Hound Dog Blues by Peg Stomierowski Gould

Author:Peg Stomierowski Gould [Gould, Peg Stomierowski]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504382106
Publisher: Balboa Press
Published: 2017-08-25T04:00:00+00:00

Duke and Raven walk a dog park trail.

CARRYING ON (8)

After Duke’s startling diagnosis, for the most part we keep up our daily visits to Bear Creek, our off-leash community dog park. Duke is plumb crazy about the place, and has plenty of company in that. Considered to be one of the best dog parks in the country, the 25-acre fenced park in El Paso County draws an estimated 100,000 visitors annually, with canines in tow. It is open year-round, displaying the change of seasons, and includes walking tracks and wooded trails, open prairie, hills, a creek, deep pools, an agility park, a small-dog area, poop-pickup-bag dispensers, a water fountain, picnic tables, and shaded rest areas. Only the heated restrooms and a canine memorial don’t allow the dogs inside. They don’t mind. We’ve been taking Duke and his buddies here for years since discovering its wonders by word of mouth.

In hindsight, I’m not entirely proud of our blind drive to keep our routines going, but at the time it seems like the thing to do, to keep his interests and passions alive. Never mind our own. Call it stuck in normalcy, which I guess equates to more than a mild degree of denial. Duke, too, seems to crave this more than not, and is anxious to get out the front door and be helped into the low back seat of our beat-up silver compact, to hang out the window and occasionally bark at the passing parade. We just wonder now whether we were even capable of altering this personally comforting routine for more than a day or two.

And I think now of Dad declining to get a wheelchair for Mom so she could get outside during her last year; he was afraid it would turn her into an invalid. I have nostalgic photos of Duke, usually after going to the dog park, wrapped in blankets on the front porch, his food bowl nearby, so he could get some more fresh air and a nap and not be trapped into staring at the same four walls all afternoon. That he couldn’t enjoy more of life hurt us as much as him. This boy had been our smile-maker.

And who would ever forget Duke’s love of popsicles? A children’s picture book is what I most expected to feature him in—not a book about grief and recovery from loss.

At first, despite a limp that a brace won’t substantially help, and being on medication for pain and discomfort, he does surprisingly well completing the same walking loops and crossing the creek to traverse a few forested trails. This feeds our delusions that he can beat the odds and recover. He even walks the planks at the agility park and we proudly snap his picture, up on the middle board, with a tennis ball in his mouth. In hindsight, these photos give us pause. Ironically, his declines now are easier to see than when we interacted daily. We wonder if he had more pain than we

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