DOG OF HOPE

Asta turns 13 on April 1st, no fooling. She’s doing alright for an old biddy; she’s deaf, mute and blind, but still plays a mean pinball. My friend Will, who is 10, recently remarked on her beautiful cloudy blue eyes. I had to tell him that they’re cataracts, which made him sad, and then he later told his mother he was sad that he made ME sad by mentioning it. There’s a sweet man in the making right there.

So yes, Asta is blind, and, as mentioned, she can’t hear all that well. She’s also directionally challenged, somewhat incontinent, and has trouble with stairs. That being said, she enjoys her meals, short walks, longs naps, and being petted. We should all aspire to that when we are – what? 13×7 is … 91. Yikes, that’s old.

I’ve never had an old dog before. We had a dog before Asta: Milo was a rescue puppy, and he grew big, and, sadly, mean. He just didn’t like children, and it’s not like we had a choice. We ended up giving the children to a nice single man who had a farm, and he raised them like his own. Last I heard, they were doing fine.

Seriously, though, Asta was, and is, our dog of hope. We got her almost a year to the day after I was diagnosed with breast cancer. We’d been through the wringer that winter, what with the chemo and the radiation. I was exhausted, John shell-shocked, the kids suffering from delayed anxiety. “Let’s get a puppy!”, we said, which, when you think about it, may not have been the best idea, but in the end, it was. We knew we wanted a Golden Doodle, and, after Milo, we knew we wanted a girl dog. We decided on a breeder, and set off to pick out our puppy. There were only two females in the litter, and they were identical. We finally settled on one, and the breeder tagged her so we would know which one she was, but when we returned to pick her up three weeks later, the tag had fallen off, so to this day, we’re not sure if our dog is Asta or Asta’s sister.

She was a rambunctious puppy, and got into endless trouble her first few years. She broke her tail in the garden gate, lost a dew claw in the creek, chased swans in the park, got a face full of porcupine quills, and met more than one skunk. One night, when we were enjoying a dinner off the barbecue, we heard and saw her running around the backyard barking like mad. We couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her, and kept shushing her, until we realized she had tried to eat something under the grill, and had hot coals fall on her head, becoming entangled in her fur. Poor silly baby. She also had several moments of fame, appearing with me in a photo spread in Canadian Living magazine, and also gracing the cover of the Toronto Star when a photographer came across her in the park on a snow day.

To this day, I don’t know what she makes of Duey. She was 6 when he came along, and while she clearly considers him to be an idiot, she is too well mannered to show it. He, on the other hand, adores her like no other. He came straight from his mother to her, and he can’t be without her, not for a moment. I have no idea what I will do when the inevitable happens. No, YOU get another dog. The cycle must be broken.

Nowadays, Asta spends her days lying in a sunny patch on the floor, looking, but not seeing, out the window. Occasionally I’ll look up to see her staring at me from across the room, as if to say “what is happening?”, or more likely “do you still love me?”

The answer is … you’re getting very old, my dog of hope, and yes, always.

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