On their way to the Sierra for a camping weekend, Matt’s yellow lab was in a terrible accident. The decision whether or not to put Sam down weighed on my son, and he decided to try and save her.
A month passes before I see her in the hospital. I’d waited. I’m not big on dogs. But my aversion to them is not why I waited – I was afraid to see how bad Sam looked. A tiny, thin, blue plastic tube snakes up her left nostril, cotton blankets cushion her all around, a catheter retreats from her backside, and her disintegrated hind feet are in rubber casts. In a purple haze from pain medication, she cocks her head and thwaps her tail in happy recognition, smiles at me and invites me into her cubicle.
Lying with her on the floor, we talk and cry. Actually, she talks and I cry. She says how nice I look in my dance clothes, and that this has certainly put her old hip pain in perspective. She appreciates all the love and attention she’s getting, the visits from everyone, the red, felt-tip hearts the staff draws on her casts, the green rubber frog her nurse gave her that holds sentry at her furry front feet, protecting her day and night. My head is touching hers so I can hear her. Stroking her soft ears and the part of her back still covered with her yellow fur, my hand avoids the rest of her body skinned from the pavement and grafting. She looks like half an uncooked Thanksgiving turkey.
She takes her top paw and moves my hand in between hers so she can tenderly hold it, and tells me not to worry. With a single last wag, she drifts back off into a peaceful, pharmaceutical sleep. Breathing together, in and out, softly and evenly, I quietly talk to her while she sleeps. I tell her how beautiful she is – how much her family, her neighborhood friends, and everyone at Rugworks misses her. I also relay how the Collins girls across the street are setting up a lemonade stand to help with the vet costs. I say small prayers for her and thank her for teaching me how to fall in love with a dog.
I notice she’s lost a lot of weight and tell her she looks better than ever – well, her front half, anyway. I remind her of all her other close calls with Matt when she was younger – tumbling end-over-end down ski slopes, sailing over rocky cliffs, paddling up rushing rivers – and as she made it through all that, she can make it through this.
I whisper, “There are a couple of things you should know. Matt and Brooke brought home a small gray kitten last week, and I know you have little patience for kittens. They are also having a baby in a few months. You need to heal so it won’t hurt when the baby gets big enough to crawl all over you, and maybe the baby won’t irritate you nearly as much as the kitten will. You’ll get used to them, and perhaps even fall in love with them.”
P.S. Sam has now been home from the hospital for a month. Most of her fur has grown back. Her rear legs are still bandaged and will never be the same, so she carefully, though very happily, slowly chases her soggy green tennis ball, lies in the flowerbeds (I put in a good word for her), and is making friends with the small gray kitten, Mahari. (2005)
P.P.S. Sam is twelve years old now. She still loves to camp, has outlived Mahari who was run over by a car, and is very patient with Satchel, now two-and-a-half years old. I think Sam feels about kids as I feel about dogs, so I tell her what a good girl she is every time I see her and thank her for being so gentle and sweet to my grandson. (Written in 2005)
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