Zen Master Dog

He still wags his tail hard enough to knock wine glasses off the coffee table and small children off their feet.  He still gets excited at the prospect of going for a walk, and rushes barking into the woods when I let him out at night.

But he's not the dog he used to be.

He has lost his stamina, that turbo-charged oomph that he seemed to never run out of.  Part of it is age--Wolfie is six now, and for a German Shepherd that is no longer young.  But neither is it old.

A couple of years ago, when he had so much energy that I thought he could win the Iditarod all by himself, on one of our walks in the woods or in the field a tick bit him and gave him anaplasmosis.

Despite tick meds, tick collars and scrupulous owners, most of the Vermont dogs I know have Lyme disease.  But they get a course of antibiotics and, though they may continue to test positive, they get better.  Antibiotics are also used against anaplasmosis, but despite repeated treatments, Wolfie has never fully recovered.

His coat is shiny, and his appetite is excellent.  When his anaplamosis limp shows up, I give him an aspirin or two and he's soon back to normal.  The new normal, that is, of not going after balls for more than a few throws;  of trotting rather than running down the steep driveway;  of walking rather than trotting on the way up.  I used to take him to herding lessons, for which he had a certain talent, but we've had to give those up.  And I wouldn't dream of taking up agility again with him, much though he enjoyed it when he was a puppy.

In many ways he reminds me of myself, bitten by CFS (chronic fatigue syndrome) in my prime, back when I was running my own Iditarod equivalents.  I too have healthy-looking hair and an excellent appetite.  But I am not who I used to be, and it's not because of the passing years.

But here is where Wolfie and I are different:  he is not a depressed or a worried dog.  When he's tired, he rests.  When his leg hurts, he takes the aspirin I give him in a dollop of peanut butter and waits for it to get better.  And when it does, he runs in the grass and chases Bisou without wondering how long this relief is going to last, or when the next relapse might hit.
He lives in and for the moment.

Of course he does--he's a dog.  I am not, more's the pity, and since living in the moment is the only possible approach to surviving CFS--because you never know how you are going to feel the next day, or even the next hour--I have to work hard at doing what Wolfie does so naturally.

Right now, as I write, I'm o.k.  My brain does not feel like it's wrapped in cheesecloth;  my arms and legs don't have that floaty, twitchy feeling that heralds a relapse;  my shoulders do not feel that familiar mantle of lead.  Nothing hurts.  But in the back of my mind there's a list of the things I'd like to get done today:  pick blueberries, freeze chard, make pesto, clean the fish bowls, clip the dogs' nails, fold the laundry--small tasks, as you can see--and I'm already weighing and prioritizing and wondering how long my energy will hold out.

While I fret, Wolfie chills, his long body stretched at my feet.  Inside his big head I doubt that there is much more than a pleasant anticipation of dinner, and the hope of a walk.  Otherwise, he is all here, on the floor, in his body, relishing the miracle of a cool dry day.

Me too, Wolfie, me too.

Tick Attack!

We are under siege by creatures the size of fly poop.  Like Agamemnon's army they surround our house on all sides, dropping down on us from the trees if we go into the woods and climbing up our pant legs if we venture into the field.  The only place where we are relatively safe is the yard, where the grass is still short.

2012 was a bad tick year, and we blamed it on the early spring.  There's been nothing early about this spring, and the winter was good and cold.  But the ticks just holed up in their deer fur duvets and now, like the rest of us, they want to be out doing stuff. 

Every time the dogs come back from a walk I check them over, but it's just a formality.  What chance do I have of finding a crawling fly speck in Wolfie's super-thick undercoat?  Bisou, whose hair though long is much sparser, should be easier, and sometimes I do catch one crawling around.  But I usually don't find them until the next day, with their heads deep into her skin, sucking away like tiny Draculas.

These are bad enough, but not as awful as the ones that drop to the floor like ripe olives, having had their fill of blood and transmitted their parasite du jour into my dogs.  Bisou has had Lyme for a couple of years, though fortunately you'd never know it from watching her.  Wolfie has anaplasmosis, another tick-borne illness, and despite three courses of antibiotics has never regained his stamina.  Most of the dogs I know have Lyme, and several of my human friends do as well.  New diseases carried by ticks are identified every year. 

Tomorrow my dogs are scheduled for their annual vet check-up.  She and I will have a depressing discussion about which insecticides do the most harm to the ticks and the least harm to the dog.  There are no good answers.  For decades I have held fleas at bay by sprinkling liberal amounts of garlic powder on the dog food, but there are no natural tick deterrents, and every few years ticks develop resistance to the latest manufactured toxins.

Fortunately, the tick offensive doesn't last all summer.  It will diminish in early summer, just as the black flies emerge.  Black flies show definite preferences for certain people, of whom I am one.  They leave me with bleeding, itchy welts around the back of my neck.  But they are little sweethearts, compared to ticks.