Harley

My dog has dementia. "Canine Cognitive Disorder," I guess. I used to walk him, most mornings, up the trail, the old wagon road to Hillsborough, as far as the headwaters of Morgan's Creek. He could always get a drink there, even in really cold weather. He never got lost. At least not that he let on. I would see a brown streak shooting through the beautiful woods every once in a while, that was all. He ran his ass off. Now he gets lost on my property. I think maybe even in the house. I'm not sure. My kind neighbors called today to tell me that he was walking, "pacing," back and forth at the other end of the place, inside the fence. I came home and rescued him.

I was going to write about "instant forgetting" and the Republicans and the deficits they so obviously created and now want to remedy on the backs of those they've already screwed, and the stunning gall of Paul Ryan and his ilk in calling themselves fiscal anything, but the dog just makes me too sad. I don't have the stomach. He's so sweet and appreciative of everything, but he's really out of it, and so much so like a human. He's really helpless. There's an occasional turd-drop in the house, and he's night-active, which is a change, so I'm having my sleep interrupted, and he falls down and crashes into things. Three times he's gotten stuck under my bed. He never was that great a dog, really. Hard to engage. Handsome, though. And we have a lot of history.

When my last dog, Edgar, died I was amazed and embarrassed at how hard it hit me. He was a cool guy. We would ride the town in the Miata with the top down and he would know people I didn't know. They knew him through affiliation with his previous owner, Clarissa "Gooey" Engstrom, who left him with me when she went to Scotland to study with the guy who cloned Dolly the sheep. Gooey was going to go to Pakistan and use her DVM as a donkey doc for the folks there, eventually. I think politics prevented, but she had a very interesting life thereafter until she ended it herself. There's an article or obit on her online. It seemed to me that something died with her, and I was just an acquaintance, but Gooey could affect you that way.

Edgar was a fetch monster. Stick or ball, on land or lake, he would bring it back. It was great for me. Who knew you could hit tennis balls with a golf club to such effect. Had to train the dog not to lunge at the ball pre-whack, though, or I might have taken off his nose. And the tennis racket I had used to fight the carpenter bees was used to hit the fuzzy ball way out into the lake on the property now owned by the Tobens. Great. Wear him out and cool him off at the same time. It was the last thing we did together. He got out of the lake and collapsed, finally. Bad cancer.

So I'll have to have Harley have the shot, one of these days. It will be hard. I don't know how hard, truly, and I don't know when. I'd like to get him through the winter. It's good to have time to get used to the idea, and to take care of the guy. He doesn't have to worry that Ryan and the Boehnerites will keel haul his health care or hang it from the highest yard arm, after all, or impale it on Vlad's sharpest stake, be they on land.

What the fuck is wrong with these people, anyway, I wonder. Do they watch Capra's classic at Christmas and then go out and vote for Pottersville or Boehnerburg or Kochtown knowingly? Do they root for the flying monkeys, the wicked witch? The banker scumball in STAGECOACH? Do their hearts wither in disappointment as Scrooge's melts? Do they dream of remakes of MR SMITH and YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU? How would they cast YOU CAN TAKE IT WITH YOU? Oh, Robert Preston, if only he could.

I once met the man, Frank Capra. He came to Xavier when I was there to give a talk and stayed at the Jesuit residence, where I worked as a receptionist. They failed to get word out and almost nobody showed up for the talk. My heart is softening again thinking of the massive compassion and humanity of his movies. I won't lambast the luddites no more. I think I love my dog, and I'll go care for him. I hope someone will care for me when the time comes.