Woof.

Slobber. Sleep. Snore. Eat. Repeat.

It has been brought to my attention by a reliable source on these sorts of things that August 26th was National Dog Appreciation Day. So, in the spirit of procrastinated holiday celebrations, take some time on this day that is not August 26th to read about how much I appreciate my dog.

I get out of bed from the thick, face-slackened sleep of the small numbered AM to make sure that you are still alive. In the post-sleep, pre-awake moment of mental mush, my shirt contorts and bends, poking out with my bows as blind punches seek and miss my sleeves. I look like a mid-1990s screensaver. I feel like a mid-1990s screensaver, pixelated, chunkily animated, and a little dizzy. If it weren’t for you, I’d be asleep.

We connected. Deeply. The first time we met I felt a strange immediate intimacy as though we both knew that we would be there when one or the other died. We sensed grief was in the other and that we could each hold our own and hold the other’s. Your knowledge of grief meant you were a safe future, so we each leaned into it together.  

A decade later and you are the force that pulls me out of bed in the morning. I rise to the repeated ritual of tending to our collective needs. You pull me from the covers and through the darkness with little more than a solitary idea about your existence. This tiny truth is the pilot flame for my mental acuity. I can latch to your tactile need, I can push air and fuel into the idea of your need, and from your need I can begin to process my own and from this place of awareness, I can get to work.

You didn’t have to choose me to do your work in this world. Allison was the much more logical choice. She is less awkward, softer, more kind, more outwardly loving in her acts of affection. She spent the time to find you. She is the one who read all the stuff about you. She did all the work to establish the right relationships and perform the proper rites to ensure that you would enter our lives. In fact, I argued against you. I bemoaned the reality that you were going to take up so much time. You were going to place demands on our life, responsibilities and what not. Allison and I were newlyweds living in a new place; the idea of you seemed overwhelming.

I gather the items I need from the kitchen. Your medicine is in the basket by the closet. Your favorite food is in the fridge on the other side of the room. And as I turn to complete the full kitchen tour, I pull a spoon from the island drawer. 

You are waiting for me. You seek out my eyes in the darkness. Your tail thumps, not as fast as it did when we first met, but now with an age-gained authority. Your hips can’t handle the old wag, but you insist on expressing your joy to be alive this morning. Three solid thumps. Then you insist on receiving your medication in a ball of pork mush.

It wasn’t too long ago that instead of a pill, we went straight outside. You bounded to me, burying your head and snout into the crouched fold of my gut as I attached your leash, connecting us wrist to vest for our walk. 

Then I found you one morning, laying in a pile of blood, feces, and vomit. You couldn’t walk. You shook. You sought out my eyes with your deep brown wells of affection, not with the joy of welcoming a new day, but with awareness that this may be the moment around which we bonded. This may be the deliverance of the silent promise we passed on our first day when grief called out to grief, a mother who had lost her pups to a son who had lost his mother. 

Then I started gagging. I needed to wake Allison, that better disciple than me, to help. Without a gag or blink, she took charge, giving me orders and kneeling down to work on the crappy basement carpet. I lifted your trembling frame into the tub and rinsed the raspberry jam colored mixture off your fur as I turned my head away and dry heaved, eyes watering. You shook and stared at me, demanding I see you, demanding I be with you. 

But you didn’t die. You live on, so I wake each morning to the idea of your need and meet your eyes. 

In wordy wordiness,

Walter