Her hips are so weak that she cannot get up without assistance and she is too heavy (in spite of her ribs showing these days) for me to lift. So, on these evenings when Brad is at work, she goes between sleeping and yowling. I am grateful when she gives up and goes to sleep. She looks at me with those eyes and does not understand why I will not pick her up so she can go outside. It is the yowling that kills me.Anyone who has met Luna knows that her happy sound is something like nine cats being smashed by a steam roller, so, you can imagine what her hurting and frustrated sound is like. Sometimes I scream back at her, I feel so helpless. I'd give one of my legs for hers to work, seriously, I would. I'd kick it in that cool electric chair and never think a second thing about it.
In a matter of days I will have to make that most grown up decision, to have my dog "put to sleep". I have prayed that it will not come to that, in my perfect imagining one evening Luna is her old self, she plays her nightly blanket game and we "sing". She eats a big bowl of spaghetti and falls asleep beside me on the sofa as I crochet. That night, sometime in the night, she just slips away. I awake to find her still and gone. (In my dream I do not go into the hysterical sobbing and with Brad calling my doctor for some Xanax while I vomit, it is far more Martha Stewart than that.)
Now, I lie in bed and worry about what to do with 35 lbs of dead Shiba Inu. We are so poor that we cannot pay attention, I am sure that cremation costs a hundred bucks - where will that come from? We live in town so we cannot just bury her in the yard, anyway, it is a rental and I could not just leave her here.
Right now, she is asleep again. If I sit in this spot until Brad gets home, my back pain will keep me up, but, small price to pay so she knows I am close by and she is not yowling - yet.
