I don’t know if Ruby has long with us here, anymore. All of a sudden it’s too far for her to walk all the way out to the pond, or out to the bluff. We go in the car, I drive right up to the edge of the grass, it’s just too far. Even around the block seems far, so tonight just me and her and Otterpop walked very slowly down to the corner. We stood there for a while, at the telephone pole, and then we walked back. One very small footprint at a time.

She eats, but not always. She very much wants to be back in her crate, under my desk. The blankets in there make a perfect depression for her best sleep, where she breathes shallow breathes that seem to take forever for the next one to come. I watch this a lot. She has her own coffee mug in there, but she isn’t drinking much now. I bring her mug in, Room Service! She doesn’t look up. I carry her out in the evening, when we sit in the living room, and set her in her chair. It takes her a while now to lie down, in excruciating increments she maneuvers herself to the right spot, then stares out at us with her cloudy eyes til she falls back asleep.

I have the sense that inside her head, she is sharp as a tack. I don’t think she’s gone in there. But there’s layers of thick woolly tentacles slowly wrapping themselves around her and taking her away, like the vines that take hold of trees and won’t let go.

Ruby is a classy dog. She has dignity and she does things her own way. A month or so ago, I lost hold of her leash when we were taking a walk in the dark, and she put herself out in the lead and ran, if you can call it running, on her own around the block and back to our house. The rest of us trotted behind, not sure what else to do. She got waylaid at the neighbor’s garage, and ran in there and got stuck behind his motorcycles. He reached in and got her and handed her back. She was cool with it.

 I carry her most places. She can’t take the stairs,  and in the backyard she mostly enjoys to just stand there, looking at the air. I stopped taking her to the doctor. I am letting her wilt, letting her degrade on her own time. She’s on no meds, no special heroics. No needles, no pills. Her leaves have turned and they’re drifting off now, slowly dropping off one by one.