I am taking care of the family dog this summer so my parents can go to the beach and be normal retired people, instead of retired people whose lives are ruled by a dog. (It’s also trendy to move back in with your parents, and I like to be on trend.) They’ve been gone for a week, and I’m losing my mind. The dog is in charge. I traded my life for theirs in a straight up hostage swap. As my mom hugged me before she left, she looked me in the eyes and whispered, “Thank you.” As they drove away, the dog started barking, and she hasn’t stopped.
That’s not entirely true. She stops to sleep, at which point I am afraid she is dead, and I lean over her to ensure that her belly rises and falls. But when she is not sleeping, she is barking. She sits on the back of the couch and looks out the window, like a cat. But unlike a cat, she barks at everyone who walks by: the mailman, the UPS man, a near-constant stream of neighbor children. If it’s quiet outside, she comes and finds me. She barks, sneezes, stares, and coughs, imploring me to take her out, to feed her, to feed her something else because her tastes have become too discerning for dog food.
Can’t we just take her to a kennel? We cannot. She is not some child to be dropped off at daycare or sent away to sleepaway camp! She is 13, an old lady. She doesn’t like to leave the neighborhood; it stresses her out.. My parents could not and would not be happy sitting on the beach and knowing the dog was not well-taken care of. I can’t be happy sitting on a much closer beach or in a coffee shop, thinking that the dog’s bladder might be about to burst. So I work at home, and hang out at home, and jump when the dog even looks at the door. My boss, with whom I chat online throughout the day, has gotten used to my hourly disappearances. “sorry, DOG,” I type, before running to the leash and the door.
She has a disease that makes her cough, another disease that makes her wheeze, and another disease that makes her have to pee approximately always. She has a fatty tumor on her stomach the size of my fist, and various other bumps and growths on her legs, back, and chin. Her hair is grey, and she’s grown a beard. She takes four pills in the morning and another three at night to keep everything in working order. Before the pills, there was a month when the house was covered in drips of dog pee. That month taught us all to jump when she even suggests that maybe, possibly, there’s a small chance that she might have to go. It also has taught me, at least, that the dog is going to die soon, possibly today.
The dog sleeps in my bed. People who know about such things say that this is the first part of my problem, but there’s nothing I can do about it. The dog has always slept in our beds. It’s too late in the game to change that. But: it’s not pleasant. She coughs. She has fitful dreams. She moans, waves her paws, shakes her legs. I wake up several times a night, convinced the dog is seizing and dying. But she’s just sleeping.
At least, she is until 5 a.m., when she decides it’s time to get up. She stares at me. She grumbles. She sneezes. She belly barks. Eventually, she jumps up, puts her little black paws one me, and wails. The wail makes me jump out of bed, even though it’s the last thing I want to do. (I have spent my adult life ensuring that I never have to be awake at 5 a.m., only to be foiled by dog.) But the wail implies pain, and I don’t want the dog to be in pain. I throw on a dress, follow her down the stairs, find the leash, and out we go.
At 5 a.m. it’s light enough not to be the middle of the night, and dark enough that no one else is around. The birds sing without stopping. I don’t notice much else. I focus all of my attention on the dog, willing her to squat, to pee, so we can go back to bed. It never works out like this. The insane need, the desperation of just a few minutes earlier is gone. Now her tail is wagging. She’s out in the world, having a sniff. I follow her around the neighborhood, miserable.
We got her when I was 14. I’d begged for a dog for years, and one day after school had let out for the summer, we piled in the car, drove to a farm out in the country, and picked out the tiniest, cutest black ball of fluff. On the way home I cradled the puppy’s body in my arms, listening to her little puppy breaths against my chest. I was totally content, and I thought she was, too. I would later learn that Molly did not like cuddling, and the only reason she let me hold her during those early days was because she had no energy to squirm away; her veins were being sucked dry by hundreds of ticks, so many that that my mother would spend hours pulling them off of her tiny body.
I never accepted her as she was. I wanted a teddy bear, and she’s more of a lone wolf. She only cuddles when it suits her, and it only suits her if it’s freezing and she needs your body for warmth. I had hoped that one upside of her old-age would be a new willingness to spoon, but no. If I’m in the bed, she sleeps by my feet, but sometimes if she gets into bed first, she’ll sleep near my pillow. I’ll get in and try to hug her. She’ll wake , grumble, and move out of reach.
My parents come home for a few weeks in between trips, and they aren’t home an hour before I escape to the guest room of friend’s house. Sayonara, puppy. Later that night, settled into bed with the lights off, I think of the dog. I miss her. Does she miss me? Is she okay? Are her feelings hurt that I abandoned her? I feel bad for hating her so much over the past weeks. She can’t help it if she’s old and sick and spoiled! I almost decide to go over there, to apologize, to the dog. To hug her. But she hates hugs, and also, she’s a dog. I fall asleep. At 5 a.m. I sit up and look to the foot of my bed, and my stomach catches when the dog isn’t there. Then I remember: she’s just home, not dead, not yet. I go back to sleep. She’ll be my charge (or I, hers) again soon.
