There is something about my love for Lucy that I can’t compare to any other dog I have ever owned. I understand the duress and long-term mourning I had with Duke given my adolescent hormones flowing through my body at the time. When you’re 13 years old, anything emotional is going to feel 100 times more intense and last 5 years longer than usual.
My loss of Doyle was my first loss of a beloved dog as an adult and it didn’t seem fair he was gone so young. He hadn’t done anything wrong. He didn’t deserve to dies so early and while I still mourn him, it’s not like I cry every time I think of him. (though sometimes when I pull up video of him running in the snow I will).
And while I love Princess and I will be completely besides myself when she’s gone, I feel really good that we’ve gotten to take care of her in her twilight years. It hasn’t been without struggle. This past year, her eating has declined so she’s lost a lot of weight. It’s OK to see the ribs on a greyhound but it’s not OK when their pelvic bones are pronounced. So we’ve had to come up with some creative ideas to make her eat.
First, we added water to her food to make a “gravy”. That worked for about 4 weeks. Then we added more wet food but she would just eat that and leave the kibble alone. Finally, we thought we’d add a Tbsp of melted bacon fat to the kibble and stir it around before putting the wet food on top and that seems to have done the trick! Her appetite is back and she began eating all her food again, but that only lasted a month or so and we’re back to begging her to eat. She’s missing meals and losing weight all over again.
The thing is, Princess had a family she loved very much and I believe she still missed them when we adopted her. We were told her “mom” had an accident that required her to have a full-time care giver and the care giver wasn’t interested in taking care of dogs so that’s why she went back to the rescue. Based on the national greyhound database, we know she was adopted early and never raced so if the person who was injured was her first adopter, she had loved Princess for almost 8 years. It was obvious she was in a home where she ruled the roost as getting on the furniture wasn’t even a question to her, nor could we get her to stop.
There are times now, that she seems confused – like she will wake up from a nap and look around like she expects to be someplace else. Or she just starts whining for no reason. At 12, she may be experiencing some sort of Dementia or doggy Alzheimer’s disease. At other times she seems sharp and as affectionate as we can expect her to be, rubbing her nose under my arm pit (no clue why, but this is something she’s always done) or getting excited for the nightly walk.
But whatever it may be, in my adult life I cannot say I’ve loved a dog as much as I love Lucy.