Nashoba --

Everything is Fine, it's just the New Normal. FINE is as Trish told me: "Fucked-up, Insecure, Neurotic, and Emotional. I think it's a woman's thing.

Sometimes writing about things helps … or I just do it because I can’t do anything else.

Nashoba lived for just one thing (besides eating): following me around and being my Shadow. Always walking in front, anticipating, on our hikes. We would hike EVERYDAY, no exceptions, regardless of the weather. (The old saying: “There’s no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing”, and Nashoba had the Most Beautiful Fur Coat). I remember once in the winter, the sun was getting low and I was upstairs “plugged-in” to the computer, and Leo, Trish’s dog, came up and just sat there staring at me. I ignored him. So, he went downstairs and came back up with Nashoba, and they both just sat there staring at me. So, yeah, we went for our hike.

Nashoba was my fitness coach. He knew that to get his morning raw chicken leg, he’d first have to take me on “Patrol” and to poop, and that later in the day we always had to take a hike before dinner.

Our last hike was in July 2020. I was coming back from Chanterelle Mushroom Gathering; my basket was full and I had gone less than halfway along this hike we’ve taken many times (at the end there is a river with a nice pool that Nashoba loved laying in). And coming back from this shortened hike I saw his back leg turning out and saw his front legs stumbling going down hill. I knew we could no longer go on hikes — he’d follow me (walking in front) anywhere, even if it would kill him.

So, I’d take him to the lake just down the road every night. He enjoyed the short walks and going “swimming”. “Swimming” was to wade out to where he could lie down and just lap up the water. He would do this in the middle of the winter if there were a break in the ice in a river. It was on one of these excursions when he made friends with the beaver — he stood in the water and rubbed noses and talked to that beaver for at least 15 minutes until I got bored and started walking back. When he could no longer get over the fallen trees on the path, I brought my chainsaw and cut them. But after awhile, he could no longer get into the car, so I’d lift him up. After awhile, I got a bad back, and bought some ramps for him. But soon, that no longer worked.

So, we just stayed home and did “Patrol”: a 1/3 mile path that is Nashoba’s Boundary — he would never go outside this boundary (except with me in the car, well except with two exceptions¹). He knew, every morning, that we would have to go on Patrol before he got his raw chicken leg for breakfast. There were two ponds on Patrol for him to go swimming. But the swimmages became less frequent — he’d have trouble picking himself up and getting out of the ponds. I bought him a wading pool, but, he said, it’s just not the same. And he’d fall down quite few times on Patrol. One day I counted, and it was 11 times, and that’s a big number for him (as high as he can count, I think). So, Patrols became: as far as Nashoba would go until he fell down 3 times. Counting to three for him was no big deal, so he picked the places he liked to “fall down”, the last being in sight of that log I enjoyed sitting on. We enjoyed sitting together in the forest. After he fell down 3 times walking across the level grass before the entrance to the forest and Patrol, I knew I was again asking too much of him.

So, in the morning he would get his fresh raw ground beef meatball (with the hidden doggy aspirin inside) and raw chicken leg on the shaded west-facing porch w/o need for first going on patrol, and he would get his dinner on the shaded back east-facing deck also w/o evening patrol. And he was still doing his job — following me from the porch in the morning, to the deck in the evening.

Then the day came when he couldn’t make from the deck where he slept at night to the porch in the morning, and he layed down at the foot of the 4 steps to the porch. I offered him his meatball, and he refused it. I offered him water, and he too refused that. I set up some plywood to keep him in the shade and figured it wouldn’t be too long since he also refused water. And, for almost 3 days, he never moved, not even an inch. The second day he accepted the offer of water, and then I realized this could be long drawn out process of starving to death …

Which lead me to … Facing Reality?

It was always, Joan’s words, “the new normal” — so everything was fine, right up to the end — I never once thought of “putting him down”. It’s kind of like that joke, “How did you go bankrupt? Very slowly over time, but then suddenly all at once”.

In these “end times” I now realize I was no longer listening to him as well as I did in the past. In the past on hikes, if he weren’t walking in front following me, I knew he didn’t want to go (e.g., he’d be telling me, “this is coyote territory, and I respect their territory, and they mine”). If I insisted, he would follow, but walking behind me, not in front of me. So, in many ways, during these last few months, I was not listening to him — he was more often following me behind me, not in front of me — and maybe I pushed him too hard, asked too much of him … denying reality.

Well, I’ve seen my father, my mother, and Nashoba die of old age. The only thing I can say is, in one of my brother’s words, “Well, at least we never have to worry about that happening to us!”.

1. Exception #1: one of my neighbors was recycling a deer (just to many good vittles); and Exception #2: my other neighbors always had some nice treats for him, which gave him fat tumors. On Morning Patrol he would often stop, behind me, and look me into the eyes for a long moment, and I’d say “OK”, and he leave his boundary and go down to visit these neighbors. And to expand on this — at that time in his life when he could no longer go on “Patrol”, and could just make it from the back deck to the front porch, one day he made it all the way down there to see those neighbors, pulling himself with his front legs and dragging his back legs, to say “good bye”. They phoned me and I brought him back in my car.