Golden Pond Retriever

I was brought into this family by a dog, and I have lived more with dogs than chickens , or even people, so I have known a lot of dogs, and Davey's old Deerdra was a gifted dog.
Her gifts were her sharp and sensitive nose, her great ears, and her blazing speed. A dog's dog; she was a cross between a Golden Retriever and a Greyhound, with a waist like a wasp, lungs like bellows and the ears, the coat..... and almost the speed, of a deer. Then, no more than six months ago, arthritis took her over all of a sudden, like an ant army. At the same time, her hearing went, eyes clouded, and her rear end seem to get disconnected. She hung on by her nose.
When I still slept in the Ark up by the house and Deerdra could still stand up and walk, but couldn't manage the porch steps any more, and she needed. more and more to go pee in the night........I would hear her whine from the top of the stair.
Davey sleeps very well, to put it mildly, especially after a beer or two and a Victory at Sea video attempt......... so I'd have to come out the Ark and carry Deerdra down.....and back up the stairs later.
After I moved out of the Ark and down into the chicken house so as to make room for the hens rescued from their abusive sisters, I was no longer available for doorman duty, and by then Deerdra could no longer get up without help, or lay down except by falling.... which happened whenever she tried to turn around or back out of a dead -end in the brambles. .
So when she whined in her bed, Davey had to carry her out...and down the stairs...though sometimes she would be whining not because she needed to go out and piss, but just because she was in pain.
Then, she would wander off , trying to find her way out of the dark , until she fell off the path. After a while, she would began to whine and later to yip like a coyote....so even I heard her from the chicken house..
And since G. and I began sleeping up here in the trailer cupola, I can see most of the paths all around and through the high grass and dog bane vines .
I would listen in my sleep, but often enough I just get a feeling that sent me with the plastic sled and a flashlight out to some quarter of the place, where I would sweep the dark with the light until I caught her eyes, then put her in the sled and slide her over the grass back and under the house where the roosters shelter in rough weather . She would then sleep exhausted, sometimes till afternoon. She'd become virtually deaf, blind, and confused. The only blessing being that thunderstorms didn't make her crazy insane anymore, and she slept through the fourth of July fireworks. If Davey would do a better job of keeping the paths, it would help everything, because sometimes, walking the easiest route, she would go up and down the driveway until she accidentally walked right out the other end
.A few nights ago, something made me sit up in the Cupola all of a sudden, so I got the flash light , ran out to the end of the driveway and shined it up and down....and here she comes, forty yards off still, right down the middle of Rt. Ninety.

She escaped death by any texting salt truck driver at that time of night.
But then a few days ago, saying nothing to me, Davey left here with both dogs in the back of the truck, and came back after a couple of hours with Taino in the cab and Deerdra in the back, wrapped in a blanket , dead as a cold burrito.
He took her out into the orchard in a wheel barrow.

Two days later, Davey's old truck died in the driveway, and now Davey himself doesn't look all that good.
He's been quiet ....but soon enough, he'll be crowing at me about the rent again. Anyway, I better hang on here until he' s a little less fragile
. He won't be ready for another dog for a while yet. I ought to find a kitty and shove it into the house some night, but he isn't much of a cat person. Not much of a people person for that matter.
The place could use a whole litter of kittens, or a barn full of cats, so many mice and chipmunks , and baby rabbits around here. Clean em up. Especially if we are going to try and have a food service operation here. But I sense some resistance.

Deerdra

I've got to say it's a damn good thing I didn't already Ark out of here, because that would have left Davey with a lot of problems he isn't ready to handle at the moment.
For one, Deerdra, his dog is almost old enough to vote and has got such bad arthritis that, though she can walk, and even prance a bit in tracked snow when the old spirit moves her, she can hardly turn around or stand up to begin with; and she has to get up and go out many times a day and night.
It doesn't help much that she is always confused about whether she has just come in the door or just eaten, and that she feels she has to eat every time she thinks she just came in, and every time she eats again she has to go right out.
And when she goes out she doesn't remember that she is old and frail, so she blunders off into the snow, falls, and has to be rescued.

This is the dog which, when she was a two year old afraid of people and cars, was brought to Edgewood Place as a companion for Mama Dot, who was already ninety years old then...the dog which used to accompany Mama Dot on walks to the East Hill Cemetery, where more than once when the old lady fell in the snow, she ran to her and stood there feet splayed, to help the poor old lady up.
As long as Deerdra can stumble around, she deserves the same care.


That has become very demanding. When Deerdra goes to the door after Davey has gone to bed or shoved a dvd into his computer, he lets her out onto the porch and goes back to bed, but then she usually just stands at the top of the steps barking pitifully until I come to her, so I get little sleep, to say nothing about hibernation time, and have to haul myself out of the Ark carry her up and down the porch steps half a dozen times each night.


Her hearing is weak, as are her eyes, but her nose seems to as good as ever. I take her and the younger dog Taino down the orchard lanes to the end
of the property and then let them range in the hay meadow a bit, sniffing out the places where the deer have bedded and fed during the night.

After a brief snow melt recently, I was half way back to the Ark and noticed that Deerdra was not with us.
It took be a while to find her..... a quarter mile away off in a far corner of the hay meadow, feasting on a pile of fiberous manure the size of a Thanksgiving turkey.
There may be something in particular about that mystery poop which she craves for what ails her.
So when we get another thaw, or if I can find it today, I will bring some home. It could be really good shit....but it still is a big mystery to me what could have produced it. Even a moose would be too small, and the cattle range is on the other side of the woods.
Anyway, I am here as long as I am needed, but when and if it is necessary,
I will take Deerdra for the Long Walk. I won't be staying around here long after that myself.