Loved Hound
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Sadie, Sadie – Pretty Lady
The scrungy skinny dog pack leapt up from their dirt beds. Mottled colors and multiple scars flashed around the small outdoor fenced enclosure. They had heard the reverberation of the truck’s engine and knew that meant it was coming for them. The older ones stood to the back, letting the younger ones leap on each other and on the fence in anticipation of doing what they had been taught to do. Chase and kill coyotes.
The truck rounded the corner, kicking up sand in its tracks as the pack whined and barked, pushing against the worn wire to get out first. Their days were always like this. Kept in a dirt pen, fed when needed and taken in a truck to open fields to hunt coyotes.
The trucks would race across the prairie and unceremoniously dump them out to ‘sight’ moving objects. The ranchers wanted dead coyotes, the hounds wanted only to be free to run and chase. As a pack, they were deadly. Any creature they caught would be torn to pieces in the pack frenzy. Some of the hounds would also be ripped apart in the killing fervor which reaches to their wolf past and spews out in a furious flurry.
Sadie, a scruffy, compact, sharp faced white and gray gal, had the smarts to do her job and stay alive for at least six years. From Nebraska, she somehow found her way to a Colorado rescue group. When she was put in a car for the first time with soft beds to lay on, she went into her stiff silent sphinx position. Resting but ready, curious but cautious about where this enclosed vehicle was taking her and her alone. She was no longer one of many, but one alone.
Friends of Retired Greyhounds (FORG) took her in for her medical assessment and spay, and found out she had bi-lateral thyroid cancer. Sadie, they were told, only had a few months to live, even after palliative radiation. The group took to social media to ask for another home for her two remaining months.
On Thanksgiving, Greyhound Gang took her in. That was over two years ago.
So one of my endearing qualities is I don’t always believe what doctors tell me. My Dad had banned me from coming to the doctor with him because – “I ask too many questions.”
So with Sadie, I researched thyroid cancer and cancer in general. Within one month, using holistic supplements and no doctor intervention, her thyroid tumors reduced over 50%. And they stayed reduced. I gave her: mushroom powders – turkey tail, in particular. Yucca Intensive for reducing inflammation. Turmeric Golden Paste. Raw food. Greens. Pine Bark Extract. Assorted other immune boosting tinctures. This gray and white fuzzy staghound gal runs, plays, leaps and loves, just like any other happy dog.
The first months in Gang’s home, Sadie wasn’t what you would call a demonstrative dog. Her initial focus was with the other dogs. Assuring her place in the pack, and seeing who would play with her. Her pack life experiences though made her play rough, snipping and snapping and grabbing and none of the Gang’s sighthounds wanted anything to do with her when she wanted to play. She also initially guarded her food over zealously and understandably, but smart girl that she was, she quickly learned food was plentiful and filling.
My personal dogs walk off leash with me. I kept her on leash for quite a while, sure she would be off and hunting if she wasn’t tethered. She hated it, as she obviously hadn’t been on leash very much in her life. She’d walk a few steps and then just stop. And stay.
I finally let her off leash, my heart beating hard that first time, not sure if she was going to take off through the sage and junipers never to be seen again. I shouldn’t have doubted her. This smart girl always knew where I was, and while she did range and was always sniffing and checking all the signs along the way, she always came back.
Her affection though was hard won. She accepted that I fed her. She accepted that I was the person to listen to. But when I’d sit by her side and pet her and call her gorgeous, she’d just pretend to be sleeping. Every night, she slept by herself in the living room, when all other dogs traipsed into the bedroom with me. One night I picked up the leash, as my calling her from the bed was just ignored, and brought her onto my bed. She dutifully got up on it, and then got into her sphinx position and became a statue at the bottom of the bed. No amount of encouragement and pets from me could convince her to stay. As soon as I settled under the covers with a book, she shot off the bed and went into the living room to a dog bed.
But time has a way of changing us all, and I had a lot more time with her. Now she wiggles and waggles at me and greets me at the door asking where we are going. To go for a walk, to go for a car ride are her two favorite things in the world. I’m up there though. She’s even started to ask visitors for attention. She even sleeps in the bedroom with us all now.
Lately, our morning walks are never long enough for her. It’s as if she knows her days have lessened and she wants to do all the joyful things she can. The same month my Dad died, I found out that cancer had moved to her lungs and fluid had developed in her chest and neck. She has idiopathic head tremors and a third eyelid has appeared. But she has no time for my sadness. She bounces and prances and shakes her head when she sees me getting dressed. She dashes out the door, and down the ramp, feet beating a hurry-up rhythm on the deck. And then off she goes. Ranging and roaming and sniffing and snorting, albeit with some heavy breathing from the nodules of poison in her lungs. The other day she flushed a rabbit and was off like a rocket. Dashing back to me headlong, joy flashing everywhere.
Gang recently rescued a puppy and Sadie was the only one who thought this was the neatest present in the world. Click on these links for videos of puppy play.
When our walk is over, she stands in the driveway looking outward. She’ll turn her head to me and say I want more. And more I give her. I let her go on her own to traverse the paths amid the sage, sniffing and discovering what happened there the night before. She treasures these alone walkabouts, patrolling her domain to determine what creatures have appeared since her last sniffs. She always returns, leaping up the stairs, heavy breathing. My treasure of a gal who looks to the world around her with wonder and joy. I will give her all the world in these last days.
Addendum
It’s time to make the decision. The decision that rends my heart to the far seas, that drowns my face in tidal waves.
We walked around the property today. I followed her well worn path of sniffs and snorts and pee as she shuffled along, checking, remembering. We walked by her already dug grave, and the graves of others. She can’t get comfortable – standing or resting. Her coughs increase with her attempts to expel the poison lodged in lungs. I touch her and she gives me the briefest glimpse of a tail wag.
These last days of deciding have my insides ripped and draped on my outside. I lay with her repeating – I love you. I love you. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I need to get it right – in my head and in my heart. Not too soon, but not too late. Give her as many good days as possible. Don’t let her have bad days. My lioness. That white mane of fur around her neck, the scruffy face – which I cover in tears as I let her go.