Ruby still goes to the park. I drive all the dogs there, now, we peel out of the car slowly, and I put everybody on a leash so we go the same speed. This means Banksy is PULLING, because she wants to go where I throw the ball and send her around the backstops. And Gustavo can’t believe he’s on a leash because how will he get through the hole in the fence? And Otterpop is all, whatever. But then everyone goes the same speed as Ruby. Which is very, very slow. It takes a long time to go from the car park to the field.

So that means there are other walks, where I leave Ruby home alone in her blue chair. Or we find her in the backroom in her favorite spot, the dog crate under my desk, when we come home. She sleeps along time, and she screams when we come home. Her only sound now is screaming, I don’t think it’s a bad sound, I think it might be the only sound she can make that she can hear. Does she know we were gone for over two hours, that we walked 8 miles including up a down hill? I don’t like to leave her alone very long.

I miss her terribly when we leave her home, but her only walks right now are very slow and just around a few block. Or from the car to a shady spot at the park. Her legs wobble a lot and when she does run, it’s usually not a good thing because she can’t see or hear hardly at all. So if she gets mixed up where the rest of us are, she panics and runs. She doesn’t do this at the park, we stand under a shady tree and throw the ball and she seems to like standing there, sniffing the air. She never sits or lies down, she either stands and wobbles, or is asleep in her chair or the crate. I’m not sure what this means, I worry it hurts her to get up and down. Ruby’s always been a very tough cookie, even now she’ll occasionally throw herself down the back porch stairs, and just pop up and off she goes, wobbling across the yard.

This month, she seemed to deteriorate faster than she has in a long time. Maybe she’ll stay like this for years, or maybe her time comes long before that. No way to know. I just don’t know how much she likes her life. I think if we could all sit together in the living room all the time, and she could see us there from her blue chair, she could stay like that for a very long time, then have me carry her up and down the stairs. So sometimes we do that, til I know she’s asleep. Then I hustle the other dogs to wherever it is we need to go. She wakes up though, she knows when we sneak out. And most of all, she wants to come along, too.