Mikey has not been feeling well which has been a real bummer.
I don't like having a sick dog.
He kept me up all Friday night, having to go out over and over.
Saturday we went to the vet's office and Dr. Freman was nice enough to squeeze us in, even though Mikey hates all vets and had to be muzzled.
Again.
He really, REALLY hates the vet.
And I really, REALLY hate when he's sick.
He's not the same.
Lethargic. Grumpy.
And he just stares at you with those big eyes.
"Fix me."
That's what the eyes seem to be saying.
And I can't.
So he has to go back to the vet's office and be muzzled again.
Which I hate for him.
Mikey has been a real life-saver and has helped to keep me sane over the past few years.
(Well, he's a dog; he can only do so much.)
And between his greying face (his muzzle and mine are greying at exactly the same rate.) and him being sick, it makes me think of his mortality.
Which sucks.
I don't want him to leave me.
He's not dying, so please don't panic, it's just that his greying beard and his illness make me think of some time in the not far enough away future when I'll have to say goodbye to him for good.
And that makes me sad.
Before I was given Mikey I had a German Shephard named Jack.
He was a sweet dog.
Jack was a gift from the ex for my 30th birthday and we were buddies.
But Jack was one of many things I had to give up in the divorce.
Sometimes life is full of bad options like that.
I think the phrase is "Between a rock and a hard place" or "The devil and the deep blue sea."
Either way it means the same.
I felt like I couldn't focus on getting thru my illness if I was still fighting with my ex and the ex was not going to give up Jack without a serious fight.
It was something we went round and round about several times.
And to be fair, while the ex didn't particularly care what happened to me, she did deeply care about Jack.
I used to joke about wanting to come back as one of my ex's dogs when I died.
When I was sick, for some reason I just wanted to be near Jack.
To pet him or throw the ball or just have him put his head in my lap.
Doctors say that pets have a way of keeping people calm.
Their blood pressure goes down, their anxiety goes down, they just relax.
Something about the simple, direct, unadorned affection of an animal that brings inner peace to a body.
But the ex wasn't interested in sharing.
I had left and I was the one that asked for the divorce and in her mind, that meant I had no right to see the dog. It was upsetting at the time.
"The Lyon" had given me Mikey as a gift just as I was getting back on my feet after the illness and the divorce.
The ex had called one day late in 2006 to tell me that Jack would have to be put down and she would let me know when, so that I could see him one last time.
She never called.
I'm not sure who was more upset about that, me or "the Lyon".
But shortly thereafter, I had Mikey.
"The Lyon" was good like that.
I slept on the floor with him for almost a month so he wouldn't feel lonely without his brothers and sisters.
And I took him most places with me so that we could bond.
We joined the Schutzhund club out near Athens so that we could start training.
It's pretty cool to watch your dog get the "bad guy" out on the practice field.
Like watching your kid do Karate, I guess.
Mikey has a diploma on the wall and everything.
Not too bad for a German Shephard that doesn't speak German.
Back in the summer of 2008 (I think it was 2008?) I met and fell for a girl that later I nick-named "Crazy-pants".
You can probably guess that it didn't end well.
It was over before it really started but for some reason I took it really hard.
Even then I knew it was stupid but to paraphrase George Clooney, "there ain't no logic to be found in the chambers of the human heart".
Those were dark days.
I was not fit for human consumption for quite some time.
One particularly dark day, when I had awoke on the wrong side of life, I begrudgingly took Mikey down to the park.
To me, the weight of the world was on my heart and shoulders, and I wasn't up to the task.
I was miserable and a misery to be around.
To Mikey it was Tuesday.
Did we wake up?
Yes.
Then why aren't you throwing the ball?
Actually, fairly sound rhetoric now that I think about it.
But at that particular time, I wanted some one to dig a hole so that I could get in the bottom of that hole and dig another hole so i could then crawl under a rock and MAYBE come back out 6 - 12 months later.
I was in an awful state.
Mikey wanted to play.
Little is more annoying than a happy anything interupting your misery.
It makes it so very much worse.
Someone or something has the nerve to be enjoying anything while you roll around in your blackness?
Not on my watch, Mister.
I took Mikey down to Orme Park where we normally went to train or play ball and unhooked the leash.
"Go annoy somebody else, dog. I'm not playing ball today. Leave me alone."
Or something close to that.
Mikey was patient.
He ran around. He got a stick. He jumped up on the big fallen oak tree. He tugged at my cuffs.
I was not having it.
"Leave me alone, Mikey!"
I was a dick.
I moped my way over to the other side of the park and sat down heavily on a bench with my head in my hands, all the misery and darkness of the world there on my shoulders.
Mikey was not to be deterred.
He went over to where the little kids play, there at the jungle gym.
Normally he would've just walked around it or found the spot where the other dogs had marked and sniffed and left his own mark.
But that day he didn't.
That day he climbed the steps to the jungle gym.
And he crossed the little swinging bridge.
And then he climbed the second set of steps to the top.
And then he came down the slide.
All 100 pounds of fierce, Schutzhuund trained, certified man-stopping, German Shepherd, came flying down the children's slide.
The look on his face was so full of life, so exuberant, so.....surprised and pleased with himself that,
he did it again.
And the second time he came down that children's slide, there on the jungle gym in Orme Park, with that look of absolute joy on his furry face, that expression that shouted, "Did you see that, dad!?! Did you see what I just did!?!" my clouds parted.
And I laughed.
My misery broke and I laughed in a way that I had not laughed in several months and the darkness began to leave me.
Finally.
All because of Mikey and the slide.
He had never done it before and though I've tried many times to get him to do it again, he won't go near the jungle gym now.
Somehow he knew what I needed at that moment and he did it.
So now when he's sick and he's looking at me with those big, brown eyes, that seem to weakly say, "Fix it, dad." it kinda breaks my heart that I can't make him better the way that he did for me.
So tomorrow, we'll go to the vet's office again, and be muzzled again, and probably the vet will do something unpleasant that I hope will make him feel better soon.
But it won't be anywhere nearly as great as what he's done for me.
Dharma by Billy Collins
The way the dog trots out the front door
every morning
without a hat or an umbrella
without money
or the keys to her doghouse
never fails to fill the saucers of my heart
with milky admiration.
Who provides a finer example
of a life without encumbrance–
Thoreau in his curtainless hut
with a single plate, a single spoon?
Gandhi with his staff and his holy diapers?
Off she goes into the material world
with nothing but her brown coat
and her modest blue collar.
following only her wet nose,
the twin portals of her steady breathing,
followed only by the plume of her tail.
If only she did not shove the cat aside
every morning
and eat all of his food
what a model of self-containment
she would be.
what a paragon of earthly detachment.
If only she were not so eager
for a rub behind the ears,
so acrobatic in her welcomes,
if only I were not her god.
- By Billy Collins
