A Process of Elimination

Deaf she may be, but my angry face hanging so close to her puzzled one, my gaping mouth out of which springs furious sounds she cannot hear, delivers the message. She turns, slips mournfully upstairs. Accomplished? Nothing remotely useful, other than chagrin and regret on my part. She is incapable, now, of ingesting that message.

Small and delicate-boned as she is, her inconsiderable weight landing on the rug from her place on our bed, alerted me. She is dark-haired, but the white nightshirt we dress her in at night casts a soft glow, picking up the quiet light from the bedside clock that reads 3:30 a.m. The shirt a concession to the season, the cool night-time temperature we maintain in our bedroom, and her venerable age.

I watched, with half-cocked eye as she silently padded to the door, her nails faintly clicking when she reached the rug perimeter, crossed the hardwood floor. I reminded myself, still in a fog of sleep, that she needed her nails clipped. No easy task, these days. She shies away from being handled in those ways. Her hair is too long, it’s unruly, and needs a good trim. She won’t permit that, either. She always had her own mind, never was particularly biddable, but now, in her dotage, she’s positively impossible.

I waited, not quite yet willing to hoist myself out of my comfort. Sometimes she does that, rouses herself, jumps off the bed, stands quietly for a while halfway between the bedroom door and the adjoining hall, and just remains there. Then, as though somehow satisfied with the little exercise, or whatever it portends as of a silent voice speaking inside her head, she turns back, leaps effortlessly to the bed and settles back to sleep again.

Not this time. She stood in the doorway of our bedroom for what seemed like an interminable intermission. She finally began moving forward, and I got out of bed, reached for my dressing gown. Which was when she turned back, to see if I was there. Not having heard me, nothing like that, just exercising, it seems, the kind of intuition that she seems capable of. I followed her down the hallway, down the stairs, across the foyer, into the family room, and finally stood beside her, at the sliding doors leading to the deck. She waited, and I obliged, sliding open the door for her to exit.

Sometimes that happens. She will forget, when she is put out after eleven and we’re preparing for bed, why she’s gone outside. Spending her time leisurely sniffing about. Picking up scents; squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits, raccoons, cats. We’ve seen them all in the backyard. The raccoons not so much now that we’ve tightened the lid on our compost bins with bungees. Busy out there, reconnoitring, interested in the evening breeze and the emanations it wafts over from other yards. And she forgets to pee.

So now, when I’ve let her out, she’s likely doing just that. Or evacuating, who knows? I don’t exactly feel like going out with her. The temperature has dropped below freezing. Peering out the sliding glass door, over the rails of the deck, I can just make out her little white nightie-ghostlike presence moving about, and then she’s out of my sight. My fingers begin to rap, as of their own devices, on the glass door. And, miraculously, she appears, and I admit her.

Why was I angry with her? Well, we’d bought a new kibble for her, thinking that would help to tempt her appetite toward a little more enthusiasm. We’ve spoiled her badly. Too many ‘treats’. It’s not the biscuits she usually gets after her meals as extras, but the other ‘extras’, the chicken, the cheese, the heaping little salads of chopped bell peppers, green peas, kernel corn, cauliflower she is so fond of. She would happily ignore the kibble, even with those extras, and dine exclusively off the salads, if it were up to her. It isn’t. We still want to ensure her good health.

She’s lost a lot of teeth, the last few years. She’ll have reached her seventeenth birthday next month. As it is, I’ve got to help her by wetting her kibble before presenting it. I keep a small jar of chicken soup in the refrigerator for that purpose, then quickly heat it all up in the microwave for a few seconds. Sometimes she eats, sometimes she doesn’t. This morning? Well, it depends so often whether or not, when we’ve come down first thing in the morning and let her out, if she’s managed to evacuate successfully. No evacuation, no appetite. And then, no telling when we’ll be surprised.

It’s peculiar, but she will never have a urination accident in the house, never. At least not yet. But the other? On occasion. Where once she was accustomed to letting us know, verbally, by a low growl, a light bark, when she wanted to be let out, alerting us to her need, she no longer communicates with us. She will stand at the door, silently, waiting to be noticed. We’ve got to keep attuned to her needs. Else be stuck with the results.

Usually, one of us does a quick check in the backyard at her usual deposit sites, to determine whether we’re in the clear, can expect her to eat, then settle down while we have our own breakfast. Oh, and that’s another thing. We’ve managed to spoil her there, too. She knows if we’re having eggs, and waits for her portion to be served up. It’s become an unfortunate little routine. Ditto if we’re cooking bacon, or sausages. Bagels, she also loves those. I used to bake a lot more than I now do, and regularly baked croissants, even bagels, and the fragrance of the fresh-baked goods wafting through the house would drive her to distraction. Then, while she still had her hearing, she would verbalize, let us know she was there and she needed to share those delicacies with us.

She may be small, but she has a powerful personality.

Funny that. It’s almost as though she lost her language when she lost her hearing. Ever since we became aware of her inability to hear - a slow progression to be sure - we also became aware that she had fallen silent. So, if we aren’t aware of her need to go out to evacuate, on the assumption she’d already done so when she was let out first thing, we can be in for the occasional surprise.

That’s what I meant. This morning when I set down her bowl with that great lamb-rice kibble (complete with glucosamine for ancient joints) she was so interested in - replacing the chicken-rice kibble she was so bored with - she just began doing that ritual, as though she was burying it. She does that often, too. Acts out the burying routine. But this morning there was no burying routine. I just looked around for one second, busy sectioning our breakfast grapefruit halves, and there, sitting alongside her untouched bowl, was a steaming pile.

And that, my friend, is why I screamed at her. Even though it’s happened before and I’ve told myself her memory is lapsing, she’s forgetting what she’s always known, and simply responding to her body’s instructions. We love her, and cannot imagine how devastated we will be when she has finally reached the end of her life. Amend that, we can imagine how miserable we will be, and that’s what makes us apprehensive now, about her.

It’s not that she’s suddenly lost her energy, become lethargic, disinterested in everything. That’s not so, at all. Far from it. She does sleep quite a lot during the day that’s true, but most dogs do once they’re beyond puppy-hood. She gets taken out for a hour, hour-and-a-half vigorous woodland walk each and every day, regardless of the weather. She thrives on it, forges ahead, interested in everything, all the calling cards left by other dogs ambling through the woods. She no longer leaps forward and runs like the wind when there’s squirrels nearby, but she does a respectable little sprint. And sometimes she runs like a whirling dervish in a small circuit, speedy as the wind, in an exuberance of love of life.

She no longer allows her teeth to be brushed, something we’ve done regularly over the years. So we don’t press the matter. She will biddably - actually, looks forward to it - approach me when I seat myself on the floor after her dinner, preparatory to giving her an evening brush-down. She lays herself down before me, thrusts her head into my lap, and digs it in, one side, then the other, in an excess of lavish rubbing. She will emit a low moan of pleasure when I rub behind her ears, and massage her body, before brushing her hair.

Her large and beautiful, darkly-moist eyes look occluded. People, seeing her, cry out: poor thing, she’s blind! She is not. Her peripheral vision is slightly impaired.

And her magisterial entitlement remains undisturbed. She is offended, in the winter, when we put boots over her slender paws. Else, if the temperature is low enough, the snow underfoot freezes her feet and she can’t go on. First time in the season we put them on her, she walks in an exaggerated movement like one of those Lippizaner horses on pompous display.

And now that she’s elderly she no longer minds the indignity of a winter garment sheltering her from the excess of winter cold. In fact, she seems to downright appreciate it. Helpfully lifting one paw after another to be inserted into one of those sherpa-like coats of hers.

Losing her hearing isn’t all bad. When someone comes to the door she no longer barks, because she’s unaware. The sound of the vacuum cleaner no longer disturbs her. Nor do loud sharp sounds, which used to. She’s always been skittish that way. That too, only manifests itself occasionally, say for example, if something porcelain falls on the ceramic tile floor in the kitchen and shatters. She can hear that. And hustles herself out of the direct vicinity.

So, it’s clear she’s earned a certain latitude. Unpleasant in the extreme it may be, her occasional lapses, evacuating in the house. I keep telling myself we’ve got to be more aware, more attuned to her needs, scout out the premises more rigorously to ensure we know she’s already done her business. At least first-thing-in-the-morning business. There’s another evacuation that follows like clockwork, in early afternoon. Which is when we’re usually out walking. Which is why one of us carries her up to the entrance to the wooded ravine near where we live.

She has been known to suddenly squat right on the road the last year, if she’s on the leash walking up to the ravine alongside us. We try to eliminate all those embarrassing possibilities.