By Sonya Zalubowski

For a moment, just a fleeting moment,  I think to pack up the car.  To run out to the garage with an overnight bag.   To throw it in the backseat next to the crate for my old dog.  The plastic box with a closeable grate on the front, his little den when we travel.   He doesn’t like being confined but it saved him injury once in a bad collision.  I want to pack him in there for us to run away, away from what’s planned for us both.

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Joey, my sweet-tempered Australian terrier. Part black and tan terrier, part Dandy Dinmont from down under and part Yorkie.  I used to like to tell people on our daily walks he was like a Yorkie on steroids.  Not anymore.  A little guy, lately much littler, he’s lost 25 percent of his weight. “Ominous,” the vet called it even before this week when we got the blood tests back.  Joey barely eats now. The only way I can tempt him is with tiny pieces of bacon I hand feed.

Almost 14 years we’ve been together, from his puppyhood at six weeks. The way he’d stare at me with his big brown eyes, fixing and bonding. He must have thought, strange looking as she is,  she’s now my mom.  And for me, all those years, Joey always at the back of mind, no matter where  I was or what I was doing, I’d think of him and getting back to him and making sure he was all right. 

We’ve been through so much ... the time I totaled the car.  Then my bad back and household moves, yard one day, condo the next. The death of my mother. Joey sat with me at her nursing home the night before she departed.  Sat at my knee. And watched and waited.  He used to sit at hers, as she doled out whatever she was eating, sharing generously, me looking elsewhere to not frown at what she gave him.

Joey, stocky once, his spine now sticks up in little sharp bumps all along his back.  By afternoons,  all he does is sleep.  The blood tests explain what’s going on. Way worse than I feared.  His liver’s completely out of whack, numbers off the chart. The vet says toxins are also clouding Joey’s brain.  He rubs his head seeking comfort.  His abdomen has swollen with fluids and the vet says seizures will be next.  At his age, there is little we can do.

 My own surgery upcoming in just a week.   I won’t be able to help him, can’t leave him with a sitter like this.   Don’t want him to suffer.  So bravely, I set the date.  Now, only hours away. This afternoon.

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