Blackbird

First, welcome readers from Australia, Brazil and Sweden. G’Day, Ola and Hej!

Our dog Zoe is getting quite old and I’ll probably be here alone with her at the end of her days. Right now she seems healthy and happy whilst losing her sight and hearing.

Sir Paul McCartney wrote:

“Blackbird singing in the dead of night, take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arise”

I think our “hip-less wonder-dog” is happy in the moment and doesn’t see the future. She knows the present and remembers much of the past. We have had her with us since she turned six weeks of age, from a shelter. That was 14 years ago and I hope she doesn’t remember the squalor she grew up in for several weeks before she and her litter-mates were dumped at the downtown shelter.

She now lives a “sheltered” life and sleeps on her beds and ours, including an orthopedic bed in my car from which she pops up from sound sleep at off-ramps and stop lights. She can jump down from our bed and looks out our windows early morning to catch the squirrels. That would be a virtual catch from far up, she’s never gotten a squirrel.

She killed two mice, yes, years ago. Sorry, mouse families. She will have to pay retribution for that but she already has on earth. My husband took both mice from her mouth immediately and tossed them onto a nature preserve for the Greater Sandhill Cranes to feed their young colts. Zoe eats frozen raw lamb and dry (for travel) duck or turkey kibble. We can’t get dry ice here so I keep her on some frozen dried so her tummy is OK when we travel.

I will be there for her, nonetheless, at the end. I always have to make the decision and be there. My husband is a big, strong guy and has been a pallbearer for many humans, but not necessarily one who has been in the trenches at decision or death. I have done so more times than most and insisted before we adopted Zoe that if he is to be a “pet dad” he must participate in the bad things as well as the good. He’s already good at long walks and picking up the poop, and even though this real genius cannot change a roll of toilet paper he always puts the seat down! OK, twice in nearly 17 years I fell in.

Bye, bye blackbird is an old song I somewhat remember. Dad’s mother used to sing it to me as a baby and she died before I was a year old so I never really knew her.

“Pack up all my cares and woes, here I go, singing low, bye by blackbird, where somebody waits for me, sugar sweet so is (s)he….”

I can tell you that in heaven Zoe will meet many canine, feline and human friends. Yes, she likes cats and hopefully she’ll meet my former dog Chani who raised a cat, Mick, who raised many more dogs who visited him all the time. He taught himself to fetch crumpled post-it notes from my work and drop them at my feet to toss. Hey, Chani raised him, I let her do so.

Zoe is not ready to go yet, at about 98.5 in people years but I will look for it, get no unnecessary treatment and be there for and with her before she suffers. Dee