mystic really is a very good little girl...even for a puppy. weekends are the best for her tho...she is so utterly exhausted by the end of the day that she is content to just sleep or quietly lay around chewing on her toys.
a few people have asked how we can bear to care for a palliative puppy? and at some point i am sure it will be heartbreakingly hard...but right now? it is not hard at all because mystic feels healthy, happy and joyful.
there is no point at all in borrowing sadness by worrying too much about what is happening down the road....there are enough worries happening today to take on tomorrows too.
i am going to have to do something about maude pretty soon. i keep saying it but i can't seem to actually do it. the problem is that while her mind slips further and further away...her body at 18 is still absolutely amazingly healthy. and in her dementia she is not anxious or afraid but she is unsure most of the time now as to what she is supposed to be doing. she gets lost in the middle of the kitchen floor...was she going this way? that way?...she gets stuck cuz she can't remember anymore.
but if my legs are close in her view...she remembers she is supposed to push her head right thru....if a can of food suddenly appears...she remembers to take her place in the front of the line up to get her treats too. let me pull out a handful of cookies and she knows to follow me to my chair cuz she will get more then anybody else. and she still knows that the best thing of all is her head in my hands or a trot round the pond.
at what point do i say to her...maudie, i love you but it is time for you to let go and end your life here?
i sometimes get frustrated by simple petty things...like where the hell is my kettle jenn at 6 am this morning??? microwave tea is just not the same. and i can get pissed at the crazy shit that people sometimes sling...when i know i shouldn't even bother if other people's crazy is not actually inflicting pain or suffering on the animals or humans around here.
my job is to worry about moving half grown chickens out into the grown up chickens world....my job is to worry about popeye's feet and how they feel for him today...i am to share in his trauma and feel badly about medicating ziggy, and worry about gideon and wilbur in the same vicinity as one bowl of food, i am to make sure that mystic has a life full of happiness crammed into a one single year, and i am to hold eddie and tell him he was a very good friend as he passes away....and i am to worry about paying the vet bills for all of them too.
but right now at this moment my job has to be....to make myself make an unhappy decison of about my deeply loved maudie.....i just can't leave her standing in the kitchen feeling lost and unsure for the rest of her life.
everything else is just background noise...not important, not worth worrying about...the microwave will make decent tea til i get my kettle back where it belongs...and the crazy shit will occasionally come and go like it always does cuz nothing attracts crazy more than warm and fuzzy animals.
i love you jenn but i spent 10 minutes looking for my missing kettle before i remembered your kindness in bringing all of the wet and cold weekend warriors, hot coffee, hot tea and a whole whack of really tasty cinnamony things!
it is the same and that is a very good question that i don't know the answer to.