SportNLove
Tough. Tough is a brood bitch. They’ve seen it all; they’ve done it all. Top of their game, and bottom of the barrel.
Almost eleven, SportNLove had outlived her usefulness to her racing owners. She made money for them for five years, and then bred winners for another five more. Too old to breed, and too old to race, they were going to kill her. “Why keep her around?” were their feelings when she has nothing more to give. But this tough old broad wasn’t ready to stop giving even though she’d given her heart in racing and her soul with her babies.
But first, she still had to hang tough. She came to the Greyhound Adoption League flea and tick ridden, skinny, missing a toe, with rotten teeth, deteriorated gums and a huge lump between her shoulder blades. Over the next month she underwent a spay, a dental – where every single one of her teeth were pulled – baths, shots, nails, ears and more. She also had the huge growth removed from between her shoulders that was deemed cancerous. Most didn’t think this girl would have much time left.
And yet this tough old broad just keeps continuing to amaze. One day she’s on a cold, sterile operating table getting the last of her teeth pulled – her mouth a gooey, red, pulpy mass dripping slime. And the next day, she is up and about and saying, “What is this day going to bring?”
She likes to start her days at 6 am. She races into the bedroom and throws her paw with the amputee toe into my face. Whining, she tells me the day has begun and the day is good. Get up and seize the day. Stumbling out of my bed, I open the slider to shoo her out and crawl back to bed for another hour. But SportNLove has started her day – with her romp on the grass, and her circles and leaps of joy, and her barking. She has to tell you what she’s feeling, and so at 6:05 am I am back out of bed, and shushing her as I’m not sure the neighbors will understand her joyous morning expression of life.
We go for a walk every morning, and she sashays her swaybacked, arthritic body down the red dirt road. If another greyhound decides to take a run, Sport is right there with him, telling him that she can hold her own, she’s always held her own, and no one is going to beat her at a game she knows so well and has played for so long. But she’ll run right back to me when I call, barking again at me to say, “See, I still have it, I can tell that youngster where to go”.
Taking car rides is another great pleasure. She stands at the car door, and watches all the other greyhounds leap gracefully up into the back of the Isuzu Rodeo. She looks up at me, and knows her only way in is through me, and she’s not going to be left behind. I tried that once. She actually outran my car down the full length of my driveway, beat me out the gate, and was pacing my car before I noticed this blur at the side of my car. I slammed on the brakes, shaking my head, picked her up and put her where she wanted to be – in the car with me. Did I mention she doesn’t take no for an answer?
As befitting her age, stature and life travails, she is very insistent about what she wants whether it is riding in the car, or having you pet her. She will literally hit you repeatedly with that amputated toe paw, until you realize it’s in your best interest to just do what she asks. Love like that is hard to turn away.
Now grass, couches and sagebrush surround SportNLove, and she sleeps on a soft surface with a pillow under her head. A tough old broad, who no longer just dreams about a chance for a softer life.
SportNLove Redux
Sport has returned to the Greyhound Gang to live out her last remaining days. She has a hemangioma that was not detected in time to remove. It just keeps feeding on her, and getting bigger. She can’t win this battle, but she is going to do her damnedest living her last days.
She showed her old fighting spirit immediately on the car ride home from Las Vegas. I rearranged the car with her comfort in mind, by putting all the luggage up front, so she and three other greyhounds would have the total back of the van to stretch out in. But she wasn’t having any of staying in the back with the other dogs. With some very pointed growls and snaps she told me in no uncertain terms that I was to haul all that luggage to the back, and put her in front with me, so she could ride the whole way with her head in my lap.
We spend a lot of time with her head in my lap. When she lets her exhaustion take over, we lay together with her pink, dry tongue hanging out the side of her toothless mouth. 
Me petting her, and she looking directly at me with those strong eyes. Tears well up, unbidden, whenever I stop my day to give my attention to her. Her fighting spirit is still with her, but her physical body is losing this battle. It’s as if she is carrying around an alien growth. It hangs hard and bulbous from the angle where her leg meets her chest. An alien egg that has attached itself, and keeps on feeding on her life force. And her life force is so strong, so the alien just gets bigger and harder.
Each morning when I take the other dogs for their morning run, Sport is right there, battling out the door to get to the car. This morning, she refused to go inside. She stumbled around the car, looking up at all the dogs, so full of life, and anxious for their run. She stood there, pleading with me, whining at me to take her too. To put her in that car, and take her for a glorious run in the morning breezes. To just run one more time. It took me 20 minutes to cajole her into the house, where I closed off the dog door, and gave her some chicken stew to assuage my guilt in leaving her behind. She, who refuses to let life leave her behind.
And invariably, after I return from the run with the others, she walks over to the car. Making it very clear that she expects a ride. And she gets one. 
Even though it’s just around the block. I gently slip my arm around her front legs, trying not to pull and push the growth, and lift her up. Up where she belongs.
We had a bath today. She had that old musty smell that seems to follow death around. She let me pick her up and put her in the tub. She let me suds her down, and spray her with water. She leaned against me, as her weight started to collapse. Trusting me to not hurt her, to keep her up, to make it all all right. My tears mixed with the hand held sprayer’s drops.
But Sport has no time for tears. She always knows what she wants. Like when she’s hungry. She hustles over to me, and puts her head insistently under my typing hand. She emits her ummm noise. 
A cross between a whine, and a bark. “Feed me NOW. Stop everything you are doing, and take care of me. Because I deserve it.”
So I go into the kitchen and start opening a can, she is right there watching my every move, knowing that she is first for the organic warmed chicken soup, the baked kibble, the well cut up cooked meat and the holistic canned food. She slops it all up, food particles clinging to the side of her face, and walks over to rub it off on me.
Last night, when the weather cooled down, Sport was outside snooping around. I called her name, and she awkwardly turned around, and then, totally unexpectedly, galloped towards me. At least that’s what she thought she was doing in her mind’s eye. It was more like a galumph towards me. 
The alien growth swinging and stretching, the back legs attempting to leap up, to propel her forward as she threw her head in the air, and she powered her way to my side. I dropped to her level, cradled her face in my hands as she looked straight at me with clear eyes, and tiny face. Her precious, almost 13 year young face, all white around the muzzle and eyes, but for the brindle and gray V distinctly etched between her two eyes. 
My mantra to her –
“You are so tough, Sport”, trying not to ruin her dignity and her joy with my sorrow. Because there is nothing that is going to stop this girl.
Except a huge growth that she carries as if it doesn’t exist. The ticking time bomb that will abscess, or will impede her movement so much that the decision will have to be made. I want to rip it off of her. I want to do voodoo to make it go away. I want to excise it from her. I cannot believe that this fighter is fighting her last fight, and it will be a losing one. I cannot stand to be so helpless in the face of death.
But she’s not leaving me yet. And in true Sport fashion, she lets the other dogs know. Tonight there was barking outside. I dashed through the door to see what the commotion was about. It was Sport. She was standing over a stuffed colorful teddy, and a huge knotted rawhide. She was telling the other dogs to stay away, because these treasures were hers and no one else’s. And they listened, and so did I. She and I tossed that bone around outside – her doing her damnest to hold this 12 inch rawhide in her little, toothless mouth. She slept that night with toy and rawhide by her side.
Imminent death will not stop this girl’s spirit. She is what she is. Tough, demanding, clear in her needs and the battle she has fought to live. Huge growth be damned. And I will continue to honor her daily, by honoring her spirit, her life and her will to live.
