Creature Comforts
Self-soothing in the face of life’s vicissitudes
My dear dog Daisy is tending to herself. She’s using her paw to delicately scratch her ear, groaning softly in relief as she does so. She’s turning onto her back and rocking from side to side on the bright Persian-style carpet beneath my dining table. And now, she’s placed her paw in her own mouth as she likes to do, as she’s done her entire life, all sixteen years and counting. She sighs contentedly.
She is old, Daisy is. Sixteen is old for a golden retriever, for sure, and it’s showing. She’s slowing down. She looks askance at the three steps she needs to navigate to get to the back door and the garden to go potty and winces as she trips down them. Sometimes her hindquarters give out and she winds up splayed on the floor until she can gather them under her again and proceed.
And proceed she does. She goes on. Her eyes are clouded with cataracts, and she appears to be pretty deaf at this point too. I wasn’t aware of how severely her faculties had dimmed until recently when we went to the park around the corner. Dogs aren’t allowed, and we have a watchdog neighbor who seems to have nothing better to do than police the park, so Daisy and I only visit this park when it’s dark. A half moon was rising, and stars speckled the sky. Daisy took off looking for tennis balls, one of her…
