Monday – The Basket By The Door
Mar. 15th, 2010 03:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninanevermore.
.
.
My husband removed the old dog’s bed when he buried her while I was at work. I’m not sure what he did with it. The towel I used to cover her I found her that morning so my little boy would not see her and be disturbed, I found in the washing machine. Her bowls of food and water, untouched in the last few days of her life stayed untouched until the weekend, when I tossed out the food and dumped the water down the sink. I washed them so that they gleamed like new, along with the rubber mat that sat beneath them to protect the floor. There is a no-kill shelter in my little town that I plan to donate the rest of her food to, as soon as I get around to dropping it off there. I set the large blocks of wood we used to elevate her bowls out in the garage. As she grew weak and frail she had trouble bending down to eat and drink. We raised them so that they were level with her chest, and this seemed to help.
I’m not sure what my husband did with her collar. It was a shabby nylon blue thing she’d worn for years, with her rabies vaccination tag and the heart-shaped tag that had her name and our phone number on it in case she ever wandered off. That tag came in handy just a few weeks ago when someone from the utility company left our back gate open.
“A small reddish brown dog, very old and very sick? Yeah, she’s ours. Where do I need to come to pick her up?” Jeff had said to the man who called. Somehow she, as blind and deaf as she was, had managed to make it two blocks over. She wasn’t a very pretty sight by that point: her hip bones jutted out behind her backbone and her ribs bones showed through what was once a silky luxurious coat that had turned sparse and shabby. She was prone to skin irritation in her old age and often chewed all the fur off of her hind quarters. I was surprised that anyone was willing to get close enough to her to read her tags.
The tags on her collar jingled when she walked through the house or when she scratched her ears. I’d grown used to the sound over the years, and its absence makes the house seem too quiet now that she’s gone. The day before she died my husband had bathed her to try to sooth her ailing skin and left her collar hanging from the knobs of one of the cabinets. I did not find it there when I got home; I hope he did not bury her in it because I would like it as a keepsake.
So everything about the old dog is now put away or set aside to go to charity, except for the little basket of toys. Some of them are plush toys, including the ones my son kept bringing to her and placing beside her the night she died to try to cheer her up because it was obvious she was in distress. The next morning those toys surrounded her body like sentries keeping watch over her. It also has a toy you can fill with kibbles that allows a dog to chase it so that they randomly fall out (which she thought was great fun when she was younger). There are the odd sqeaky toys and chewie toys that I thought she might like but that she never really cared for. As a toddler my son raided her toy basket and stole all her toy balls that bounced, but she was already an old dog and had lost interest in them by that point. As a young dog (or even a middle-aged dog) she would have cried foul and we would have made him give the balls back, but at the time we thought it was better that at least someone was enjoying them.
This basket sits close to the front door. It is low and flat so that a dog of smallish stature can easily reach in and riffle through it for something to play with. Her leash is in there, too. I can’t remember the last time I took her for a walk; she was too arthritic toward the end. But it’s in the basket with the toys, waiting for someone to pick it up and attach it to the collar of a healthy, energic dog. I should donate it all to the animal shelter with her unused food. I’m sure the abandoned animals could use that stuff.
But I’m not ready to get rid of that basket yet. I want it there by the door where it is, waiting with her leash and her toys in anticipation of a walk or a romp or for someone to pull and toy out of it and walk over to me with it to initiate a game of tug-o-war. I need it there, at least for a little while longer.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * # * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
.
.
My husband removed the old dog’s bed when he buried her while I was at work. I’m not sure what he did with it. The towel I used to cover her I found her that morning so my little boy would not see her and be disturbed, I found in the washing machine. Her bowls of food and water, untouched in the last few days of her life stayed untouched until the weekend, when I tossed out the food and dumped the water down the sink. I washed them so that they gleamed like new, along with the rubber mat that sat beneath them to protect the floor. There is a no-kill shelter in my little town that I plan to donate the rest of her food to, as soon as I get around to dropping it off there. I set the large blocks of wood we used to elevate her bowls out in the garage. As she grew weak and frail she had trouble bending down to eat and drink. We raised them so that they were level with her chest, and this seemed to help.
I’m not sure what my husband did with her collar. It was a shabby nylon blue thing she’d worn for years, with her rabies vaccination tag and the heart-shaped tag that had her name and our phone number on it in case she ever wandered off. That tag came in handy just a few weeks ago when someone from the utility company left our back gate open.
“A small reddish brown dog, very old and very sick? Yeah, she’s ours. Where do I need to come to pick her up?” Jeff had said to the man who called. Somehow she, as blind and deaf as she was, had managed to make it two blocks over. She wasn’t a very pretty sight by that point: her hip bones jutted out behind her backbone and her ribs bones showed through what was once a silky luxurious coat that had turned sparse and shabby. She was prone to skin irritation in her old age and often chewed all the fur off of her hind quarters. I was surprised that anyone was willing to get close enough to her to read her tags.
The tags on her collar jingled when she walked through the house or when she scratched her ears. I’d grown used to the sound over the years, and its absence makes the house seem too quiet now that she’s gone. The day before she died my husband had bathed her to try to sooth her ailing skin and left her collar hanging from the knobs of one of the cabinets. I did not find it there when I got home; I hope he did not bury her in it because I would like it as a keepsake.
So everything about the old dog is now put away or set aside to go to charity, except for the little basket of toys. Some of them are plush toys, including the ones my son kept bringing to her and placing beside her the night she died to try to cheer her up because it was obvious she was in distress. The next morning those toys surrounded her body like sentries keeping watch over her. It also has a toy you can fill with kibbles that allows a dog to chase it so that they randomly fall out (which she thought was great fun when she was younger). There are the odd sqeaky toys and chewie toys that I thought she might like but that she never really cared for. As a toddler my son raided her toy basket and stole all her toy balls that bounced, but she was already an old dog and had lost interest in them by that point. As a young dog (or even a middle-aged dog) she would have cried foul and we would have made him give the balls back, but at the time we thought it was better that at least someone was enjoying them.
This basket sits close to the front door. It is low and flat so that a dog of smallish stature can easily reach in and riffle through it for something to play with. Her leash is in there, too. I can’t remember the last time I took her for a walk; she was too arthritic toward the end. But it’s in the basket with the toys, waiting for someone to pick it up and attach it to the collar of a healthy, energic dog. I should donate it all to the animal shelter with her unused food. I’m sure the abandoned animals could use that stuff.
But I’m not ready to get rid of that basket yet. I want it there by the door where it is, waiting with her leash and her toys in anticipation of a walk or a romp or for someone to pull and toy out of it and walk over to me with it to initiate a game of tug-o-war. I need it there, at least for a little while longer.
