A Fading Light

She was born on a farm on October 31, 1993. I guess I had always wanted one since I was a kid, but I knew for sure when I saw somebody else's; his blue eyes blew me away. She seemed deeply interested in eating my shoelaces. All of the blue-eyed ones were already taken. And then so was I.

I named her in the car on our way home. I don't know where I came up with it. Maybe it was the season, a week before Christmas. I'm not a religious person. Moreover, I eschew such symbolism and reference. But for whatever reason, I named her Angel. She is pure-bred, and on her American Kennel Club pedigree, her name is Angel For Now, which belies both the tenuous hold her name held in my heart at the time, and my belief that whatever of her qualities that possessed me to name her as I did wouldn't prevail!

She bonded to me quickly. I learned within a day or two how important my scent was to her; she was awfully content to curl up and sleep in a laundry basket on top of my dirty clothes. In one of my most wildly creative moments, I used her habit to stop her whimpering at night while she was penned in the bathroom; I tossed a dirty t-shirt in to her and she went quietly to sleep almost immediately!

I brought her with me to my parents' home to meet the family at Christmas. Living only 300 miles away at the time and having to work between the holdays meant I could still be home at Christmas and New Year's, and the sixteen accumulated hours in the car over two round trips made Angel into a comfortable (enough) road dog. She spent those first few months, those first few trips, curled up on the passenger seat beside me, and I'll never forget the seemingly confused look about her eyes when, as she got to be too big for the seat, she was no longer comfortable there. It wasn't long after that she learned how roomy was the area of an SUV behind the front seats, and she could still be close enough to me to smell me and to be touched.

She learned the joys of the frisbee when, with the help of a friend and neighbor, she finally got the timing right and caught it. It was only a few days later when she learned how much more fun it could be if she would bring it back to me and let me throw it again!

She dazzled me with her intelligence. Her first toys were plastic chew toys that proved to be very fragile in her jaws, and a shoe and a child's slipper donated by family members. The slipper was actually in the form of a bunny rabbit, but it looked more to me like a kitty kat. So, when playing with Angel with these toys I called them "shoe," and "kitty." Her toybox quickly expanded to include "ball," a tennis ball; a knotted chew "rope"; a donut-shaped rubber chew toy, "ring"; a squeak toy about the size of a 12" softball, "squeaky ball"; a number three sized, child's soccer ball, "big ball"; and of course, "frisbee." In all, there were about 15 different items of all shapes and sizes. One day it dawned on me that she was responding to my words by picking up the toy I called out to her. I tested her by spreading her toys out all over the floor and randomly called out to her, "Where's the 'big ball?'" "Gimme the 'rope!'" "Where's that 'ring?'" And with about 95 percent accuracy she retrieved the correct toy!

At her second Christmas with my family it was my father, of all people -- Mr. Gruff Exterior, tough-as-nails, don't-cry-about-it-just-get-back-on-your-feet-and-go, to-hell-with-flowers-plant-tomatoes -- who noticed that she has a cute, little, Valentine-heart-shaped spot on her left foreleg/shoulder!

She had been with me barely a year when I uprooted and moved 600 miles further south. When I finally settled in to my new apartment, Angel ran to the door every time I stood up, thinking we were finally going back home (I know this because if I opened the door, she ran straight for the car, and then looked at me!). This behavior tapered off over about a month, and she was conent in her new home. I did it to her again after about 18 months, only moving to a place out in the woods. She absolutely loved it there, and her urge to go back "home" dissipated within several days.

Then I met the future Mrs. Farrago. When it came time to move I really regretted taking Angel out of the environment she so dearly enjoyed - a huge field in which to run, a creek running past a sandy beach (despite my fear an alligator might eat her!), scrumptious squirrels running all over the place. The improvement in my life, the upgrade of my environment meant the opposite for Angel. Mrs. Farrago had two dogs of her own. Angel would no longer be the sole focus of my affection. She had to compete for attention, place, and toys, and she was a sore loser.

She forced the other female out: she's still in the family, but now with Mrs. Farrago's brother. The male, two years older than Angel, began to break down and, since he was Mrs. Farrago's dog it was Mrs. Farrago's decision, he was put down at the end of August 2004 before he experienced any true misery.

And now, nearly two years later, Angel is meandering down the same path. Her eyes can't track and her jaws can't catch the ball like they used to. She can no longer run the frisbee down, nor catch it. Her hind legs are objecting to her decisions to get up off of her pillow, sometimes refusing to move for a few more seconds. She doesn't hear me when I come home from work, but more feels my footsteps in the floor when I get very near her. Her rear end is failing her more and more often, as there is some nerve issue causing her incontinence. We have her on a daily dose of selegiline hydrochloride, an effort to determine if she suffers from cognitive dysfunction syndrome in dogs. It has helped curtail the incontinence, but not 100 percent.

Angel narrowly escaped the will of Mrs. Farrago in March, but she cannot escape the ticking clock. The day, as yet unmarked, weighs heavier on me as it approaches. When it is time, if she hasn't checked out on her own, Angel's eyes will close for the last time on the man who has belonged to her forever and the woman who joined him about halfway through, and on the house she has shared with them and those damn birds she's not allowed to eat.