Cookie is 13 years old now. 13 years. I can hardly believe it. An entire dog lifetime that has been an ongoing challenge. The first 2 years we were still hopeful we could integrate Cookie into the world around us. Then we slowly and painfully learned we could not. It has been over a decade of accommodation, anxiety (hers and ours!) limiting guests and really not having overnight guests (Or when we have guests we implore them to wake us before they wander downstairs into Cookie’s territory.)
Cookie is our 60 pound cattle dog hound mix, tan with spots and a very distinct white heart on her head. She is usually sweet; mostly found either sleeping or begging for food. And by begging I mean standing nearby not making eye contact. She is a bit shy and not in love with physical touching. She is fine with her immediate family. But with all new people and dogs, and probably every other lifeform – she is aggressive and unfriendly. She has bitten several people, fought with many dogs and chased cats, squirrels, chickens, and bunnies.
Years ago when we were just figuring out her problems, the many professionals we consulted with told us she didn’t necessarily need to be put down. She is not just aggressive, they told us. She doesn’t seek people and hunt them, wanting to hurt. Her violence comes from her anxiety. She is beyond frightened and acting out her terror with aggression. So that left us to figure out: what does it mean to have a potentially violent beast in the house? How do you protect her from the outside world and how do you protect the world from her? How much do we owe her? How much should we change our lives to accommodate her limitations?
Before we got Cookie we had only ever had good dogs. In our minds it was an impossibility that we could have a dog that was not friendly with other people or dogs. We also had the deep underlying belief that love, steadiness and food could cure any rescue dog’s ills. At that point I probably believed it could cure any person’s ills, too. We also thought we were pretty great; patient, kind, understanding and insightful. We could figure anything out. Bring it on.
Cookie was a puppy, maybe 16 weeks old when we got her. My husband Rob, and our kids 9 year old Lily, 5 year old Georgie and I picked her from a Connecticut parking lot 2 hours from home. We stood shivering in the February cold on the grass island and waited until they led her out from the huge semi-truck filled with cages and other rescue dogs from the south. Cookie was from Tennessee, had been born under a gas station and fed only hotdogs from the rolling hotdog warmer. That’s really all we knew. We chose her from an early puppy photo online. The email contact in Tennessee wrote that she was a good dog, a bit shy and that all her siblings had already been adopted. She said she would send pics of the mother and the litter, but never did. When Cookie emerged from the truck she was a bit bigger and older than we thought she’d be, but she was chunky and cute. The kids pet her, beaming as she settled between them in the car and passed out for the long ride home.
Later, when I looked back at the pictures of her on that drive home I can see the nervousness. The ears sort of flattened out, the whites of her eyes showing. Most animals would probably be anxious after what she had just gone through but now I can see clues of what we were getting into. I had been at work weeks before when Rob and the kids picked her out from a pic on a rescue website. I wanted a girl dog. I really wanted a female. That seems so silly now, that was the thing I got caught up on. I definitely wasn’t looking for us to get a dog right then. It was February. I wanted to wait until spring and until we saved up some more money. I tried to talk them out of it but they were all so excited. And she was so cute. A fat little speckled dog that we could save, that needed us and would be the perfect pet; a best friend for the girls after our beloved dog Azalea had to be put down the previous year at 13 years old.
Once we got her home we did what you do when you are trying to cultivate a great dog. We went to puppy class. We socialized her, bringing her everywhere we went in the car, for walks, on trips; all the things. We were so excited and had so many expectations. Dogs had been primary in our lives. Best friends and characters that got us through life and dragged us outside. The expectations for Cookie were big and we never dreamed she wouldn’t live up to them: Walking, camping, running along beside Rob while he biked through woods. We would take her to town with us, let her ride in the car. The kids would feel connected and protected. It was going to be great. Sure, Cookie was turning out to be a bit suspicious and standoffish, but we had committed to her, spent a lot of money on her and the kids were attached. Also the rescue organization had made us sign their standard agreement stating that we were her “forever home.” We would do whatever it took.
Things were never really great or calm. Cookie would get just a bit too worked up with a tinge of aggression when playing tug o war or out with other dogs. She barely passed puppy class; a little jumpy and growly in a way that made the teacher intermittently nervous for us, but then Cookie would be fine; fun and silly. We let her run off leash and she was good at coming back. We had always had dogs that we could let run loose through the woods and fields where we spent a lot of time. We were hoping she would calm down and settle in as she got older. That she would get more relaxed and trusting. We integrated her into the family; meeting my parents and sister and the other family dogs. She loved them. My family thought she was great. She would play happily with their dogs. A little on the bossy side, but she was still pretty small and things seemed mostly ok.
At around 18 months old Cookie became more aggressive. In retrospect it was probably a combination of puberty, Lyme disease and her general temperament coming out. She would run away off leash chasing animals and people and not come back. She started to bark aggressively, throwing herself at the windows of the house, barking maniacally when the mail would get delivered or anyone would walk down the driveway. She started fighting with other dogs and barking at people and lunging when we would walk her on leash.
We didn’t have much money to spare but we wanted to do what we could while she was young so we went to dog trainers and more classes. We then had a dog trainer come to the house. We read books. We asked the vet for help.
They all seemed to agree she wasn’t an aggressive dog but a dog that responded to fear with aggression. It seems like a subtle nuance but we wanted her to be saveable and so we went with it. If we could desensitize her to the world and protect her from surprises we could be ok and she might settle down.
Our vet sent us to a fancier vet who specialized in treating challenging animals. She gave us a bottle of pheromones that we could spray at Cookie while ignoring Cookie’s initiations of connection. The combination of $70 pheromones and always being the ones to initiate contact would be a sort of re-mothering that would deeply calm her anxiety. It didn’t work. I was so busy working and being with the kids I would have to remember to go spray her and make eye contact throughout the day. After a month or so her behavior had not improved but we were all a bit more alienated from her because we had been rejecting her each time she tried to make contact as we had been instructed. Uggh. Breaks my heart now to think of her quietly approaching and getting rebuffed again and again.
We decided to let the technique go and went back to letting her initiate, but she was always kind of a solitary dog. She did love the people she had bonded with before she hit puberty so, my family and the babysitter and the neighbor across the street were all Cookie’s friends. She would wag her tail and throw herself on the ground with excitement when she saw them. But after she hit puberty and got the Lyme disease we couldn’t really add anyone else.
All the different dog experts who said Cookie had anxiety that triggered aggression also noted that she was very food motivated. One of them said, “that food obsession just might save her life.” So we used food to train her and tried to do exposure therapy. One trainer recommended having someone Cookie did not know come over wrapped in cardboard and duct tape to protect them from bites. We didn’t do that because we didn’t want to completely freak her out and risk having her bite someone through the cardboard. It didn’t really seem safe. But we did many other things.
The trainer that came to the house definitely put the responsibility on me, saying that Cookie could sense a 1° change in my blood pressure and that she was responding to my anxiety. I hadn’t really felt anxious until she started lunging at our neighbors, but I thought If I could calm myself down then Cookie would be calm. I do alot of yoga and meditation so I thought I could mind-meld with her and keep her steady. I am a mother, a nurse and an energy healer. I was used to challenging situations and staying calm. I could stay serene and help her acclimatize to the world. It was a lot of pressure, but I thought I was up for it and I tried.
But even when I was thinking peaceful thoughts, she scrambled over to lunge at the gate where the pugs were barking at us, slamming against it over and over while Rob wrestled her back like a huge shark on a fishing line. I wanted to believe that everything the dog is doing wrong is because of the owner because at least I had some control over that. I tried to modify my behavior in so many ways. Surely I could stay serene and help her acclimatize to the world. I tried giving her CBD and Rescue Remedy. I read so many articles. One of the ones I found interesting on dog anxiety said that studies show anxious dogs miss early cues, so that from their perspective suddenly something is happening and they’ve missed a chance to adapt to it. That felt accurate. Cookie always seemed both anxious and oblivious, shocked by things we had seen coming a mile away which made her hard to predict and control.
I even tried a dog psychic. She was very nice and definitely knew some things that were uncanny. She gave some suggestions. Everyone had suggestions. And so many were conflicting. Everyone really tried to help. They took a lot of our money and I do feel like they each believed that things could be done and Cookie could be fixed and could live a life among people. But none of it worked. Now, so many years later I feel a bit put out that no one offered the possibility that nothing would work. That her anxiety would never be fixed. But actually they might have told us that, but we probably just didn’t want to hear it. I felt like I had to figure it out. I had to make it work. We couldn’t fail. By that time the kids were attached.
At the transition time when we were realizing cookie was a fighter and a worry; I would fret when I went to work. Rob and Cookie have an unsteady relationship. Rob says it’s like that movie 51st dates for every morning Cookie forgets who he is and slinks around him suspiciously. He works all day to get her trust back up, but a sneeze from him or if he wears his hat askew and she’ll go skittering into the other room glaring at him.
Right around Cookie’s puberty there was a time that Cookie had done something naughty to one of the girls, maybe been too rough, stolen a glove and Rob was going to get it back and cornered Cookie yelling and Cookie snarled and bit him. He called me at work. It hadn’t really broken the skin but it was scary and hurt. We were all so upset that Cookie was who she was and hadn’t quite adjusted to it yet. We worked so hard to change her behavior. And now she had bit him.
But we didn’t get rid of Cookie then. She was still young. We wanted to give her a chance. The vet said that many dogs will bite if cornered. But looking back the biting probably severed something in their relationship. Cookie also bit the neighbor kid. We told the kindergartener to stay away as he approached. Rob had Cookie on a leash but the child ran behind Rob and Cookie and Rob couldn’t gather the leash quick enough. Cookie bolted behind him and bit the kid on the arm as she lurched to the end of the leash.. It didn’t break the skin, but if he hadn’t stopped her at the last second on the tether she could have really hurt the child.
As I write this I wonder – why did we keep her? We did have a conversation where I let Rob decide if we should put her down because I didn’t want it to be my choice. Unfair, but I didn’t want it to be only my fault if she bit someone. I had been more in favor of her staying and he was thinking she could go, but I left it up to him and he relented and thought we should give her another chance. In the beginning I was so devoted to the idea of being a forever home. And then someone pointed out it’s not really fair for the rescue model to find willing homes and demand they do whatever a damaged dog needs. Sometimes it’s too much. Sometimes a dog is too damaged. Sometimes you try everything and it doesn’t work.
Around that time our younger child was also a challenge. I mean both kids had their moments. They are human beings. But our second was going through a really hard time at the same time we realized we weren’t going to fix Cookie. I was simultaneously reading up on how to manage difficult children and dogs and the two of them felt so linked. Both complicated, angry, moody creatures who I loved and who were my responsibility. It seems almost silly now but the child and the dog and their behavior I hadn’t bargained for were very linked. The thought of taking one of them to the vet and putting them to sleep because they weren’t what I wanted seemed like a terrifying thing to do to a living being. I didn’t want my children to see me doing that. At the time it didn’t feel like an option.
My friend at work is a dog breeder. She thinks of dogs in a very practical way; like a farmer thinks of livestock. Shortly after Rob was bitten and we were trying to figure things out this dog breeder friend blithely said.
“I could come over and I could run Cookie over for you and we could act like it was an accident. You could be done with her.”
I stopped what I was doing and wondered how far people got in these sorts of plans? Part of me felt such relief at the idea of being done and not having it appear to be my fault. It was just a moment, but horrible I know. But then I thought of the fact that the dog probably wouldn’t die and would suffer and be in pain. Then she would have to be brought snarling and writhing to the vet where she would bite people and require extensive surgery and then there would be a recovery costing thousands of dollars. I’d bring home a hostile bionic dog.
Of course I’m glad I didn’t do it but the fact that I was having the conversation shows the level of conflict, confusion and distress I was feeling. It’s hard to be a mother. It’s hard to be a mother and have things not be how you thought they would be. And it’s hard to be a mother and responsible for and caring for creatures that might hurt you, themselves or someone else. It’s hard to know how to help and what to do and when to just accept that things are the way they are and when to keep trying for something else. Really, it’s all hard.
Now I tell myself Cookie is happy as she sniffs the spring air or doggedly chomps on her food. I hope it has been a good life. It’s been quiet. I feel guilty for the small little life she leads, but we did try. I used to bring her in the car because she loved going on outings but then once she chewed all the seatbelts in the back seat and I had to spend $700 to replace them before I could get the car to pass inspection. After that she was relegated to the big dog crate in the way back.
In general she is not super interested in us or willing to snuggle for more than a moment. She’s mostly solitary, but she’ll greet you when you come home with a wag and a head butt. And she is always thrilled to eat. She is a good catcher of the end bits of food and a reliable food vacuum, which is something. She has been very healthy and low maintenance in that department. Thank goodness. Cookie has been fed the same dry dog food for 13 years. I got it at Whole Foods for $12.99 a bag. With inflation it now costs $31 for a bag that is less than half the original size. It is good that she is physically stable because taking her to the vet is traumatizing for both her and me and probably the vet and the techs, as well.
Eventually the vet prescribed 40 mg of Prozac every day which made her less angry. We started at 20 mg but that didn’t do anything noticeable. I remember scouring the internet looking for anxious-aggressive-dog-happy-endings. There were not many. One blog had mentioned prozac. Recently after a mortifying and potentially dangerous vet appointment the vet added gabapentin, and then Tramadol – neither of which did anything. I have wondered if ativan or some controlled substance would work, but she would need a lot of it and it would have to be increased as she grew tolerant. A dog addict. It would have been fine with me, but I worried about having a high potency med around. I worried because who knows I might be tempted to take it on the days I was generally overwhelmed or someone else would find it – like the guy who sanded the floors who took a bottle of leftover vicodin we had languishing in a drawer.
Once anxiety hits, the fear in Cookie is very strong. She goes somewhere else. She lunges against the window. Once she smashed her nose through the windowpane in the mud room door, showering the children on the other side with broken glass. We learned, all of us, that if anyone walks down the driveway we have to get Cookie into her crate immediately. Once she realizes someone is there she hurls herself at the door and can’t be pulled off of it. And she is a strong and muscular 60 pounds. Interestingly if you catch her before the panic strikes she doesn’t seem to mind going to her crate. We say the word and she dashes there. It’s like she doesn’t want to be taken over by the terror either.
She is sweet with us. She doesn’t mind sitting on the front porch and watching everyone go by. She seems to like barking at anyone who comes too close. I would say the meds and her age help her get a bit less hysterical when UPS comes to the door, but not much. And even now there is a great deal of caution in our lives. When I take her for a walk I look both ways when I get to the end of the driveway and if someone’s coming I just walk her around in our yard. I don’t walk her far when I’m alone anymore. Too many times she tried to run towards another dog or lunge towards a person out of nowhere and it is hard for me to hold her back.
She wears a muzzle out in the world. It’s called a basket muzzle and it is a weave made of rubber. It makes it easy for dogs to pant and to drink so it is the preferred type of muzzle for anxious-potentially aggressive-dogs. We trained her to tolerate it by shoving pieces of hot dog through the slats until the muzzle permanently smelled like hot dogs and she didn’t mind putting it on at all. The first time she wore it to the vet they were all curious and interested in the muzzle like they had never seen one before. I was mortified. I thought, “Uggh. I do have the worst dog.” I hate going to the vet. They are very nice and tolerant. I go in the weird side door like a criminal or famous person where no one else is sitting. And during the visit Cookie is a wall of tight muscle. She wears her muzzle and is leashed and I hold her upper body against the wall with my lower body, saying soothing things and petting her soft head while the vet checks out her hind quarters and gives her vaccines and takes blood. Sometimes the vet can look at her ears. Never the mouth. She saves the eyes for last because Cookie gets so upset with the eye contact and the light in her eye that she growls and barks and bares her teeth. I usually am sweating when I leave from the effort of containing her and the deep shame of feeling like a failure as a dog parent.
Initially, the vet was reluctant to start the Prozac – it was still kind of new to use it with dogs. At first they said I had to come in for bloodwork every few months to make sure that the Prozac wasn’t harming her liver. It was hundreds of dollars of tests and anxious wretched experiences. For years. Then I finally confronted the lovely vet in clouded language because my preteen was there,
“I feel a bit like I am being punished for using Prozac which seems to be being used all around the country on dogs as far as the Internet is concerned. I couldn’t find other examples of people needing blood work every six months. If Prozac becomes toxic to her maybe us having Cookie isn’t an option.”
The vet was so kind. She nodded in understanding and said,
“We’ll skip the labs. Keep giving her the Prozac. I know that Cookie wasn’t the dog your family hoped to get. And we know it’s been a challenge. We support you in doing whatever is best for your family.
Let’s have you coordinate all your appointments for once a year. No need for you guys to come in so often when it is so stressful.”
It was code. She would not judge us. She would not make our life any more difficult than it was. It is strange to have a creature in your care that you love but you are not trying to prolong its life indefinitely.
Another time the vet also told us we should make an appointment for the thousand dollar teeth cleaning under general anesthesia she needed. I told the vet that I understood the importance of dental health, but I did not want my dog’s teeth to be strong. And because she was snarling and rigid with fear-manifesting-as-rage against the wall of the small clinic room, the vet and the tech nodded in understanding. No teeth polishing.
I used to be able to leave her with my parents. She loves them. Our meeting place is 5 guys in a strip mall midway between our houses. We would get a burger and fries and switch over cars. My parents are fond of her and when I let her into my parent’s car while I moved the crate Cookie went up and put her chin on my dad‘s shoulder in the driver seat inside. He is a dog whisperer who the dogs all sit beside and lean on. Like our neighbor across the street who is another dog whisperer, he doesn’t really care that much about the dogs. I mean he likes them but he doesn’t get all worked up. These calm disinterested men must just feel solid to the dogs.
One time my mother and I were talking in the car while switching off Cookie and she hadn’t been put back into her sturdy crate in the way back. A person having some kind of mental health crisis staggered towards the cars in a strip mall where pedestrians in and of themselves seem like a dangerous anomaly. He jerked suddenly towards my car and Cookie ravaged the window -teeth out snarling, drooling, and absolutely a hellhound. I was used to it so I just sat there and watched it unfold, hoping the windows would hold after making sure the doors were locked so the unhinged stranger who had been arguing with the sky didn’t open the car door. When Cookie is in the altered state there is no redirecting her. You can contain her in a crate but even the crate will move about the floor like it is possessed. The man looked startled and stepped back and kept up his uneven walk along the parking lot toward the road. I turned to look at my mother who had her hand to her chest as she shook her head whispering, “Holy Shit!”
That is why I always have Cookie in the big sturdy crate when I travel with her. Just in case I have to pull over and there’s a police officer or tow truck driver knocking on the window. Uggh. I can just imagine. When you go to grab her collar when she is worked up there is no recognition in her eyes. She is completely gone. Like she’s never seen you. She hasn’t bitten us when she is freaking out, but it feels like she could when she is in attack mode.
I warned my parents. And they had seen glimmers of what she was like. But it was so different than her serene placid solitary way when she is not threatened. I tried to remind them of the episodes they had seen like in the parking lot or the time we were having a barbecue on our back porch and someone came to deliver a package and Cookie hurled her whole body against the glass door. The FedEx man said years ago. “I’m not scared of dogs usually but I’m actually scared of that one” as he looked at Cookie snarling in the window. I was standing there in my socks bending over to get the package at the back door. I nodded my head at him and I said, “You’ve got good instincts.”
The big fear all along, of course, is what if she hurts someone? What if we have all the data that she is a menace and still let her hurt someone? It has been an underlying bedrock fear of our lives for 10 years. What is our responsibility to her as a living being that at this point it feels like only we can care for? And what is our responsibility to protect others? We work very hard at managing her. She is sequestered to her porch when people are visiting. I only take long walks when Rob is there because he can contain her better. When I’m alone with her I just scuttle along the shrubbery along our yard and then walk in the empty lot where she does her business. She’s medicated. She wears a muzzle. But if anything were ever to happen it would seem like we took a foolish risk.
I have learned that people will not hear your warnings because they think they are special. They think that they have a special way with animals and are dog whisperers. That is why the trainers insist on the muzzle. They say it is to protect the dog from people, because well-meaning strangers are much less likely to approach a dog and try to pet and interact with a dog with a muzzle. Instead they cross the street.
My parents were lolled into apathy by Cookie’s usual calmness. Twice when we left her with my parents she bit people and broke the skin. Both family. My sister-in-law who she had never met and my now brother-in-law. It ended up not only was it not safe for those who were bitten, but it also wasn’t safe for Cookie. My brother ended up holding up a chair like a lion tamer and yelling at Cookie backing her into a room and closing the door. My parents also started to worry about the big plate glass window by the door. What if she just busted right through it? Seemed like something she might do.
After I realized they couldn’t contain her and I couldn’t leave her there anymore, it was our adorable tiny platinum blonde babysitter who would watch Cookie. Oh my God, Cookie loved Andrea. Cookie would whimper and cry with joy when she would hear the sound of her little car coming up the street. And Andrea loved Cookie. She would take portraits of her and pat her lovingly. But she was tiny and I warned her to please not really leave the yard with Cookie when she was housesitting for us. Just stay in the yard.
They had a great run Andrea and Cookie, but then she had a child and stopped coming. Poor cookie. And then the final person left. The reluctant dog whisperer who lived across the street moved away. And then there was no one to watch Cookie anymore. And my daughter was going to be traveling so she couldn’t watch Cookie while we went on our family trip to Provincetown so we brought Cookie to a kennel. A kennel! We made sure it was a place where she could be out in the run with the door closed when they dropped off the food for when she got aggressive. We told the teenage dog walker that Cookie was a bad dog and please don’t try and be a hero. We walked away and left Cookie surrounded by barking dogs on each side through a chain-link fence. She stood there on her back legs with her paws up on the fence quietly looking at us with absolute astonishment.
I felt so selfish leaving her there but I also felt suffocated and stuck thinking I would never get to leave the house again because we had no one to watch her. I figured she wouldn’t live past 13 years but she seems very sturdy. My older daughter once laughed and said, “Mom. She’s gonna live till she’s 25.” I feel a lot of guilt for feeling like that is a curse. I know in some ways we could just put her down, but it is complicated. I do love her and feel responsible for her care and happiness. And, actually, she has been protective. There was a summer Rob and I had to work and the kids were home alone. Two preteen girls unattended when every single house surrounding ours was having work done. So many anonymous unknown untethered men wandering around my house and the houses nearby. Deliveries, drop offs, people doing construction with no known adult in the neighborhood. My children wandered around in the house feeling safe because of Cookie.
I have decided that while she wasn’t the sweet flexible familiar I wanted. Wasn’t the steady attentive friend I wanted. Wasn’t the cool frisbee dog I wanted wasn’t the roly-poly loving family dog I wanted. She was a hell hound that protected us. Who can say what she has protected us from? Who knows who has avoided our house because of the demon in the window. I certainly feel like no one can sneak in and that can be a good feeling coming home late at night.
My therapist recently told me that caring for Cookie all these years has been a noble feat. Shaping my life around a challenging and in many ways unlovable and unmanageable creature has shown great caring and responsibility. She was sincere but also laughing as she was telling me I was amassing a great deal of karmic good. I’d like to believe it.
But I’m not sure.
Especially as a mother and woman, the drive to care for things at my own expense is not what I want to cultivate any more than I have already been forced to. I feel so torn about the general ambivalence of her. The challenge of her and the low-level question of – did we make the right choice?
Will she hurt anyone? Each year that goes by I’m thankful. Thankful we have made it another year without an incident. I do love her. She’s old now but still quite spry. She does move slowly to greet me when I come down in the morning. Her head bowed and her tail wagging. I love her soft ears and I love that she does make me feel safe in a world that often doesn’t feel safe. But I’m trying to be honest about what she has been in our lives for these long 13 years.
I’m also trying to imagine the end. She will not tolerate any medical care. I worry about when it is time we will even be able to hold her down for the vet to put the ending medicine in her veins?
And I will never do it to myself again. If I get another dog – and that is a big IF – I will only get a dog that can be held in my arms and can’t really really hurt people. And I feel guilty saying it as I feel guilty having written much of this, but when she finds it hard to get up or staggers sometimes after peeing for a long time, I think “Is it time yet? Can I be free of the burden? Is it time for her to go?” And then she looks at me and wags her tail and trots inside, her little floppy ears bouncing and I feel like a monster.
But part of being a mother is that I’m the one deciding that sometimes it is too much. Sometimes we need to say no and be done. I have not been able to do it with Cookie and sure, I will decide in retrospect that I have gained merit and I have loved something sort of unlovable. Because that is what I have done. But having made that choice I also now acknowledge all that I have lost. Lily said at some point that Cookie would pass on and then we could get a nice friendly family golden retriever and that could be our childhood dog. I had stopped to look at her in horror because Cookie was only 6 and Lily was 14. There wasn’t going to be another family dog. We couldn’t even have any other family pets with her around. She had gone after the chickens so relentlessly, staring obsessed from the windows and surging to find them whenever she could. We couldn’t even have friends over without her barking jealously from the front porch.
We had to cut ourselves off from the world to keep her and the world safe. It was the choice I made. I don’t think I could have made another. But it was not what I wanted and the complicated feelings just grow stronger and more sharp as she gets close to the end. But Cookie can’t help it. She knows nothing of my expectations, so I try to give her love, snacks and walks and I hope we have created an environment that keeps her happy enough and keeps those around us out of danger.
And I appreciate things about her. I love how her morning walk and evening walk mark the beginning and the end of each day for 13 years. I love her steady audible breathing when she is sleeping happily in her bed. It is like a sedative -so rhythmic and calming. She is a quiet and steady companion most days. She keeps uninvited visitors at bay, certainly. When she wants a walk or her meal, she lays her head on my lap and lets me pet her head softly, stroking the white and orange silky fur the center of her head, the pure white heart that was one of the reasons I thought, even though she wasn’t perfect or easy, that she was meant to be ours and that we had to do all that we could. And we have.
