She’ll be 14 next month and she doesn’t particularly wear it well. Once a beautiful girl, she is now painfully thin, despite gorging on the high-protein foods we feed her. She limps terribly, but we can find no obvious injury. She is stone-deaf and her vision is also going. However, she ‘sees’ through her nose and continues to follow me faithfully. I slow down my pace for her now, and when we arrive at one of our in-home destinations, she plops down and falls into an immediate and deep sleep. She is my office mate, my reading companion, and my sit-under-the-tree in the backyard buddy. She sleeps with us in bed at night, and hardly moves once she’s curled herself up tight and cozy.
She has many health problems including Cushing’s and never-ending UTI’s. She’s been on every antibiotic in the book. She wears diapers because she has no control over her bladder. But her time hasn’t come despite her current condition. She eats, she follows, she sleeps, and she loves. Likewise, I love her with all my soul and heart. My beautiful girl. It’s not time, but when it is, she will tell me. I dread that day.