The last sense that leaves us as we slip out of this world is our hearing, I’m told. A person lying as still as a corpse, barely breathing, will see nothing, smell nothing, taste nothing–but will hear everything. This is why priests pronounce absolution upon the nearly-expired and why nurses are careful about what they whisper around a death bed.
Dogs are the opposite, it appears: Milly can still smell everything, and does so with her usual enthusiasm, but she is having some trouble seeing and, just lately we are noticing, even more trouble hearing. Just this evening, I called her to go on a walk with me, but she did not show up at the gate. I called her several more times. Nothing.
When I found her, she was on the patio slurping up some water. I called again and clapped my hands, but she did not turn around. Finally, I tapped her on the back of the neck. She swung around and looked at me, then quickly got the idea and followed me through the yard, out the gate, and into the campo.
She has slowed down considerably this past year. In the six months that we have been away, doing my cancer treatments in the States, she has aged noticeably. Her once ink-black coat has gone salt-and-pepper, with the fur around her mouth almost pure white. She walks more carefully, as if trying to avoid stones and twigs–something that never bothered her in the early days, when she would dash down into an overgrown arroyo like a black panther, chasing an invisible (to us) rabbit, then race back to us, with an wildly oscillating tail, waiting only a few seconds before speeding off on another caper.
Now when Milly is out walking with me, she stays close to my side, as if she might be afraid of getting lost. She moves around the house much more slowly, too. When she stands, stiffly, it is on little legs that Mike has observed are arthritic. We have been adding glucosamine powder to her food, and that has helped.
But we are trying to prepare ourselves for the inevitable, while holding onto a brave denial scenario: after all, she still likes her food, she still snaps at strangers, she still… and so on.
Like most people, I had thought that ‘dog years’ to human years were a simple seven-to-one. But that is incorrect. The right formula, from those who study these things, is: 10.5 dog years per human year for the first 2 years, then 4 dog years per human year for each year after. It makes much more sense.
By that way of counting Milly, who is 14 — is, if she were human, 69. My age.
No wonder I am watching with a certain fascination the gradual setting of her glorious sun. No wonder I am attentive to and curious about each new sign of senility in her.
And no wonder that I have been treating her with new respect, she who guarded the house for so many years, who bared her teeth when a stranger got too close to us, who warned us of approaching visitors, some of them unwanted. She deserves that respect now, living out the long autumn of her life alongside us.
No wonder, when I pass her, I look into her eyes, suddenly clouded with cataracts, and whisper, louder than before, ‘Good girl.’
NOTE: On October 4, 2012, Milly passed away peacefully in her sleep under the dining room table…dreaming, one hopes, of juicy bones and running through arroyos. Dreaming, also, of looking at us through clear, youthful eyes, seeking the loving approval that we, mere humans, tried as generously as we could to give.
Joseph Dispenza 