Good Girl, Princess.

Why isn’t there a checklist?  That is all we would need!  It works for everything else.  Our lives are filled with list!  We have playlist, instant queue, ten top reasons, milk-eggs-bread, pap-mamo-facial wax.  How are we going to know if there isn’t a list?  There should be a checklist of when it is time!

1. You are cooking her meals so that she eats enough to take meds.
2. You are holding her hips while she navigates her ascent from the floor.
3. You are hand feeding her.
4. You are checking her breathing throughout the night.
5. She is wearing a diaper 24/7.
6. You will not leave her alone, calling others to watch her while you run an errand.
7. You are carrying her up and down the steps.
8. The tail wagging is diminished.  Breaking your heart that she just isn’t as happy to see you or feel your touch anymore.

Can she see me anymore?  These are the real times that make a life, make us feel alive.  The struggle of life and death breathing and beating in your chest like an anvil resting on your soul.  I want a list!  I want an answer!  I just want her to go to sleep and decide for herself.  Amazing that now after years of telling her where to lie down, what to eat and not eat, when she could join me and when she will stay, now I want her to decide.

There were times that I didn’t really decide.  It was early on, the younger years.  Hiking she would get a look in her eyes, I would take my time attempting to restrain her, knowing she would bolt.  She bolted, bolted fast.  Usually running with her hiking buddy Hound Dog.  They would bolt across the creek and up the steep hill on the other side.  Climbing up and up until they were out of sight.  Angie (Hound’s mom) and I would make a show of calling them back, to no avail.   The retriever and the hound on the hunt for their true selves, minus the sit, stay, no barking, leave it commands of their everyday world.  We had no control over them; they were dogs, making a decision to fly.   Angie and I would settle into a spot on the grass, knowing no matter how much yelling we did, they would come back in their own time.  Angie would fret about being late for work, than we would start our imagining what they were doing.  “Don’t you wish you could go with them, keep up and see what they are doing?”    We would make up stuff.  They must be running in that cornfield by now.  Chasing a herd of deer.  We would have voices for each of them.  “Princess come over here, look at this rabbit hole” Hound would say in his gentle, doh kind of voice.  Princess who swears a lot (all my dogs swear) would reply,  “what the hell, where?  An f-ing rabbit, holy sh*t, wish we had thumbs!  I would reach in and pull that thing out if I had thumbs!”  This would go on for quite sometime.  Eventually, the fun would stop and real swearing would begin.  Yelling for them to come back.  Fretting over losing jobs, calling to explain our lateness, planning the search and rescue, deciding in our minds what photo we would put on the lost posters.  “Do you think someone shot them?  Damn redneck farmers.”  “What if they got into a henhouse?”  “Bit by a rabid squirrel?”  “Broke a leg in a hole?” (Angie has a horse so breaking a leg in a hole is a real fear.)  Worse yet, “what if someone took them?”  Our stomachs would turn.  This was a possibility, after all, Angie found Hound on a road in a wooded area.  For all we know she “rescued” a dog out hiking with his family, but that is another story.

Eventually, they would come back, separate from one another.  Princess would usually appear not too far from where she left us, she does have retriever in her.  Her tongue would be hanging out of a smile as big as a dog’s smile can get.  You could see a story in her eyes.  If only she could speak.  “You guys would not believe the things I just did and saw!”  I would scold her for disappearing for so long, she would plop down in the shade, soaking wet from crossing the creek and start cleaning the burrs, mud and manure of some variety off of her.  She was in heaven.  “Hey, where the hell is Hound?”

That is a good question.  We would have to start walking.  We discuss the option of Angie going back home and getting ready for work while I stay and wait.  There is more swearing and yelling “HOUND DOG!”  “HOUND DOG!”  “I’m going to kill that dog!”   By the time we round the corner and up the hill to where the car was parked he would appear somewhere, usually the last place you would look.  In the field close to the car; nowhere near where he started or way pass the cars up in the apple orchard we would see movement and yes it was Hound.  “How the hell did he get all the way over there?”  Of course with Hound seeing him did not mean we had him.  We would drive to him, call him, he would look at us “what?”  We would pretend to leave, sometimes he would follow the car, stopping he would stop as well keeping his distance, drive away again to no avail.  Treats would be thrown, yelling, whispering, lying down to pretend we were hurt, asking other’s if we could use their dog as a lure.  It went on and on, he came back when he felt like it.  He decided when it was time.  That is exactly how death came to Hound Dog, he decided when it was time, as he lived.  He went to sleep one night and didn’t wake up.  I know he was dreaming of his life.  Running in the creek, climbing the hills, chasing rabbits and deer, rolling in dead fish guts.  I know he could hear us yelling “Hound Dog, come!  Hound, come now!”  He didn’t come back, he stayed, like a good dog, he stayed.

Follow Hound now Princess.  Run with him, you don’t have to come back.  You can stay out there forever in the cool of the woods, reaching into rabbit holes, chasing deer, swimming after ducks.  There will be gutters lined with discarded French fries, chicken wing bones and college kid’s puke if you want.  Your heaven awaits you and Hound is there.  You can run and you don’t have to come back.  You can run and run and run.  They didn’t teach me the command I need the most in obedience school!  “Die. Stay. Good girl Princess!”