A Sketch of Sweet Old Dog

photo by Stephanie Landis
My daughter, Stephanie's Kelpie, "Sketch", and her toy fox terrier buddy, Teo

A Sketch of Sweet 
          Old Dog

She looks up with grizzled

muzzle, old face, big feet,

gnarly body; she has the sweetest

expressions.

Scrabbling for footing as her

world tilts, dizzily. Who turned the sky

grassy green? The horizon is over there,  
no over here. Vestibular Disease…

       
or brain tumor. Hard words for humans,

but not in dog vocabulary. Old dogs

know truth is found in smell alone.

Food, favorite bed, the scent of loved

ones.

Soft growls at the vet, indignant

grunts when picked up like a lopsided

sack of lumpy potatoes,

held in position for relieving the belly

of the undigested and unneeded.

“Have a tablespoon of mash. Have a lick

of ice.”  Old one says, don’t put your offerings

under my nose; give me the dignity to

choose my own bowl. Of limping, staggering,

even falling.  Life is risk.

Don’t make my world risk proof; not

yet.  Life is feeling floor boards under

your toes, sensing the scrab, scrab

of old claws on wood. 

I say, who suffers more: old dogs

or their people?