Talkin' 'bout my girl

My girl is feeling a little sick. I came home this afternoon to find her right eye all red, with black smudges on the white fur around it, and my poor baby was rubbing her face on the ground, and rubbing her eye with her paw, and generally confused.

I think my overactive little monster must have scratched it slightly, jumping up into the tree branches after a bird, or leaping through the air at top speed to go from one side of the house to another, keeping watch over every thing that dares to go past our front gate, but not paying much attention to what might be in her way. Or maybe she was scurrying around the corner and skidded through the pebbles on one side of our house, and one sprayed up into her eye.

Whatever it was, she’s handling it. She walks around the house with one eye closed, a bit slow, knowing that something is wrong and that she needs to take it easy and let it heal. Or maybe she’ll forget for a moment, when dinner is served, and she hops around on her hind legs looking at the food and then up at us, as if to say “You wouldn’t keep anything good from me, would you?”

But she’s very happy to be attended to. She’s nine years old now, our feisty, happy, healthy old girl, and she knows beyond knowing that we will take care of things, that we are all-powerful – but she has absolutely no conception that we should do any more than we do. Like the perfect devotee of the perfect religion, she knows that whatever her masters do is the right thing, the best thing imaginable and all that she asks for, and she is completely content to be subject to our omniscience and omnipotence, although there’s hardly anything we can do.

I lie down next to her on the floor, and gently rub the water away from her eyes and out of her fur. I feel around her eyes carefully, making sure there's nothing lodged there, and no injury. I put my face next to hers, I stroke her face softly, I massage her head and rub her tummy. She blinks awkwardly, opening one red eye a bit to look up lovingly, and then puts her head back down to rest and accept more love. I invite her up onto the couch and attend to her for awhile longer, letting her relax. Eventually she drifts into a deeper-than-usual sleep, assured that all is well, and letting herself heal. Every little while she wakes up, and is happy to receive more attention, and knows when to let her head sag back down and her eyes drift closed and rest some more.

There is almost nothing more tender than the relationship of loving master and loving dog. She’s lying here now, my white-furred little baby. I often feel that Lady and I can understand each other perfectly, but not in words, only in a kind of instant, elemental communication, which I am not capable of transcribing. I am not a believer in any religion or any system – in fact, the whole concept of “belief” as opposed to “knowing” or “thinking” is a very odd, human kind of craziness – but I know that in some sense, Lady will wait for me when she dies, and that we’ll be together after I die. Now isn’t that silly?