Sick Boy on Christmas Eve

It is Christmas Eve and our dog is on his last legs.

We spent three hours at the dog ER with Punchy this afternoon after he collapsed getting out of the truck after an aborted run to the dog park. It was too cold for either dog to be outside, never mind their having been sled dogs. That he could not right himself and kept falling was astonishing and scary. Our intrepid Punchy, unbalanced and twitching. He had to be carried into the house.

The dog ER was full of unhappy people. My husband heard one client wrap up his description of his mother’s cancer-afflicted cat that had taken a drastic turn for the worse by saying, “Merry Fucking Christmas to Me.”

We didn’t feel that bad, having accommodated ourselves to the realities of owning older, very much older dogs, never mind how fit and trim they might be from years of working the sleds. Nothing lasts forever, I thought to myself, remembering Punchy just a few days ago galloping down the dog park trail like a puppy. He’s lived a good life, I thought, we ought not end it with misery.

Still, we brought him home from the dog ER though there were other options. And he wobbled into the kitchen where I cooked latkes for our combination Hanukkah dinner and Christmas Eve gift giving. The latkes took forever to brown because I’d put them in the oil when it was hot but not hot enough, this being miscalculation #496 out of nearly forty years doing this.

In the midst of this, Punchy brought himself to his feet and pooped in the middle of the kitchen rug. We watched while latkes wallowed in the not hot enough oil. I picked up the poop with a paper towel, dumped it in the toilet, washed my hands and kept on frying. There are worse things, I think, than soggy latkes and a dog pooping in the kitchen. There could be no latkes and a dead dog.

You say gratitude is hiding in a 500′ high haystack? No worries. I’ll find it.