A Faithful Friend Starts to Slip

The Boston Herald

The advertisement is old. It ran in The Patriot Ledger in January 1991.

"Lab Pups - 6 wks old, jet black, classic English features, champ lines. Father has misplaced his papers. Our loss, your gain. $ 150 with shots. Hurry, only 3 left."

We hurried, my two daughters and I. We got in the car and drove to Marshfield "just to look," we told my husband. But he knew.

Molly was the puppy that hid in the corner, the roly-poly one, shy, soft and sweeter than we dreamed. It was love at first sight, even for the husband who sighed when we brought her home.

Now Molly is 13 - older than we thought she'd ever be. She was hit by a car and almost died when she was a puppy. She ate a tube sock. She ate control-top pantyhose, then a dish towel, then a pair of men's socks and had to have all these things, one operation at a time, surgically removed. She's had ear mites and fleas and ticks and her share of bad days. But most of them have been good days for her and maybe even better ones for us.

Now, though? I don't know. She doesn't hear me when I walk down the stairs in the morning. She doesn't know I'm beside her until I bend and pet her. Sometimes she flinches. Sometimes she sighs. But always, always, her tail goes as fast as ever. Her way of saying, "I'm happy you're here."

It takes her a while to get to her feet. It's a struggle. I see this. Her legs aren't strong and she's full of wee seats - lying down while I make her food, lying down when I take too long to open the back door, lying down all the time.

She doesn't bark at the vacuum cleaner anymore. She used to go crazy. Now when it's right next to her, she doesn't even open her eyes.

The word "brush" still gets her attention. "Molly, do you want to be brushed?" And her ears recoil. But she doesn't have the energy to run away.

She no longer sees what I drop on the floor. You have to point out raisins and M&Ms. But she still finds the pills I hide in her food, picking them out and stashing them under her dish like a patient in a psychiatric ward.

Maybe she knows something I don't. Maybe the pills I give her to ease her pain are easing her to a place she doesn't want to go.

I asked the vet how you know when it's time to put a dog down. I had trouble saying the words. I have trouble thinking them.

"How's her appetite?" he asked and I said it was great. She ate a cheese ball off the coffee table just a few days before.

"Usually, when they stop eating, that's when you know."

Usually. But not always. Sometimes it's about quality of life, he said. And comfort. But whose? Hers or mine?

She still knows when it's time for dinner. She still greets everyone who comes to the door. And she's still where I am, always by my side.

We haven't gone for a walk in a long time. Most days she can hardly walk down the few steps out to the back yard. But she does. And some days she walks better than others.

You don't want her to suffer. That's what people say. "Are you suffering, Molly?" I ask her. But she doesn't hear.

"There's life in the old girl yet," I say. But I'm not sure. There's love, I know this. And faithfulness.

Everyone else comes and goes. Even I have left her - oh, how she hates suitcases - but she has never left me.

She's leaving me now, though. I see this. I look into her eyes. I scratch her ears and under her chin and breathe in the smell of her fur and I tell her I love her and that she's my best girl, and that I don't know what to do.