I found this photo, I have thousands of photos of Otterpop. Otterpop who would stand anywhere like a statue, balancing on whatever it was I needed her to balance on. This is 5 yrs ago, Otterpop on a tennis chair, I drove by it, thought she’d look nice there, popped out of the car, climbed her up this tall chair on a bleary morning, shot the photo and off we went.

She’s not doing well. There’s definitely no balancing or standing still watching the camera lens. She wakes up like a bomb went off between her ears at 2am, manic and crazy and ready to run around the house, flinging herself off furniture, into walls, barking and screaming if she’s contained behind a door or in a pen or a crate.

Her front feet paddle fast, her hind feet drag slow, she looks like hell but then decides to play with the other dogs or chase a ball across the yard. She falls down sometimes. I’m going to try sedation for anxiety, to see if the manic can wear off in the middle of the night. She said she wanted to go on a walk this morning, then two houses down the row said she can’t walk. She’s all over the place, yes she is. She can’t make it down a stair, but at 3am can fling herself up on the couch and launch off the side and across the house at speeding bullet trajectory.

I don’t even know how to find the thousands of photos, of drawings of Otterpop. Tens of thousands? So many. They’re somewhere, maybe in an old computer, maybe a box under the bed. Her vet talks about quality of life, I walked out with a bottle of trazadone. She comes to work and sleeps in the car, she sleeps on the couch, I carry her around. I throw a handful of food down and watch her go, like a little machine. I see her normal Otterpop self, just really old. It’s in there, along with the demon self that maybe the trazadone can tamp down just enough for some quiet more days.