Lucy looked up at me with her lovely dark brown eyes as she greeted me at the back door this evening. Her tail thumped into the metal cabinet like a drum. I bent down and kissed her forehead and scratched her behind her ears the way I always have.
Lucy was 9 when we adopted her two years ago. She was already old with gray around her eyes and throughout her muzzle.
She perked up when we walked through the rescue shelter looking at the various strays. She was in the last cage, a black Labrador-German shepherd mix that weighed nearly 100 pounds, a senior dog brought in by an elderly woman who had to go into a nursing home because of her health and could not find anyone to take in her dog.
It was July 7, 2007. 7-7-07. A lucky day, we said.
Ms. Carnacki wasn’t certain we should get such an old dog and had not thought of us getting such a big dog. But there was something about the way that Lucy lit up when she saw our three daughters and us. We took her outside on the leash and she moved like a puppy, happy to be outside and licking the children with her long tongue. She won all of us over and we took her home and it was as if she had always lived with us. She wasn’t a pet. She was family.
A week after we had brought her home with us, I strained my right hamstring while running intervals for exercise. I had decided I was going to milk it for the weekend and put off the jobs on my to-do list. I was on the sofa with a horror movie on the television at 2:30 a.m. and my feet propped up. Lucy lay on the floor next to me, her head resting on her paws while I gently scratched her head.
Suddenly she jumped up and raced into my oldest daughter’s bedroom barking fiercely. A neighbor’s dog was barking in that direction and I thought Lucy was answering him. My fear was she would wake my daughter. Unlike Lucy, I was a fool.
But thankfully we had Lucy because the next morning we discovered someone had opened my 9-year-old daughter’s bedroom and pulled over the children’s metal wagon and attempted to enter her room. Lucy had frightened the burglar off.
For many nights afterwards, Lucy and I patrolled the yard at night for the police had suspected the person had watched the house for some time and picked that window deliberately. Only our adoption of Lucy had saved us from a world of hurt. I wanted to be seen aggressively keeping watch around the house to send the message to anyone watching that only Death and a fiercely loyal, big, black dog awaited him should he return.
She has been with us through many trials and tribulations, loyally guarding us and loving us. She’s the first to greet me at the door and help me transition from long-distance work commuter to father.
One of her greatest joys is to catch sticks. She doesn’t return them. She chews on them until she breaks them, often with one bite of her powerful jaw. Not long ago she stopped jumping for the sticks and a couple of times she fell trying to catch them as her weakening back legs gave out from under her. I built a long ramp covered with outdoor carpeting and with side-guards to make it more secure for her for her to use instead of the back steps. She uses it to go down, but stubbornly prefers to struggle up the steps than to go up the ramp.
We were fearful we were going to lose her last month, but she bounced back. However, on a follow up visit on Friday, we discovered her weight had dropped to 87 pounds. The vet, who has brought her back to health twice before and I would trust with my own life, told me Lucy has cancer and estimated she has two to three months at most. At Lucy’s age, treatment is really not an option.
There’s little more we can do for her. We’ve always loved up on her. We’ve always spoiled her (though she remains a very polite dog). So we just have to keep treating her the way we’ve always treated her to make the most of the time we have left with her. We have pain pills for her and I’ve picked out the spot where we’ll bury her and plant a memorial flower garden.
For $15 we adopted Lucy. I wouldn’t trade her for all the money in the world. She’s made me the happiest dog owner ever.
That’s my happy story this evening. Your happy story can be about anything you want it to be.