By Bob Groeneveld
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You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.
Sometimes Joni Mitchell’s words of pop advice apply even before it’s gone.
Sometimes, you just have to know that it’s going – or that the going is imminent – to make you notice what you’re losing.
We almost lost Sam recently.
He was terribly ill. He wasn’t eating; he refused to eat anything except the most delectable treats, and he often turned even those down.
He’d lost a lot of weight and gotten to the point where he had difficulty walking.
At times, I had to carry him up and down the stairs, like I had done when he was a puppy, and which, despite his considerable growth since then, he still likes me to do when he’s feeling sad or unwell.
His fitful sleep was ragged and his breathing laboured, punctuated by horrible rasping gasps.
We got some pills from the vet, and they helped… until they didn’t. And then we got more pills, stronger than the first batch.
Donna and I have walked the final walk with loving companions before, and this felt like we were headed down that devastating road again.
Somehow, he recovered.
He tires more easily now, and he sleeps longer and more soundly than he did before his illness.
But the tests we ran to try and understand what was wrong with Sam had revealed something else, something that has changed everything.
Sam is dying.
It’s probably not related to the illness that nearly took him from us.
Sam has a condition – a change growing in him – that will overtake him quite suddenly.
One day – maybe this week, maybe next week, maybe a few months from now, or maybe it’s happening right now as you’re reading this sentence – he will suddenly grow weak, he will lay down, he will probably fall asleep, and his heart will stop beating.
It may be related to a cancer, but probably not. There’s an operation, but at his age, success would be unlikely. And even “success” likely would not extend his life enough to fully recover from the operation.
So we’re just enjoying the love Sam gives us every day – every minute – while it lasts.
We spend more time with him than we might have if we hadn’t known what we should have known anyway: Sam is an old dog, and he is nearing the end of his life.
Nothing has really changed, except the awareness which came from discovery of his strange dysfunction.
It’s also made us realize – not just know, but truly realize – that Pippin is also an old dog.
And that we, too, are older than we once were.
What we have – everything we have – is not forever.
But it’s pretty darned good, and we need to enjoy it while we can.