That Nice Girl with the Dogs
Winter began without warning one day in October. I was sitting on the cold tile floor of the examining room helping to hold my dog, Sirocco, when the vet explained she had only a matter of weeks.
“The steroid medication I’ve prescribed will delay the progress of the cancer, but there’s no cure. Most likely, she’ll be active and happy for another four, maybe six, weeks. Right up until the end.”
As I had been taught, I didn’t cry or protest, but fought for calm, clutching the fur of her scruff as the white room ballooned, then shrank. The rest of the vet’s words were almost lost to me under the terrible shushing of blood in my ears.
“When the end comes, it’ll be fast, within a day, most likely.”
I called her Sirocco because she was the color of sand and swept along the earth like the wind. Sirocco was my go-anywhere, best-behaved dog. She slept with her whole long body against me every night and calmed me with her meditative gaze.
I had two other dogs, both German Shepherds like Sirocco. These other two were fine dogs, but Sirocco was my favorite. Now, with her illness and so little time left, I dropped any pretense of fairness. Sirocco got the meatiest bones and special treats, the longest play-time, the most affection. But most important, she got the dog park every morning just before dawn, every morning until the last one.
The park is 80 acres, in the countryside away from town, and just over a ridge so that the town lights cannot be seen. Bark-chipped trails wind through the central part of the park, through tall prairie grass, an occasional towering oak or hickory, and elderly apple trees still bearing. But Sirocco and I preferred to patrol the narrow, stony dirt path that follows all around the edges of the park up on the ridge where the jack pines grow and where meadows of cow parsnips space the woods. We liked that high view of the prairie below, and to circle all around the known and loved.
It was quiet, cold and dark on the ridge those early mornings. The park was often empty of other people or dogs. I rarely used a flashlight, trusting my eyes to adapt. Sirocco would disappear into the grey and black shadows of the woods to hunt. Mostly, I let her be, but if the darkness crept up my back too much, I liked to call her to me in a whisper, huffing through the silence.
“Sirocco, come!”
