Getting Our Pet Fix

No matter where we housesit, we inevitably get attached to the pets.
We frequently bring up pets that we have cared for and laugh at the dachshund that wanted to attack swans twice his size

or the one-eyed English dachshund that disappeared into a badger hole, 

or the puppy that grabbed a frozen squirrel and ran away from us. 

It's no different here in the Berkshires where we're caring for a 15-year-old, arthritic yellow lab and two cats.
We were warned before we arrived that the dog, Jenny, is having trouble with incontinence. And that has proved to be true. Most mornings when I come downstairs to teach at 6 a.m., I have to clean up the floor where she has left her pet nuggets overnight. But that's part of pet ownership, isn't it?
The cats are quirky in that they follow us when we walk the dog.

We don't go on real roads, but we do walk along a dirt road sometimes, and if a car should come along, the cats are smart enough to disappear into the ferns and plants along the road. The problem is, they don't always come back out.
There have been plenty of times that Earl or I have had to go back searching for them, and there they are, hunkered down in the same spot where they jumped off the road, as if they couldn't possible find their way back.
One day last week, the pet's dinner time arrived and the cats were not milling around underfoot. I fed Jenny and asked Earl if he had seen the cats. They're indoor/outdoor cats. We lock them inside at night because there are so many predators that would like a tasty cat morsel.
We both tried to recall when we'd last seen the cats.
That morning, Earl and I had gone for a 5-mile walk, but Jenny hadn't come and the cats usually only followed when the dog was along.
Earl went onto the front porch and started calling for the cats (they do come when they're called sometimes).
Jenny ran to the front door to be let out. I opened the door and she raced past Earl and up a path into the woods, barking crazily. She barked and sniffed and ran a zigzagging path until we couldn't see her anymore but we could still hear her.
After a bit, she came into view still barking and running.
We couldn't believe the way she was moving. This is an arthritic dog that gets medicine every morning and evening. But we had been out of her meds for three days.
"I feel like I'm in an episode of Homeward Bound," I muttered to Earl.
He went in search of the cats, heading toward the grandparents' home down a different trail.
About 10 minutes later, as I stood on the front porch, I saw Kepler, the black cat come bounding down the same path that Jenny had gone up. He stopped and looked behind him in a paranoid sort of way. There came his sister Tanna after him down the hill.
They both came into the kitchen for food as if nothing had been amiss.
I could picture them up in the forest, lost, until they heard Jenny barking and searching for them. She led them home.
So, in a way, it was like the movie Homeward Bound, only the cats were lost because they just don't have a good sense of direction.
Not too long now, we'll be leaving behind these pets that we've grown attached to, but we know there'll be future pets to enjoy.

Crazy Conversations

Sometimes I can lure my boys into hanging around with us. Football Game Day is one of those. If I buy the right snacks -- their preference is for peanut M&Ms, Funyuns and tortilla chips with cheese dip.
Ohio State was playing at noon today and the four of us watched while I baked some pigs in a blanket to satisfy Tucker's craving.
The cats are always present in the middle of our conversation. Tupi had wandered from lap to lap, moving his way closer to the cheese dip. Tybs sat in the middle of the living room rug with his four legs tucked under him.

Tybs, who will be two this fall, is a strange cat. He purrs when he is getting read to bite someone. He hasn't learned to put away his claws so he is constantly scratching people. His eyes hang at half mast so he looks a little evil and a lot tired. He's got kind of a bad rep at our house.
"Tybs is not someone I like to hang out with," Spencer said.
And we laughed, trying to picture the cat compared to Spencer's wide group of friends.
I was trying to figure out where the cat stood in the polls, if there were any friends he might outrank.
"I mean, it might be okay if there were like four other guys, but you wouldn't want to hang out with him alone," Spencer continued.
"I only like him because he doesn't have any other friends," Spencer said.
"So no road trips?" Tucker asked.
"No, I am not going on a road trip with Tybs."
And we all laughed because, well, he's a cat.

Peaceful Passing

Sometime between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m., our dog Rosie died.
She'd been a three-legged dog for about four months, getting used to negotiating stairs on three legs and licking her shaved hindquarters faithfully until the hair grew back. Amputating her leg was supposed to save her life, but the cancer had spread to her lungs, so she began coughing and started refusing all but the most delectable food tidbits. Yesterday, she turned up her nose at a hot dog and wouldn't take any medicine. Her last week was spent mostly lying under the porch swing as the flowers in the backyard waved gently in the breeze and the finches alighted on the bird feeder. She would lift her dry nose to feel the air wafting past and wag her tail at the approach of her family.
In spite of our coaxing, last night she wouldn't come in the house. While the kids and I went to the book store to retrieve the latest Harry Potter book, my husband sat on the ground beside her and she burrowed her nose into his lap, perking up her ears at his voice. He thought she had weeks to go. I thought otherwise. I watched how she wouldn't make eye contact with my daugher when we returned home. Grace sat with Rosie in the dark until friends arrived, taking Grace to an all night reading party.
I asked Rosie again if she didn't want to come in the house. She lapped at the water Grace had placed beside her and settled her nose on her tan paws. The clock read 1 a.m.
At 6 a.m. I wrenched myself from my bed. I was meeting friends for a run. Our black and white cat raced ahead of me down the stairs, anticipating his breakfast. I poured the dry food into his bowl and stepped to the sliding glass doors. Rosie lay on her side in the grass, her paws folded in front of her, no longer breathing.
I am sad she died, but I appreciate the way she lived and how she spent those last weeks of her life. I could learn a lot from her.

Good Dog

We have lived in this house for six years now and my dog still stands at the wrong side of the door waiting to get out. Like a misbehaving toddler from the 1950s, she stands with her nose in the corner. I have to scooch her back as I open the door at the other side and herd her around to that side, avoiding snowflakes and blasts of cold air that are gaining ground in this bizarre spring.
The dog was a bribe to the kids, brought by Santa the year we moved from Michigan, leaving behind a tight group of friends and godparents. In this friendless city, my husband drove to a farm and picked a chestnut brown puppy with floppy ears. She slept in an oversized dog kennel under the Christmas tree that night with a big red bow around her neck. The next morning she never left my 6-year-old daughter’s arms. My daughter named her Rosie, because she thought that brown fur had a reddish tint to it.
Rosie is eight years old now and mostly my thoughts of her have to do with vacuuming up dog hair and picking up dog doo in the backyard. She barks if anyone has the audacity to walk along the street in front of our house and she remains at the bottom of the pack, even under the paw of the kitten we got last summer.
My daughter Grace was certain she could turn this mutt into a show dog. She set up obstacle courses and ran her through them, along balance beams and through tunnels. Grace tried making her a sled dog, attaching the wagon to her ample sides and having her pull small children through the streets. Grace’s last efforts were teaching the dog to be a jumping dog. Grace would pull molded plastic chairs into the center of the backyard and place a long hockey stick across the seats. With pockets full of treats and a long leash, she would jump the stick, her newly elongated legs flying through the air. Rosie would follow sometimes, her belly barely grazing the stick. Other times she would simply stop, nearly pulling Grace’s arm out of socket as the leash jerked to a stop.
This fall, Rosie started limping. We probably waited a month before we took her to the vet, thinking it might go away. The vet diagnosed an old knee injury that was probably getting arthritis. He gave her a cortisone shot and sent us home. We went back two more times for pain medicine as her limp became worse. In March, the knee was so swollen and she was in obvious pain. This time, the doctor did an x-ray. He called me and my now 15-year-old daughter back to look at the x-ray.
A bone tumor.
Where her femur should have been straight and white, the bones seemed to wander off into their own curling paths.
Grace held it together until we returned to the examining room. She sat down, refusing to look at the dog. Tears streamed down Grace’s face as I petted the dog’s soft fur around her ears and neck.
“She doesn’t know why your sad, Grace,” I said.
My husband and I took her to the Veterinarian Oncologist and our very sensible friends refrained from laughing at us. But after two hours listening to the doctor explain chemotherapy treatments and the cost of amputation, we walked out having decided to make Rosie’s life as comfortable as possible. With all of the treatments, they could predict a 10- to 16-month life expectancy. She had already beaten the odds. A dog with this type of bone tumor normally only lives five months. Rosie had been diagnosed six months previously.
So, now I think about the dog much more. I give her medicine every morning and evening. I let her sleep on the living room rug rather than in her kennel. I feed her treats and trip over her chew bones. I’m careful when I open the door to let her out, trying not to brush her sore leg and leaning way into the spring snow to avoid hitting her with the screen door.
She has been the best bribe I ever gave my children.