Love and Loyalty From the Souls of Dogs

“Such sadness and endearing and abiding love…”  Fran

I am by nature a “right brain” person—despite my training in science and medicine, I prefer paintings and photographs to words and mathematical constructs.  Over the past two years of writing this blog, I have resisted on many occasions the urge to add pictures to this website, despite the fact that I possess wonderful photographs of the things that I write about—my family, my dogs, my horses and my patients.  I am constantly taking pictures—I have chronicled my entire life in photographs from my first Kodak Brownie and I will continue to do so.  But I started writing again, thirty eight years after graduating from college with an English degree, to see if I could “describe” rather than “illustrate” the events in my life which have had an impact.  I want to write stories that leave a little bit to the imagination, to my readers’ right brains—stories that can be read out loud.

For the past few months I have been following the saga of Roo on Facebook.  Roo is an Ibizan hound owned by the artist Nan Kilgore Little. Affectionately known by their owners as “beezers”, this breed’s history dates back 5,000 years to the times of the Egyptian pharaohs.  The erect ears and tall lean bodies of these hounds are depicted in hieroglyphs in the tombs of Ptolemy, Nefermat, Mereku and Tutankhamen.  Think of the god Anubis, Protector of the Dead, and you will have a good visual image of the head of this hound.  Brought to the Balearic Islands off the coast of Spain by the Phoenicians in 800 B.C., these dogs have hunted to put food on the table of their masters for centuries.

Roo turned sixteen years old a few weeks ago, an extraordinary old age for a large sighthound. You can see it in the pictures—the eyes, once keen are now cloudy and the strongly muscled hindquarters have wasted.  The bone structure appears more prominent, and yet more delicate at the same time. The ears are nearly transparent, and beautifully veined.  Nan started to post pictures of him on his daily walks, interacting with the other dogs in the household, and resting on his favorite pillow—pictures which have inspired a legion of Facebook followers who clearly feel privileged to watch the “old man” in his waning days and to take that last journey with him and his loving family.

The last forty-eight hours have been tough. Old Roo, with his brightly colored bandanna and his watchful countenance has stopped eating and has taken to his bed, his head resting on his favorite pillow.  He is not in pain, but he is very tired.  No more walking in the Wild Yard and no more jumping over the Big Tree.  His best friend, an Australian cattle dog named Barkool, has taken up watch and rarely leaves his side.  Barkool is neither elegant, nor particularly beautiful and his squat body is a contrast to the lean and classical Ibizan.  He is Sancho Panza to Roo’s Don Quixote.  He is the friend we wish we all had.

My Facebook friends love dogs as do Nan’s and as a result, we frequently feel compelled to put up photographs of abused, starving and abandoned canines in need of rescue, or dogs beaten and bloodied in the service of man’s cruelest whims.  But rarely, in these hastily posted pictures, we see a glimpse of life as it can and should be.  Yesterday Nan posted a photograph of Roo and Barkool.  Roo is wearing his blue bandana and is wrapped the cocoon of his softest blanket, one covered by multicolored hearts.  Barkool’s head is tucked under Roo’s chin as a pillow and his stocky body is still as can be.  His eyes show apprehension, and resignation at the same time.  He is, above all, present for his buddy.

Sometimes friends and families of my patients are uncomfortable visiting their loved ones after a diagnosis of cancer, or even more so at the end of life.  They ask me, “What should I say?” or “What can I do?” The answer is revealed in Nan’s picture of Roo and Barkool:  without fanfare, without words, without tears, just be there.