I'm Living My Dog's Life...

Most of you know that I adopted Lucy Bell Boswell about 5 weeks ago. I have had many questions about how Lucy and I have adjusted to one another since both of us are somewhat past our prime and rather set in our ways.  So I thought I’d bring you all up to speed on my dog, as the vet said had “high anxiety.”

Let me preface all of this by saying Lucy Bell is not anxious, in the least.  She is simply needy and wanting  to be loved and cared for and that has been an easy task.  Our bonding was fast and solid and there will be no separating us, we are meant to be together.  But…"in every life some rain must fall”  I mean, after all no relationship is perfect and we all have our issues.  So where should I begin?

At the beginning...The first day I brought Lucy home we had a long drive from Dallas to San Antonio.  Lucy was meek and timid, but a very good driving companion, sleeping most of the way home.  I got us settled, ate dinner and around dusk thought I’d take her for a walk, sort of a test run.  I had just bought some new Nike Free tennis shoes to wear on an Isreal trip and thought...this would be a good time to break them in, short walk and all.  So we sprinted out the door.  I quickly found Lucy was used to leash walking, as she was very behaved.  Remembering the vet had told me she was quick to run away I had a firm grip on her leash.  Brooke called me and I was telling her about Lucy and our trip home as we strolled through our neighborhood.  So picture this, Lucy’s leash in one hand along with a bag of fresh poop--what a good dog, cell phone in the other, new shoes, it’s still hotter than blazes so I’m in wind shorts and T-shirt and SPLAT!!  I looked like a large watermelon that had been dropped from the sky.

My first thought was pain, my second thought was The Dog.  When I fell I must have landed on my left knee, hip, elbow and then tried to brace myself with both palms of my hands.  The leash and my cell phone flew out of my hands, skidding across the pavement.  All of could think of was this dog that I had adopted not 7 hours earlier.  The vet had said she had a high risk of running away.  In that split second all I could picture was Lucy Bell hightailing it off into the woods, escaping our fenced neighborhood and getting smashed like a grape by on coming cars on some busy parkway.  So my immediate response was to try to reach for her leash, as much as I was able while lying flat on my stomach, I looked like Spiderman stuck on a high window.  The only difference was he was vertical and I was horizontal in the middle of the street.  Strangely LB sat down like a good Wheaton terrier and simply waited for her master...Oh, I had a Lassie dog!   “Lassie go get help Timmy, he has fallen in the well!”  I was easily able to hold on to her.  

          "If there are no dogs in Heaven, then I when I die I want to go where they went."
                                                                                                                     -Will Rogers                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                    
Suddenly, I hear this voice coming from my right.  The only young neighbor we have comes out of his house in scrubs and I hear, “Ma’am are you okay?  Let me help you up?”  Mortified that someone had seen this dreadful splay of my body.  I quickly replied, as perkily as possible, “Oh, I’m fine really.”  Watching me struggle to scrape myself from the concrete he kindly came to my rescue.   As I was rising I reached over, grabbing my cell phone and simply said to Brooke, “I’ll call you back.”

In full upright position I noticed blood was free flowing from all parts of my body.  One of my new shoes was turning red and blood was dripping down Lucy Bell’s leash.  Looking at the street I realized the treads of my great new Nike Free’s must have gotten caught where the pavement had buckled and I had landed on one of those metal seal embossed City of San Antonio manholes.  (Do they call manholes embossed or is that word only used for stationery?)  Anyway...this kind, young physician asked me to come in so he could help clean me up.  “Oh no, really I’m fine,” I was, to use a high school term, gagging from embarrassment and the pain was becoming noticeably worse.   All I wanted to do was get home.

As I turned to hobble off I became twisted in the stream of doggie poop bags that had come unrolled from the leash when it went crashing to the ground.  The kind man offered to at least let him roll the bags back into the container.  Nodding I stood as this very sympathetic young doctor painstakingly rerolled the brand new very long stream of doggie bags.  I 'm not sure but considering the meticulousness of his rolling I think he might have forgotten he wasn't doing plastic surgery on Heidi Klum, only  re-rolling poop bags.  Finally, his surgery job complete,  I was able to thank him and totter home.

Arriving home I realized my fall had taken all the skin off my elbow and forearm, the palms of my hands were a swollen mess, as was my scrapped and battered knee and I had a lovely goose egg on my left hip.  Fortunately 6 weeks later there are no lasting scars, the only remaining reminder is my now purplish blue goose egg that continues to reside on my hip.

Maybe all this had to happen so that I could realize that I am now mother to a Lassie type dog, Mary Poppins, perfect in every way!  Well, “not so fast Tonto!”...First of all, Lucy Bell began tinkling in the house...hmm, the rescue people had said she was housebroken.  I decided she was in a transition period and this would be short lived. I took great pains to take her outside often for her to have regular potty breaks.  She did fine during the day, but nighttime...she can’t make it through the nights.  

I bought her a wonderful large comfy pet bed, put it in the mudroom and began shutting her in at bedtime.  Waking in the morning I found she had tinkled on her bed...weird, I thought dogs didn’t go where they slept?  So I decided to leave her outside at night.  The first night it was around 10:30 p.m. and my doorbell rang.  I was a little freaked out by someone ringing my door at that time of night and hesitantly went to answer.  There stood my neighbor with LB in hand.  She had somehow escaped from the back and he found her sitting at the curb in front of my house.  Lassie turns Houdini.

The next morning I hid and watched to see how she was breaking out and to my amazement I witnessed my 32 pound dog birth herself into the front yard by squeezing her 5 inch head through 5 ¼ inch wide wrought iron fence bars.  Her left shoulder followed by the right one and then with a hoist of her back legs she sprang free.  I promise you it reminded me of a large child coming into the world.  My fear is that LB is now gaining weight because she is so loved and happy and that one day she is going to find herself stuck like Winnie the Pooh after a major hunger binge. 

Second, no this would be third little issue.  When I adopted Lucy Bell she was on steroids due to allergies.  I was instructed to wean her off slowly in hopes that she would have no more problems with “her scratching” once she was in a new environment.  The first couple of weeks LB was great, scratching only a little, I reduced the steroids, thinking, piece of cake, no problem.  Well, wrong.  Once the steroids were out of her system poor Lucy began going crazy, running herself in circles and crying out loud, scratching herself to death.

Back to the vet we went, here is why I’m living my dogs life.  First the vet said we needed to put her on Fish Oil to thicken her coat (as she had scratched so much of it off)...hmm that’s kind of unusual my ob/gyn has me take Fish Oil.  Then she suggested we put LB on glucosamine chondroitin to loosen her hip joints.  The vet said because she was an aging dog it would help her maneuver better...I too take glucosamine chondroitin to keep my joints from getting stiff.  

Now the light begins to come on, I have an 8 year old female dog, in people years we are the same age...we are taking the same meds.  But oh not so fast, the vet said the bedwetting (let me say right now, I am not yet wetting the bed) may well be due to the fact the Lucy Bell’s bladder is old and when she falls into a deep sleep her sphincter muscles also fall asleep.  She then suggested LB be placed on hormones to help with her nighttime mishaps. Hormones...great, now I have a dog who’s taking all the same meds I am.  Oh but no, she is also on Claritin for her allergies and after 2 weeks of crazy scratching she is back on steroids and I’m thinking..I wonder if my next prescription will be for steroids as well?

"Petting, scratching, and cuddling a dog could be as soothing to the mind and heart 

as deep meditation and almost as good for the soul as prayer."-Dean Koontz

So okay, I have now spent a little over $2,000 in 6 weeks on my newly adopted wonderful, lovable  8 year old Lassie-esk dog.  A dog that could easily go into my medicine cabinet and slurp up all my meds and be cured.   Oh but, we still have to go back to the vet next week for another urine specimen to make sure her bladder infection is cleared up...oh did I forget to mention she’s also on an antibiotic for a bladder infection?

Yep that’s my Lucy Bell!  She loves the grandchildren.  She loves to walk with me every morning.  She has become very popular in the neighborhood and has made friends with all the other dogs.  She thinks she can out run a deer, squirrel, skunk, possum, and even a silver fox.  She continues to sleep on a fresh towel every night in the mud room because of her sleepy bladder and she is still able to turn into Houdini when she’s left in the back yard too long.  What was it Bette Davis said, “Old age ain’t no place for sissies!”  Well, Lucy and I are making the most of it, side-by-side.

"Dogs are better than human beings because they know but do not tell."- Emily Dickinson

            “A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself.” -Josh Billings

"Animal lovers are a special breed of humans, generous of spirit,

full of empathy, perhaps a little prone to sentimentality,

and with hearts as big as a cloudless sky." 

-John Grogan "Marley & Me"

                                                                                                

"The 3-Month-Thing..."

I’m not sure why, but somewhere in my mind I had heard or had decided that 3 months would make a difference.  A difference in what?  Nothing will change the fact that Steve is gone or that I am living without him.  We knew this to be a fact when we first learned that Steve had Stage 4 Glioblastoma.  We knew that his life would be cut short and I would be living alone, that Steve would be gone.  So why did I think 3 months was some kind of “turn-the-page” marker?  That somehow this blanket of grief would be lifted, just a bit.  This cloud of fuzzy cobwebs would be not swept clean, but dusted off, clearing my head.  That I would have some understanding of this void that now fills every molecule of my being and I would begin to again feel, really feel with all my senses.  Oh I know,  you are saying...no, that happens after a year.  I know the whole “year -makes-a-difference-thing” but I still thought there was a 3-month-thing.  Well, I don’t think I’ve got the 3-month-thing.

Here’s why:  I think my mind is deteriorating.  First, the little vendor bender with my car (see past blog), my fault.  Then there are days I will be driving and I simply drive right past my destination.  No thought of turning or stopping until I’m well past the spot and my brain kicks in and I have to turn around and backtrack.  I know, you say, oh, I’ve done that a thousand times...but how about this?  

I bought a mesh bag of lemons the other morning.  I went to the refrigerator that night and opened the drawer to do some dinner cruising and found a pair of scissors in the hydrator drawer.  Huh?  The next morning I began looking for the lemons, not in the drawer, not in the frig, went to the utility frig, no lemons.  I knew I had bought those lemons, where in the world were they?  Went out to the car thinking maybe they fell out of the bag, but no I remember bringing them in, putting them in the refrigerator.  You know where this story is going don’t you?  A couple of hours later I needed a pen out of the kitchen drawer (where I usually keep the scissors)...there were my lemons...I’m talking a huge mesh bag of lemons stuffed in a pencil drawer.  The cobwebs are definitely still in place.

The borders of my inability to concentrate expand.  My love of reading, the words float on and off the page, my brain will not absorb their meaning.  Television, for the most part, is background noise, I lose interest within minutes of turning it on and will get up and begin wandering aimlessly around the house until I find a project.  Returning phone calls, answering e-mails...sorry to all of you.  Please don’t take it personally, there simply is no energy within me to do what is acceptable. 

Then there are these Steve moments and I’m gathering them more now than ever before.  These are moments when I so want Steve here to see the joy on his face or hear his voice say, “Oh my word!”  

“Breaking Bad”... Oh how we waited for that final series to return.  We loved that television show.  One day, during the first part of the summer, a commercial for the final season’s return came on and I heard Steve make the comment (really to himself), “They better hurry or I won’t find out what happens to Walt and Jessie.”  Watching that final episode, oh man did I need Steve to be hunkered in with me.  We knew those characters, we had invested time with them, we cared about their lives.  I had to sit and watch Walt and Jessie... and I won’t ruin the end in case you ever want to watch but, there was...No Steve.

Baylor football, it’s just all wrong.  Steve loved his Bears.  He watched Baylor when no one else could.  Now after four games so far this season, when they have scored an average of 70 points per game...come on, he would be beside himself, calling Joe Kruger and Bill Cottle every 5 minutes.  No Steve.

Seeing his oldest grandson, Dylan all dressed up in white shirt and tie for his first high school debate tournament and winning.  Watching Elena make more points than any other player on her 5^th grade volleyball team and doing so with such grace and poise.  These are magical grandparent moments.  No Steve.

  

These moments are cascading into my lap faster than Fall leaves drop from their trees.  I have so many tender moments, moments that I am unable translate into words. They are before me, so vivid, with such a necessity to share them with Steve.  If anything, it seems like “the-3-month-thing” is worse than the first two months after his death.

I looked back through my daily personal journals to see where I was emotionally after the first month.  Here are some of my words on August 8, “Father, I am so thankful you gave me a mind to hear and a heart to follow your instruction these past years and especially these past months.  I have heard your quiet voice and I obeyed, I took heed.  The storm came with Steve’s illness and death but my house didn’t fall.  I am remaining steadfast in my strength and in your comfort and peace.”

The second month, September 8,  I wrote,  “In this process of learning how to live my new life, I must continue to find real quality time to be still--really still and focus on God.  For when I do, I hear his quiet messages, so clear, so direct--such a blessing.”

Nope “the-3-month-thing” a misnomer, a myth, untrue.   I think, if anything, reality is setting and I’m missing Steve’s presence more than ever.  I’m realizing that all those moments of life that we once shared, I must now find a way to find a way to store that joy someplace within myself.   All I can do, all I must do, is be thankful for those Steve moments.  The fact that we ever experienced them, that I can forever cling to the memories of how precious they will always be and still smile when I say, “Oh how Steve would be, or maybe he still is, smiling now!”

Oh and by the way, not to end this entry on such a Debbie Downer, today October 8, I journaled, “I’m finding the more I live life, the easier it is to believe without seeing, because God has made himself so real to me in countless ways.  I praise you Father for allowing my eyes and my heart to be open to all that you have done and are doing in my life and in the lives of those around me.”

Life goes on and so will I.

Psalm 30:5 “...Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.”

Keep Your Face to the Sun: "The 3-Month-Thing..."

Joe Kruger keeps the Baylor tradition going!!!

Trudging Through a Thunderstorm...

I feel the sudden need to go back to my September 9^th blog entry titled “Lifelong Friends”.  Ann, Louann, Donna...start gagging because the harsh truth is about to be told...

As most of you know I’m an early morning riser and walker.  Home or away, I’m up and out.  Our trip to St. Pete’s was no different.  We had a long, full, very fun day the day before and so everyone else slept in while I started out on my beautiful early morning walk.  I found a path from the Renaissance Vinoy that lead straight along the waterline.  It was perfect the view, incredible.  The water so clear and bay calm.  Sailboats and yachts were drifting, local walkers and runners with their dogs beside them were sharing the pathway with me.  As is the way in the South, friendly quick nods, smiles and brief hellos were exchanged.  The homes set well back from the waterfront were quaint, older homes of St. Petersburg...those wonderful “Southern Living” magazine homes.  There were blocks and blocks of them before the mega mac-mansions cropped up.  

I was loving this early time, quite solitude.  I was lost in the surroundings, but also in thoughts of memories of Steve, life without him...it had been my first trip since he had died and I was filled with a jumble of emotions. 

This day, the sun was coming up, it was already warm but breezy and I in the distance I saw a bridge that I decided I would make my destination for a turnaround point.  I walked farther than I normally do and about 45 minutes into this glorious fast paced stroll I looked up and saw a beautiful rainbow.  Wow, living in South Texas it had been ages since I had seen such a sight.  I actually stopped a took a picture with my cell phone.  

Continuing on, deep in my own thoughts, I looked up and noticed a large ominous black cloud that seemed to be heading toward the water...and me.  I asked an older, wise looking local woman about the cloud, “Good morning, do you think we will get rain from that dark cloud, it looks pretty threatening?”  Her calm reply, “Awe, you never know around here, often the wind just blows them away and other times we get the most incredible thunderstorms from those clouds.”  She kept walking…so I thought if she can, I can too.  I continued toward the bridge.

Now here is when Steve would have said ten minutes before I ever asked that old woman anything, “Janet,  that looks like a treacherous (his favorite overly dramatic word) thunderhead let’s head back.”  I would have argued and plead with him to continue on with me and he would have taken my hand and drug me back like a small child.  Oh, Steve this is why you still need to be with me.  

It was about two minutes later and there was this treacherous, truly treacherous bolt of lightning followed by an immediate crack of thunder.  Whoa, that was enough for me, I turned around and hightailed it back to the hotel!  The hotel, which was now about three miles away and no cover in sight,   only clear land with a path and miles of wide open ocean.  I walked faster, the most gigantic raindrops started to fall out of the now freakishly dark sky.  I started running, wham another zap of lightning, crack of thunder and torrential rain.  Great, where in the hell was that stupid old woman with her dog?  

All I could hear was Steve’s voice reminding me of the dangers of lightning, my heart was pounding...another jolt cracked through the sky.  Through the rain I began frantically looking for shelter, someone’s porch, a cover, something...there was only nature all around me.  My head down to keep the slashing (drama) rain out of my face I kept moving, the fourth jolt and I thought, okay the headlines will read “Poor widow, dead from lightning while her ‘lifelong friends’ slept soundly through the morning.”  Where were my thoughtful friends and why weren’t they coming to my rescue?  They knew I would be walking this morning.  They could hear this raging storm.  What a crummy bunch of lifelong friends...a shelter, I suddenly spotted some kind of YMCA!  I ran for cover.  There stood the dumb old woman and her dog,( neither had a drop of water on them) along with about 20 other people.  I was the only drenched soul in the group.  No one spoke everyone just stood calmly watching the torrential downpour.  

Soon the rains began to let up.  The sky lightened a bit, a few bystanders ran to their parked cars in the nearby parking lot.  The others remained like mannequins, no plans of going anywhere.  I stood there like a dripping soggy noodle and thought, “Where are my deadbeat friends?”  Finally, it seemed the worst of the rain had passed, I was already drenched so I (no one else moved) headed out.  I was about two blocks from the shelter and feeling like I was almost home free, stomping through ankle deep puddles and swearing under my breath about my “friends” when holy moly more lightning strikes, thundering roars...man I ran!

Well, of course, I’m here so I made it safely back.  Everyone woke to a bright sunny morning all chipper and cute and rested and I whined, really whined my way repeatedly through this above tale ad nauseam.  Whaa, whaa…my lifelong friends were non-plussed by my saga of tragic woe.

A side note here about my lifelong friends...funny how one, okay I love to try to point a finger of blame on the innocent.  I knew it was all my fault that I didn’t turn around long before I did.  I knew they were innocent in having no clue I would be dumb enough to be out walking in a raging storm.  In short, the good thing about lifelong friends...they accept and love you in spite of yourself.  Breathe easy girls you’re officially off the hook!

While that storm was, in reality a scary place to be walking I dare say I feel like most of us have all walked through some treacherous storms of life.  Our family has been in a hurricane season for quite some time now.  Steve’s health issues began about 9 years ago when he was unexpectedly diagnosed with Cardiomyopathy.  We then began to deal with other family health issues that knocked us off our feet and onto my knees in prayer.  Then in November 2008 the Glioblastoma was found, and the final blow was Harper’s in utero diagnosis of an omphalocele.  Our storms were raging, lightning of fear was piercing, thunder of the unknown was shaking our world and shelter seemed no where in sight.  

I started out much like I did on that early morning walk in St. Pete’s head up walking with purpose into a future that seemed bright with a wonderful marriage, adult children that were stable, happy, healthy and settled and blindly walked head first into a series of horrid torrential storms.  So, what did I do?  Well, as in my early morning walk, when I first sensed my fear I eschewed it.  I denied our problems, Steve would be fine, he was in great physical shape.  I walked on.  Then the skies grew darker, other family health issues cropped up that not only made me do an about face but caused me to look upward for help and answers as I plodded along on this path.  God’s answers came slowly, and some those health issues took years to overcome.  

The piercing stab of lightning that ripped my heart into happened when we learned of Brooke’s first unborn child had a birth defect that might well have been fatal.   This strike found my heart paralyzed.  I was unable to move forward.  Headlines reading, “Grandmother of unborn granddaughter and mother of precious daughter dies of a broken heart.”

It was all too much.  I asked God why?  How much more?  I bent my head against the raging winds and water and stomped my way through the puddles of tears that were knee deep and I pressed forward.  I never lost my faith.  Did I question God?  A lot.  Was I angry at life?  Absolutely.  I was so weary of being the poster child for “Pitiful.”  I walked on, trudging, plowing until I could find moments of shelter.  Those brief moments when I could see God, feel his presence, know he hadn’t abandon us.  It was here I could take a breather, a respite from the driving storm.  Inevitably, I would strike out on my own again, feeling the storms had calmed and boom, life hit with a tumor recurrence that finally lead to Steve’s death.  Oh, that is a storm I pray I never have to go through again.

I often wonder what Steve’s storm must have been like, knowing his time here was limited?   I know he feared being bedridden, being unable to speak, to communicate his thoughts.  Steve weathered his storm seeming fully equipped for whatever elements came his way.  God was merciful and Steve’s few fears were short lived.  He was allowed to leave this world only a few days after his last serious seizure.  What amazing grace God granted us!

I am reminded of the song by Rogers & Hammerstein from “Carousel” You’ll Never Walk Alone:  

When you walk through a storm
Hold your head up high
And don't be afraid of the dark

At the end of the storm
Is a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of the lark

Walk on through the wind
Walk on through the rain
Though your dreams be tossed and blown

Walk on walk on with hope in your heart
And you'll never walk alone
You'll never walk alone

That day when I finally made it safely back to our hotel in St. Pete’s I said a quick prayer of thanks that God did allow me to see the end of this storm.  I also know what is more important is that God has allowed Steve to finally see “a golden sky and the sweet silver song of the lark.”

Today I may feel that my “dreams are tossed and blown” but one thing I am positive of is that I am never walking alone,  I can “hold my head up high and not be afraid of the dark” because my focus is on a God who is bigger than any storm of life and he walks before and beside me always.

John 14:18  “No, I will not abandon you or leave you as orphans in the storm—I will come to you.”