It's Not My Time Dad

I’m not an overly spiritual kinda guy.  I pray, though not religiously – so to speak.  That is to say I don’t pray nearly as much as the wife but more than my daughter – who doesn’t pray at all (so I guess that would be damning myself with faint praise).  When it comes to praying I can’t hold a votive candle to the wife. In my own spiritual defense though I do pray for things more substantive than the elusive winning lottery ticket or the local nine going to the World Series.  And while my devotion is often fleeting there are those times when I’m given pause to consider that there may be some sort of providence at work.  But providence does have to hit me in the face – hard.

Last Saturday was a hanging out at the house day.  I’d made the appointment to have our dog Rainey put to sleep.  For months she’d been fighting an infection in her front paw complicated by cancer in the same paw.  She’d been in pain off and on (too often on) for quite some time but in recent weeks she’d been in obvious misery; moping, not wanting to eat, spending the days lying down, moving only to find a comfortable position.  We literally had to coax and sometimes help her to stand up.  The vet offered an option of having her leg amputated followed by chemo. Our girl was devoid of the gaiety that we’d known for the past 12 years and so we rejected that option 10 days ago.

Saturday evening was cool and breezy.  Rainey was lounging on the back patio, turning her head back and forth, nose up, taking in the evening smells as I sat with her, bundled in a jacket watching the Olympics through the screen door. Even in old age and in pain her birddog instinct was as keen as when she was a pup; a centuries old spiritual drum, beating deep in her soul.  I looked at her and remembered years past.  I had a co-worker, a hunter, who would occasionally bring me a pheasant wing.  The wife hated those damned wings.  I kept them in a baggie in the freezer right next to the waffles and popsicles on top of the frozen vegetable medley. On evenings we would take the wing out of the freezer and bring Rainey up to the local soccer field.  A small whiff of that wing would have Rainey jumping and quivering; electric with excitement.  When we got to the field the wife would hold Rainey on her leash, her back to me as I walked to the other end to find a divot in which to stash the wing.  I would jog back and with Rainey’s back still turned to the field I unhooked the leash; “Go find the bird girl.”  It was like launching a heat seeking missile.  She ran back and forth and anyone looking on would think she was just running wildly with no method to the madness.  But watch.  She ran in long sweeping arcs; nose to the ground. Soon the arcs became shorter as she worked her way down the field; shorter, closer to her target.  It couldn’t have been more than a minute elapsed before she found the wing and then froze on point flanks pulsating.  And years later there she was, that greying muzzle still hard at work.

I went back in the house and the wife and I started talking about the day we were dreading.  It wasn’t in calm tones.  She’d been on the internet looking for a miracle and was lobbying for finding a way to avoid putting our friend down.  I’d let my dog go twice and now here we were revisiting the end yet again.  I wasn’t ready to get my hopes up in order to let go for a futile third time.  I broke off the discussion and stepped out to the patio and Rainey sprang to her feet looking at me with an old sparkle in her eyes.  She hopped on her three good legs over to the corner of the house and stopped to look at me.  It was as if she was calling me; “C’mere, let’s play” she seemed to say. “What is it girl?”  I walked over and she hopped around the patio table, stopped in front of me and looked up. “Do you wanna go to the front yard?” I asked. She bounced to the gate and when I opened it up she sprung over to the lawn and hopped around.  Every now and then she stopped and looked at me with eyes that were lit with joy. She was jubilance, mirth and unbridled doggy joy. We returned to the backyard, Rainey moving so fast and carelessly that she face planted.  Back to her dog bed near the screen door she plopped down and looked up at me.  It was a scene that repeated itself on Sunday evening. 

I’m not an overly spiritual guy.  More often than not I’m the curmudgeon who poo poo’s the social media prayer calls. I’m the perceived grouch.  I’m often in that sludgy place between spirituality and so called reason; a foreign land to the wife.  Maybe some things are just coincidence.  Maybe somewhere in her doggy sense Rainey perceived that we were planning her ever shortening future.  Maybe she was saying to us, “Not so fast mom and dad. I'm not ready to leave you yet so don't send me away.” Was there something providential going on?  Have you ever noticed that d-o-g is g-o-d spelled backwards?

What I didn’t know was the deal.  Providence? Coincidence?  False hopes?  What I did know was that my friend had a renewed vibrancy.  What I did know was that anyone with the means and a heart beating with any measure of compassion could not dispatch this creature of God to God. And so as of tonight we are the proud parents of a tripod. Surgery was successful.  The doc tells us she’s resting nicely and we can pick her up tomorrow. We’ve rolled the dice as they say. Rainey has yet to go through a non-aggressive chemo therapy. She'll probably be used to 3 legs before we are; that's what the doc tells us.  "They aren't self conscious about this sort of thing," he said.  We might have only a week left with her; we might have months; maybe a year or two. But in the here and now we knew that it wasn't time yet for those bright eyes to go dark.