Django blew out his ACL and the vet says the surgery for an old dog is beyond expensive. So he prescribes pain pills and time, saying the joint will calcify. The doggie day care acknowledges his wound by putting a yellow band around his neck to indicate his limp is an injury. Combined with his normal blue collar it looks like he's wearing the flag of Ukraine around his neck. The place is now synonymous for anxiety, unpredictability, and complete WTF.
When I am forced to board the dogs overnight, DJ freaks out in the kennel, remembering his cross country drive as a rescue. He was three months old. The truck drove straight from Houston with a full load of grown rescues waiting to meet their owners in California. They said he was a Great Pyrenees but he is a sleek supple leopard with the spots and alert barking of a hound. He has grown to become as large as his supposed breed in the last ten years, but without the thick coat. He is known as the "sunbather" at doggie day care, though he has the speed and size to command Alpha status. No one messes with Django. Not even the Huskies.
We're sitting out back together, DJ, me, and Sadie the irrepressible black lab. I'm just back from a couple new hospital days and they spent a night at Wags. We're all a little restless. They want to get fed. The sun is setting. I wrote a chapter in my fiction book today, in a room with Seinfeld and The Office on the television with sound off to make sleeping easier, then raced up the 5 at 80 miles an hour to make it to practice on time. The track lets me breathe. I delight in the time and the myth I am somehow in control.
Every victory in this journey of these hard wins and losses needs to be savored. The mountain lion in the refrigerator. Sun an orange glow over the backyard.
Django is the calmest/most anxious dog I know. But he keeps watch over the backyard, a little plot of his own Ukraine.
As will I.