No nicknames. No handles. No pet names for the pet. Just one name. Prophet. My little dog. Our little dog. Zoe's little dog. She is, to my occasional chagrin, more Zoe's dog than mine. I'm petty. I get jealous about that. But when I think of Prophet, when I page through the many memories of this little creature...this furry, panting thing that brings such joy to me...the first thought, the picture, the movie playing in my mind is watching her follow Zoe around, attached at the hip, the heart, the soul.
It's a beautiful picture.
There is still more news to be gotten after Prophet's day of poking and prodding and shots and anesthesia and big scary machines and fear and confusion. Still more news but it's news that only amounts to the difference between awful and really awful. News that is beyond my personal threshold of emotional pain such that I can't any longer distinguish nuance or subtle gradations.
Our little dog is dying. She is remarkably energetic and spry for a dying thing. But she is dying nonetheless. There's a big ass tumor in her nose and it's completely blocked her nasal passage such that she has to breathe through her mouth. It is pressing against the roof of her mouth and up against one of her eyes. It is consuming bone and killing tissue. And it's spreading like fucking kudzu.
At this point our only option, barring some miraculous change in the diagnosis, is chemo. Chemo that will not cure it...that won't even knock it back...but chemo that might, just might, slow the spread.
And there's the bitch of it. I'm all for keeping Prophet around for as long as we can. That cannot, however, mean more time but a loss of that magic energy that is this wondrous dog. If all chemo does is make her hurt and sick so she won't be hurt and sick...well...fuck that. A treatment that gives us a gift of more time with her but gives her nothing but a whole passel of feeling bad and hurtin' ain't a treatment we'll consider. Which means, agonizingly, we'd have to opt for no treatment at all. We'd have to opt, on purpose, to let her die. Which seems inherently wrong.
In some ways we are hoping that Prophet will tell us when she is ready to go. And maybe she will, she is quite an impressive dog. But, I think, more likely is we'll have to conclude on our own when it is time to let her go...when it is time for us to stop being selfish. Prophet, you see, will stay with her pack, protect it, nurture it, and revel in it, for as long as the pack will let her stay. And never complain about the cost to herself.
I would never insult the parent-child bond by equating losing a pet to losing a child. Even I am not so self-involved as to miss the rather massive difference between the two. While it is light years off in magnitude it is similar in some attributes. Zoe and I never had kids. We had a perfect dog named Prophet. And into that shedding, drooling, panting, barking, whining, whinnying, waggling, running, jumping package of perfection we channeled all the parental instincts we could. Hers is the only life we've ever been responsible for and the only life that ever was totally dedicated to and dependent on either of us.
Many years ago, sitting on our sofa in Torrance with Prophet sleeping wedged between us, Zoe looked at her and said, "such a little life". Indeed, it is. And it is ours to protect and love.
So, it's hard. It's very hard. As I know many of you already know and have experienced for yourselves.
Barring aforementioned miraculous change, this will be my last post on the topic until...well...the last post. The final news. In the meantime I'll simply say that I am grateful that Prophet picked us on that day long ago at the animal shelter. Thank you to everyone who has sent kind thoughts our way. I've not responded but please don't take that as indifference. Those of you that know me know by now that I tend to be very public on a general level...with this blog as evidence...but shut myself off on a specific level. I will respond at some point to each of you. Until then, please accept my thanks in this general way and understand that doing my Rik the Island bit is my way of coping, illogical as I'm sure that is.
I'm grateful that I got to experience the joy Prophet brings me.
More than all that, though, I am grateful that I got to witness and experience the joy Prophet brings to Zoe and, just as important, the joy Zoe brings to Prophet. It is truly a sight to behold. For that reason, I will disagree with something that Zoe posted (and it's a post worth reading)...you, Zoe, you were worthy of Prophet. You belong to Prophet. She will, forever, belong to you. And that's a pretty cool thing.