The Dog Gauge

On this New Year's Day, 2011, I found myself really looking at my two dogs.

Belle, who is somewhere around 10 or 11, had a very bad inner ear infection that caused Bell's Palsy on her left side. She's had it for a little over a month now. While she still can't blink her left eye, it is now moving in synch with her right, her inner lid functions normally, and she is able to move her left ear a little. The left side of her mouth still droops, though, and we administer drops in her left eye a couple of times a day to keep it moist. Her pretty brown muzzle is white with age. Even though she still suffers from deterioration in her back,this morning she sped out the back door and ran the length of the back yard.

Nigel, who will be 7 this February, also has white on his muzzle where it used to be all black. He has become quite the curmudgeon, too. Being part Chow he was always opinionated, but now when I look at him I see an old man standing on his front porch in plaid pants hiked up to just under his chest waving a fist in the air at the neighborhood kids.

My dog's lives represent a timeline. What was I doing when they were young? What was I doing when we only had Belle? How about when Nigel was added to the clan? How have things changed now that we all are older?

These two also are an example of no matter how we sometimes would like the clock to stop and things to never change, time forces change to happen. It is the way the world was devised, for better or for worse.

One time, when I was around 12 years old, I was a very upset little girl crying during a family gathering while seated at our dining room table. I was trying so desperately to move from one phase of my life and into the new one and it was so confusing at times. Some of my extended family was embarrassed by the emotion and walked away. I can remember my father standing at the head of the table holding on to the back of one of the chairs looking like he was so lost as to how to help me with the pain. All at once, my grandmother walked into the room, sized up the situation, and said, "Nancy, it won't always be this way." She then proceeded to gather up my hurt and pain and replace it with peace and calm.

No matter whether change charges at us head on or creeps up from behind, we cannot stop it from happening. All we have to do is look at our dogs to see that.