I’m not sure about this, because you know how things work. Nothing ever moves in a straight line. There are no smooth descents. Every vet we’ve spoken to has told us about people who’ve canceled that last appointment when their pet revives, starts chasing squirrels. I could be wrong, and I hope I am.
He may yet take one more with me, or two. I will not compel him, but I will ask him, encourage him even. I exist to facilitate his desires, and if he wants to go I will carry him the whole way if he needs it.
But I think my very last walk to the park with Zeke took place on Tuesday.
Yesterday was a bad day. I spent the day doing laundry, most of it piss-soaked dog beds and canvas tarps that I had put over the dog beds in an unsuccessful attempt to absorb the piss, and I wondered about moving that vet date up until this weekend: he hated it so. But I found some pads designed expressly for this very situation, and they work well to keep his beds dry — and him too to a lesser extent — and he is less miserable now. Last night he perked up at around one am. I sat out back with him and fed him snacks, and his eyes lit up again. His gratitude for every gesture of help is palpable, the glances when I steady him, the tail wags when I pick him up off the floor or clean him up with warm water, and he relaxes fully only when I am in the room.
I took his cheer this morning as evidence he might be up for a walk. I took him out front, hosed down his groin and feet a little to clean him, and then said “let’s go!” He turned around and walked up to the porch, pleading with his eyes to be put back inside.
When he was asleep on his new pad, the heater vent blowing warm air onto his hips, I went for that walk on his behalf.
It’s funny how these things work. You’re more sure of the first walk without him than of the last walk with him. I might be wrong. I hope I’m wrong.
I don’t think I’m wrong.
I threw some stale bread to the mallards on Pinole Creek. The creek is flowing well despite the dry winter. I watched the rills slow-cutting new channels in the gravel bed. A woman walked across the bridge and passed me, stopping as her gentle pit bull shyly sniffed my pant leg. “Do you have a dog?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, after a moment’s thought.
There is a steep way back that Zeke sometimes preferred, the sidewalk gaining 90 feet in one block, and he chugged back home that way as recent as November. I climbed it for him. A row of disheveled ivy he used to sniff, and the spot where I pulled him each time we passed away from the poison oak, and neighbors looked at my wet cheeks and looked away. At the corner of Summit and Buena Vista I stopped.
I have the quiet list of apologies I make, that I keep to myself lest someone point out to me that we all have lives to lead, that it was Zeke’s job to fit into our lives as much as mine to fit myself to his, and yet I apologize to him that he only saw the snow he loved three times in sixteen years, that I failed to walk him on days when my depression grew too all-encompassing, that I shoved him out of the way sometimes, that I left him for weeks on end to go traveling. Silly regrets and yet inevitable, and at the corner of Buena Vista and Summit I remembered him pulling on the leash, always wanting to walk two blocks into the cul-de-sac. Every time we walked that alternate path he’d ask, at least a hundred times, and I took him five or six at most. I was usually in too big a hurry to get to work, at a job I no longer have, a job where no one cared if I came in late. Five minutes a day at most and I told him I had no time. Such a simple wish, so easy for me to grant, its importance so much greater to him than the time really was to me, and I want more than anything to take him that way now.
You whose dogs still walk with you: please. Please take them where they want to go. For Zeke. Because I cannot.
Later, 7:00 P.M.: we just came back from a three-block walk. Maybe it’s the last one, maybe it’s not. I’ll take it either way.
Posted by: Chris Clarke
Categories:
Zeke
Send to Del.icio.us; Digg; Ma.gnolia; Reddit; Spurl; Newsvine; StumbleUpon
Login or Register to save this post as a favorite or email it to a friend.
