It’s not a good sign when chemotherapy medications require you to double bag your dog’s waste products and keep urine in a contained area away from other animals and humans. Since neither my husband nor I are in the habit of sniffing dog pee, I don’t see the relevant hazard to humans; Riley, on the other hand, does like to sniff AND pee wherever Catie does.
Catie’s at the vet hospital right now. It’s become a very familiar place and Catie enjoys the visits; the technicians, the doctor, the special outing without her brother. Her second chemotherapy treatment was administered late this afternoon: doxorubicin this time, the first round was carboplatin. Her treatment protocol alternates between the two equally-sounding unpleasant drugs I can’t pronounce and can barely type.
I have to be honest. Riley and I in particular quite enjoy the three weeks between treatments. Life seems normal then; Riley and I share an affinity for routine in our day-to-day lives. It’s a prerequisite for our well-being, actually. The last couple of months of Catie’s illness has upset the natural rhythm of our household and ironically, Catie has handled all the changes – the pokes, the probes, the loss of limb, the chemo treatments – with far greater and astonishing aplomb than we. We’re now very accustomed to her hopping gait; the distinctive thump-thump she makes as she moves around upstairs; and we forget for a while that she has cancer.
Until she has to go back to the vet’s.
Riley is having his post-supper, evening nap. The Olympics are over (he barked enthusiastically yesterday at the human outburst over the final goal in hockey; Catie slept on the couch with her head on my mother-in-law’s lap); television is boring. For distraction I search the house for a good book about dogs. Sad to say, we don’t have many on the subject. The most beautifully written one I have is Dog Years by Mark Doty – lovely, lovely, funny, breathlessly poignant but I decide I’m not in a place to re-read it right now. I go on-line to the Chapters Indigo site, type “dog” in the search.
Results – 12,610.
That’s a lot of books about dogs.
Books on surfing with your dog, teaching your dog physics (I’m serious), gardening with your dog, making crafts for your dog, raising dogs, training dogs. Doggy problems, doggy tricks, doggy cookbooks. Bayou dogs and San Francisco dogs; sled dogs, shelter dogs, prairie dogs, hot dogs, Obama’s dog.
I’m overwhelmed. I stop scrolling at item 371.
Riley is still napping. Waiting for Catie has become our theme song.
I open Mark Doty’s Dog Years to a random page:
We are not helping our dogs move toward independence, as we do with children – and as, of course, children long to do. The dog’s need for us is permanent. The great evolutionary success of their species lies in their ability to convince us of our need for them.
I’m thinking I need a snuggle with Riley.