Dog Years

If you put a hat (or a tiara) on Lola's head and tell her she's pretty,
she will wear it -- even though she has her doubts.

The other day, Lola the dog started behaving: she didn’t tip over the garbage, didn’t steal food, didn’t
jump on visitors, didn’t pull on her leash like she was hauling a sledge.

I brought her to the vet.

She didn’t leap out of the car and drag me to the vet’s door. (She loves the vet.) I had to coax her. She didn’t jump up to see the receptionist over the counter, and because she didn’t do that, she didn’t see the bowl of treats up there and try to stick her face into it.

If you saw her, though, you wouldn’t think she was sick. Her tail waved. She climbed onto the examining table because she knew that’s what happened next. She licked the vet’s cheek as the vet listened to her heart.

You would think she was a calm, well-behaved dog.

“This isn’t like her,” I explained.

Turns out Lola was ill, mildly so. She felt better a few hours after taking her first dose of antibiotics.

“Thank God!” my high-school daughter texted me. She had been texting me all day, to find out what the vet had said. “I thought Lola was going to die.”

Me too.

Your mind goes that way with dogs, doesn’t it? You are always aware that they aren’t going to live as long as you are. They go from puppy to full-size in two years. Lola, a black standard poodle, started to experience “fade,” gray hairs interspersed in the inky black, by the time she was three. At six, her chin is all gray.

Happy to report that Lola’s her old, bouncy self. She just went outside to dig in the flowerbeds.