How am I supposed to let go of Scully when I can still get a funny column out of her?

This year alone, we have come to the brink three times.  As a last resort, we ran some tests in January and they showed she was hypothyroid.  That was fixed with a new medicine.  June had us thinking she had cancer but it turned out to be COPD.  Antibiotics and cough medicine fixed that.  This month she’s had several days where we thought “this is it” only to have her turn around the next and be just as ornery and sassy as ever.

All of the senior dog sites say to be careful not to push your older dog because “all they want to do is please you.”

Obviously, they have never met Scully.

From the day we took her in because her previous owner could not handle her overabundant energy, she has made it quite clear who she wished to make happy. 

That would be her. 

Her attitude has always been that she’s happy and if your happiness depended on her being obedient, she’s not the one with the problem.

As I’ve said before, she looks like an Ewok and is just as savage.  If you gave her a plush dog toy, she would happily take it to a spot in the yard, sit down and gleefully tear it to shreds.  Even after she lost her sight, she could take Scooby, her Jack Russell Terrier yard mate, in no time flat.  Try to snatch her chewie?  I don’t think so.   Next thing you know, Scooby is on his back and Scully is crunching on both her chewie and Scooby’s.

Before the COPD, she would bark for no apparent reason other than to have a reason to bark louder after you told her to shush.  Scully did not do “shush.”

She is a poodle mixed with possibly a pit bull or a wolverine.

I still take her on very short, very slow daily walks.  Her favorite thing to do, still, is to plow into a tall strand of grass or plants.  She’ll emerge from the other side covered in flower bits or stickers or, sometimes, entire uprooted plants, and then I’ll have to stop and pick off everything before we go on but I can hardly deny her this pleasure.

Today, she and Scooby had just finished power-sniffing the same spot and I had just jerked Scully away before Scooby decided to mark it.  This is a constant test of my reflexes and one I don’t always pass.  For the record, Scully does not care for warm rain as it means she has to get a bath as soon as we get home.

I maneuvered them on to a particular patch of tall grass that Scully loves.  She dove in and while she was busy snorting her way through, Scooby decided to make his deposit on top of a bush he had previously flattened down.

Scully rustled her way through to the end just as Scooby finished and walked away.  Unfortunately, that’s when the bush decided to unflatten.

Having lived together for twelve years, there are times I swear I can read Scully’s mind.  This was one of those times.

“Really, God?

Really?

It’s not enough that I have gone through this life without sight for more time than I could see.  I have to have diabetes which means two needle sticks each and every day.  I’m always getting more and more pills all the time.  Cushing’s disease, hypothyroidism, COPD, arthritis and I have to have my eyes cleaned out every day and coated with medicine for dry eye.  My back legs are so deformed from the arthritis that the left one turns out.  There’s an untreatable problem with my urethra and I’m peeing blood.  I’m deaf, I nap all the time and I have to live with a mentally unstable Jack Russell Terrier and a cat.  A cat!  Who thinks he can share the sofa with me until I’ve had enough, roll over on my back and poot in his face.  Ha, ha. 

But, no, God, no.  That small little pleasure of mine does not make up for the fact that right now it’s hot, I’m tired and I’m only halfway through my walk, I’m covered in stickers that have to be pulled off one by one and now, just when things were going well, yes, I am being sarcastic, God, I have to get hit in the face with flung poo.

It’s not even my poo, God. 

Well, when we meet up God, and yes, I know it will be soon, I have a few bones I’d like to pick with You.”

You know if I was God, I’d think twice about restoring her voice.