Dear Prudence.
a love letter about the love of an aging dog
Dear Prudence,
Someone I’d just met asked me the other day about my family. I said I was married 10 years to my high school sweetheart and no kids, but we have a dog! She shot back, "so you do have a kid!" She's a parent, and as far as I know doesn't have a dog, so I say she speaks for all the humans now.
I have a confession to make. I used to cringe when people called themselves "dog moms". But I've changed.
A year ago this week we were prepping for you to have a knee replacement. You tore your ACL-equivalent in October 2020 while running. We tried expensive non-invasive therapies but they stopped working after a few months. You stopped healing, then starting regressing, and we could tell you were in so much pain.
The known pain of limping along was tolerable until it wasn’t. The unknown pain and risk of surgery wasn’t worth it until it was the only option. We made the call and scheduled the x-rays and put you on meds to protect your aging organs. We lowered our mattress to the floor and took money out of savings if it could save you.
It’s what you do when nothing is totally certain. And there’s no way to fully steel ourselves against heartbreak. We keep going anyway.
Because you survived anesthesia on your abnormal liver, I asked you when you came home... just make it to 10. Then just make it one more year. I didn't even ask you to run again.
Just walk again.
Just turn 10.
Just a little more time.
On the other side, healing from surgery was so tough, and you were way tougher than me. You cried the whole first night and I cried every day for weeks. An 80-pound dog who can't walk is a lot of dog, if you must know. Watching you suffer broke me down.
For months, walking was painful or impossible. There were falls and scary follow-up appointments. The vet staff we saw every few days called us by name: Prudence and her mom.
Miraculously, you made a full recovery. I’m still recovering, I think. But you know this, of course, because you’ve been by my side every hard-earned step of the way.
You turn 11 next month and you’re running. You've always run oddly and fast - that's the suspected greyhound in you. You don’t have the lateral flexibility or the hip strength to hit the groove of your old gait anymore. The mechanics are different. You run like your back legs are tied together, like a hunter’s bolas got you tied around the ankles.
I know you've adapted. We’ve adapted.
Watching you run, I realized something happens to a human heart a few years in to loving a dog, and there's no imagination for life without your beloved. Why try? Your hair will be in our life for decades after you’re gone. But that’s not all.
Why pretend we don't love you as much as we do? We are devastated to watch you struggle. God forbid we lose you entirely. Why do we cheapen this loyalty, love, and companionship? It's so dumb. Almost as dumb as admitting I'm a dog mom. By that I mean I'm a woman with a family and you, our Dear Prudence, have made our family who and what it's been these last 10+ years.
It’s been very hairy (you’re a massive shedder.) And it's been beautiful.
You’ve been on so many of our biggest adventures and made every single one of them home: from Texas to Portugal to New Mexico to the barn-home in Missouri to the car-home while climbing from Wyoming to Canada, then finally, Colorado. You’ve witnessed our decade of marriage and all of our 20’s. I’m not the same person I was in 2011, but you’re still the quirky, rescue greyhound-ridgeback giant from the streets of San Antonio sent to love us so well.
I could write a whole book about the lessons learned from being loved by you, of growing up with you. Last year I felt the gap closing too soon. It was such a close call. But I’m awake now. Time with you is so, so precious. We don’t realize you’ll get too old and we’ll have to let you go so soon when we bring you home as a puppy, and that’s such good news.
I feel the old becoming sacred. And I’ve never known sacred to not be hard.
Thank you for one more year, Prud.
Our family has been one of the richest adventures of my life.
Love your dog mom,
