He walks up the 3 stairs to my bed with pause, not sure if his back legs will cooperate, each step carefully considered one paw at a time. His front leg moves up to the step above, he hesitates as his back leg dangles for a split second before he finds the muscle control to pull the leg up high enough to place the foot on the next step.
Once he arrives on the soft red blanket, surrounded by pillows, he slowly turns in a circle and lays himself down. I can almost hear the creak of his vertebrae as he does this.
He is twelve, this dog we used to call Benji the Bullet, so fast as he whizzed through the park single-mindedly focused on the yellow tennis ball in flight, legs scrambling underneath him, every ounce of his will engaged in each muscle to get the target as fast as possible. When he reached the ball, he’d thrust himself, full force, to catch it and I’d see his body twist and contort. I couldn’t help but worry how his full force speed would impact him over time.
He loved to jump, to shoot himself in the air like a gush of water, do a little pirouette and land with the frisbee, the ball, whatever.
The four of us played keep-away together with the floppy frisbee on a regular basis – one dog in a “sit and stay” on the side, the other dog running fiercely between us to catch the pink flying disc, hoping for us to fumble. And with Benji between us, if he and I came in close for the catch, I always snatched my hand away to save my fingers. He just couldn’t help his intensity. Those frisbee games always ended with happy panting dogs who’d then need a nap.
We’d swim him at the river in summer, throw huge branches out as far as we could so he could paddle back with his prize. He wouldn’t even make the effort for a skinny, wimpy stick. No, he’d tell us, this one… the big one. His effort and focus just the same as when he ran, one pointed, determined, like a good soldier.
The first year he lived with us, sometimes he’d go rogue in the woods after the scent of a deer or a moose. A few times we thought we’d lost him.
Brave and fierce as he was, he would occasionally shake like a leaf at home, unable to move between rooms as though something from another dimension was blocking his way. Eventually, we called in an energy worker to get help and she said our house was haunted and that the spirit was picking on Benji. It seemed far-fetched, but we couldn’t deny his strange behavior and how his freedom to move about returned after she’d cleared the house.
Now, he spends his days lounging on my cozy bed looking out over the street – my room, now dubbed “the watch-tower.” He walks like a hunched old man and on occasion trips down the stairs. I cringe every time.
His vertebrae discs are compressed.
He takes daily pain meds in a variety of forms.
He’s one of three elders in my life and I’m bracing for their inevitable departure. I suppose this is what we sign up for when we get dogs, that they will leave us first with a gaping hole in our hearts, their loyal friendship gone.
And then there’s my mother. Ninety-three and counting, still playing piano. She’s making a CD this year. But just last week she told me her knees hurt more and she’s sleeping a lot and the cold she got hasn’t gone away.
Bracing. Or perhaps softening into what is coming.
What is inevitable.