Here we are.
Next Friday is Mr. Coltrane’s last round of chemo. Maybe we’ll be on our way to the vaccine in the weeks after? Who knows. What we do know is that Roscoe is hopping around on three legs better than I sometimes walk on two. There are good days, and days not so great. There are days when he gets to the front door to greet me faster than I can unlock it, and some days I meet him on the couch in the living room, waging his tail as if I was the next best thing to a prime ribeye steak.
I’ve stopped thinking in terms of post-treatment median days of remission; and favor instead the number of hugs, licks, jumps, and snuggles. Last night, I woke up from a disturbing dream that had nothing to do with dogs. He was there. He comforted me with the thump of his tail on the wall.
There are more lessons jam-packed in to these last few months than I can possibly absorb. Every time he has stopped and laid down on his way to hopping somewhere, I have given him only a couple of seconds to regain his strength.
“Nope. Get up. Good boy. C’mon. Let’s go. A little further. There you go. Atta boy.”
Every single time, he’s gotten up and gone a little further. The message he sends? An echo of my own. I read somewhere, sometime that, “A man gets the dog he deserves.” I wish I knew who said it, but I have to disagree just a little. Whatever a person invests into a dog seems to have returns so much greater than the investment. That seems to be the case with Roscoe, anyhow. In this 70-80 pound stock of American Bulldog, there is (and I believe always has been) so much more than I, a mere two-legged human, ever deserved. Somehow, I ended up with a dog that is so much more than I deserve.
Here’s to my buddy Roscoe.
Let’s go, little buddy. A little further.
There you go.
Atta boy.
