Borrowed time

She trips over pine cones and sticks.  She can't find her bed and spins in the room looking distraught. I hear her crying at night when she wakes up and can't figure out where she is. It's hard for her to find her way into the house.  She ends up in a corner by the steps and can't understand why she can't push the door open with her little nose. She has more accidents.

I got her in 2006 when I had shoulder surgery. I'd always wanted a little dog in the house, but the other person that lives here did not.  After taking care of me for a week he decided it was time to finally let me get one.  And then he went to Texas bird hunting for more than a week, leaving me with this little puppy and still unable to drive and put my clothes on.  It snowed. Baby silkies do not like to get their feet cold or wet (adult ones don't like it either), so there I stood in the snow, my arm in a sling, in my pj's, begging this little three pounds of hair to POTTY.  We survived and bonded.

Sydney the Silky Terrier is 12 now.  She started losing her vision when she was four. Navigating around the house has never been a problem, until this year.  Almost all vision is gone.

Sydney, leftt, and Ellie give me the stare down from
the stool.

She still can smell a coon or possum on the window ledge outside the bedroom window before the big outside dogs do. Her hearing is fine.  If I say the word "treat" she will come from the comfort of her bed and sit at my feet....if she can find me.

When I learned she was going blind, I got her a companion dog—Vamaro's Elegant Gal or "Ellie", but most often she's is called, "you little %$#*." I put a cat bell on Ellie's collar so Sydney could hear where she was.  They travel together and sometimes fight like sisters, over a milk bone, or the favorite kennel, or for no reason at all.

Ellie is affectionate and wags all the time.  Sydney has always been a little reserved, shy, and wound a little too tight, like me.  That's why she's my heart dog.

When she hears my voice and wiggles and wags.  I pick her up and tell her to "give me a kiss" and she gives me half of her tongue on my cheek for half of a second.  That's all I get, and I'm lucky when I get that much.

Hanging out in the clothes basket that holds the dog
laundry.  Sydney (left)

Sydney still runs and jumps in her pen, threatens the birds overhead when they get too close, and can out-walk her companion Ellie.  I pick her up when she cries and she stops.  When I wake up and take my first big breath, she immediately comes to life and wants out of her kennel.

It's not time Sydney.  Not yet.  As long as I get wags and wiggles and half kisses, it's not time.

Below, walking the team.