Go Figure, Wobbley Legs Walks Again

I don't get it. Earl came home on Tuesday after going to Utah for a week for a friends funeral. We were afraid he would come home and have to bury another dear friend. I was anxious to see Earl's reaction when he saw how gaunt and debilitated Vic had become, and sure enough, Vic demonstrated his weakness and inability to get from here to there, looking a bit like a frog with his hind legs tucked up under him bent and feeble. I could see it hurt Earl's heart. It made me cry.

So I come home from work last night on Wednesday and Vic greats me fully up on all fours, mostly stable. He's had a hard time being completely able to move his feet without tripping since he was hospitalized, but this was amazing to me!!! How could he go from being so weak and unable to move and then be fully able to walk with little more than and occasional trip of the feet? And then to top it off, I come home from shopping today and Nate tells me Vic has been up on the land with he and Earl while they were cutting down scrub oak and Vic followed them all the way up to the top of the land and back down. What? He walked all that way and back? How in the.......................!! I don't believe it.

The only explaination I can come up with, is that every time Earl leaves, poor Vic goes downhill. I think he gets depressed and it truly effects him physically. I think he is afraid Earl won't ever return. What a love. What an amazing kind of love between dog and master.

Vic reminds me of Earl, he is big and kind of scarey at times. Yet I can see in Vic's eyes that as he gets older, he becomes more vulnerable. Both of them like to be in the open spaces of the land and enjoy their independence. Neither of them understand what's happening as their bodies age and become more feeble, unable to perform as they used to. Both are desperately devoted to those they love, yet there is a side that is misunderstood. Vic being beaten as a pup has made him very defensive about anyone, more specifically males, getting close to his hind quarters or his face.

Both Vic and Earl are big. It's their breed. They don't know when they're being scarey. They don't understand why some people stay away from them. But those who stay away don't know what they are missing. It's been worth it to me to earn Vic's love. I can see it in his eyes. He loves me and I know he knows I love him too. I know Earl knows I love him, even though I've bared my teeth in defense of my kids or the things I believe in. I hug him and tell him I'm glad he's come home. I hope his children will some day come home too before he is gone and it's too late.

Old Wobbly Legs

This was the last of three days of work in a row. By the time the last of three comes, I feel like a stretched out rubber band. Nate called me yesterday at work to tell me Vic couldn't use his legs and that he got stuck in a ditch. Nate said he tried to hump Cisco, the other Rotty, and his legs became useless appendages after that. He's been having trouble with his hind quarters ever since the last time he was sick. He's lost a lot of muscle mass in his back legs, but he really looks cachectic now.

Nate and Heather tried to move him, but he kept trying to bite them. When I got home yesterday I went to see him (the dog) right away and it really hurt met to see him struggle just to move from one spot to the other. It breaks my heart, I help old people in and out of their chairs and beds to the potty all day long and I can't help this dog, whom I love, and I know he will inevitably be put down because he can't walk to get his water, food and go pee. Granted he's over 14 years old, he has cataracts, but he still has the gumption to play humpy-humpy with Cisco. We had to let Cisco sleep in the basement garage just so her smell wouldn't send Vic into a frenzy!!

I know Vic loves me. I'm the only one who dares put my face close enough to his to let him kiss me on the cheek. And he will give me a kiss when I ask him. He bit Nates face when all he wanted to do was hug him. The wound looked like a dollar sign and I took a picture of it with my camera phone. Nate now has a scar and won't go near Vic's face. As I recall, Vic bit Whit on the lip when Whit was about four years old. Vic also ate Whit's bicycle seat. We could have pushed to have Vic put down the first time he bit my boy, but I know Vic's sad and cruel history. When he was a pup, some kids beat him to a pulp, cut his legs and abdomen, smeared grease in the wounds, kicked him in the nuts so hard he swelled. The vet was amazed Vic was still alive. I can't hate him for protecting himself, or, at least feeling defensive around males.

Tonight I came home to find he is still in the same shape, dragging his old bent legs around and feeling pretty upset that Cisco can get to the water bucket and he can't. He dragged himself over to the bucket so he could have a drink of fresh water tonight. I'm not sure if I'm going to allow Cisco to sleep in the upstairs garage tonight so Vic will sleep.

It seems every time Earl goes to Utah, Vic goes spiraling downward. Earl is due to come back tomorrow and his way of putting a dog down is with a 22 rifle. I won't let that happen. I'll pay for the priviledge to ease Vic into the next life where he will frolic free and easy, lay on green grasses and never feel the pain in his legs again.

That time is probably only a matter of hours away and I can barely choke back tears with the pain and sadness of him being gone. I'll miss him, even if he nearly eats my own dog when ever they are near each other.

Accentuate the Positive

Loyalty, or the lack thereof, is a touchy subject to me. Especially when it comes to the loyalty that I see a lack of amidst mine and my husbands family. As a child I just felt that there wasn't anything better than being with my cousins at grandma's house playing in the basement. Aunts and uncles upstairs smoking and drinking coffee, and just talking about what was going on at the time. The house usually smelled like Camel cigarettes, coffee and food. It was the smell of security for me because I found security in being with my family. But those feelings have all changed and it hurts me very much to see us all go our own ways, getting so caught up in our own little lives and not even including those I found to be my security blanket of youth.

Brothers bad mouthing brothers. Uncles sleeping with nieces. Sisters sleeping with their sisters husbands. Family complaining because this one stole from that one. This one loses their kids to the state. Family adopts them, then excludes everyone from the kids lives. This child won't speak to her father because of lies started years ago and the pride to admit wrong doing is too great between them. A father makes devastating changes in his life leaving those who love him hurt and humiliated. So instead of showing the unconditional love they are taught about every Sunday in church, his family lashes out at him by humiliating him to every person they know in the community and in their own church.

Adultery, stealing, lying, hate, anger, all those negative things that can happen have happened in my family. And I wonder where the love has gone. And I wonder why the innocense is gone. And I wonder if I will ever feel the easiness of the wind in my hair as I eat a green apple with salt like I did in grandma's back yard as a child.

I had a dream once of being surrounded by tires and junk in a pool of water. I looked up the meaning in a dream interpretation guide and it said that water can represent the soul, and polluted water is the soul being polluted. That's how I feel. Like I want so bad to be clean, but so many things around me are polluted. My spirituality is unclean, or so it feels. Especially the innocense that goes with the spirituality.

My husband and I just celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. On the way back from the restaurant we started discussing how easy it is to write about sad or negative things. I blog about things that bug me and he writes music that has a bit of a negative edge. Why is it that being negative seems so much easier than being positive.

How does one write about the happy things if the soul doesn't seem happy? Really? I know that there are a multitude of things out there that are bad and it's easy to find a subject to write about.

Children have always been a subject that I can find peace in. Perhaps it's because they are so young, nieve, innocent and it's easy to forgive them their follies. Sometimes their follies follow them into adulthood. Like my son. As an toddler, he used to pass out when he was really mad. It scared the crap out of me the first time he lay limp in my arms. Then after that, I recognized it as a tantrum. The tantrums of fainting have gone, but the tantrums have taken on a different color. My daughters recognized it early on but I ignored them. Now I pay the price and have less control of his behavior or in manipulating him to do as I say. But he is still as good at manipulation as he was as a little boy, only now the things he wants are much more expensive.

One good thing I have to write about is my granddaughter. The thought of her makes me smile and brings me back to the same feelings of innocense as I felt as a child. I love her little laugh, her bright blue eyes and her fair skin which she inherited from her fair mother.

Yes, there are things in my world that can bring me back into the world of happy and Claralynne is one of them. Her parents make me happy too. They have their problems, but don't we all.