Slim

Ode to Slim
Slim is dying. He doesn’t realize it, but I live with that knowledge everyday. I see his brain and heart telling him he can still run, and his legs attempting to complete the message by flopping out in directions that make running impossible. I see him struggling to totter out and greet my return, determination focused, legs unfocused. One day he’ll wake up and his legs will be unable to support him, and then I’ll have to let him go.

Until then, we are remembering and loving. Remembering the first big wide smile five years ago, as he stood in his crate begging me to choose him as my own. Remembering his inability to do anything slowly, as he only had two gears, fast and faster, and he would take every staircase as if it was a race to the top. Remembering the fields he’d run and run in and when I’d call he’d return to the closest guy, not yet determined to respond to a woman. Remembering the day a swallow swooped down and caught his eye. Slim took up the chase, and the swallow complied by staying eye level, and they raced back and forth and back and forth on an open field. The bird reveling in leading the chase, Slim stretched out determined to win.

Remembering the carousing on beaches, feet lifted high in water. His attempt (OK, my attempt) to get him to swim when I took him over his head, turned him to shore, and he valiantly dog paddled, until his lack of fat and hence buoyancy, caused him to slowly roll on his side, still desperately dog paddling for dry land.

Remembering our cross-country trip. Which he spent standing up in the back of the pick-up cab so as not to miss a thing. His constant whining told me what he found interesting and what he did not. At night he’d lay across my legs on top of my sleeping bag and steal my pillows whenever I got up. He was a boy who couldn’t stand to be left alone, but he also didn’t want to listen to no stinkin’ woman, and he strongly felt he didn’t need no stinkin’ leashes. My go-go kind of guy, gotta move, gotta smell, gotta check it all out and gotta do it on his own. He taught me to learn to let go, and let him be who he was, and soon I will have to make the ultimate let go — the decision to let him go forever.

This decision is bereft of power. It’s all about sadness. The sadness is mine because we have shared and loved and it’s time for him to move on. And everyday I wake up next to him, and it’s the first thought I have. Can he struggle up, can he walk, will this be the day? And everyday is the day. And no day will be the day. Because Slim is dying, and I will have to let him go.

Addendum: Slim underwent spinal neck surgery, and though doctors said the surgery was a success, he never regained the use of his legs. He is now in Doggie Heaven.