A Horrible Year Redux

My January 1 post of 2024 was titled “A Horrible Year.” The Israeli army invaded Gaza and began its slaughter of the Palestinian people. Now there‘s a tentative cease fire in our second go-round of Trump presiding. God knows what will happen. I guess I have to title my January 2025 post the same: A Horrible Year. For many reasons, personal and political or personal is the political.

Paco is dying. Remember, the vet calls it Cognitive Dysfunctional Syndrome, or dog Alzheimer’s. It’s come back with vengeance. He’ll be lying on the floor when suddenly he jerks up as if a gun shot just went off. Unfortunately, the gun shot is in his head, some sinister signal that evokes trembling and panting, as he clings to me for comfort. This is mostly in the middle of the night, of course, as he pushes against the bed or scrapes his cone against my nightstand, endlessly, seeking something—me— to quell his anxiety.

That’s probably what’s killing him relatively slowly. The real culprit is more likely what we thought was a harmless lipoma on his front leg but is actually a tumor with an abscess that formed from his constant licking a slight abrasion into a bloody mess. We keep trying to medicate it into a scab but it keeps erupting with blood, so once again he’s wrapped up in bandages that he constantly tries to unravel. Removing the tumor is beyond our vet’s ability and presumably beyond our financial ability as well. So he wears a cone that thankfully, is flexible. We borrowed it from a neighbor who had searched for an alternative to the wide-brimmed, inflexible type you get at the vet.

Paco has been my boon companion for almost 14 years. I found him in La Junta Canyon, running up the forest road behind our caravan of parciantes and Picuris Pueblo tribal members inspecting one of the dams that takes water from our watershed, La Jicarita, over into the Mora watershed. But that’s another story. I guessed that this three-month old puppy who’s mostly blue heeler, probably jumped out of a rancher’s truck—they’re the dog of choice in el norte—or was dumped, into my reluctant arms. I already had two old dogs near the end of their lives who didn’t need a puppy yipping around. But Paco was an excellent puppy—no destroyed shoes or slippers, no pooping in the house, no barking at the sky—and an excellent adult who went everywhere with me.

I fervently hope that Paco will drop dead on my living room floor. Most pet owners probably wish this as well, when their dogs or cats reach the age when they can barely get up, when they are in pain from a chronic injury, when they have late-stage cancer, when they have any condition that makes their lives miserable (that’s our assessment of course), so we want them to drop dead before there’s a trip to the vet. Just a few minutes ago I thought I’d lost him after his wound poured blood, I re- bandaged his horrible mess, he briefly stood up, and then flopped over onto the floor. But he’s alive. For now. For not much longer.