TWILIGHT YEARS

Dear Isis,

You are an elder as I am. I wonder if you would share your secrets of finding purpose after youth fades.

Signed,

Twilight Years

Dear Twilight Years,

Ok, first of all, can I just say how nice it is to talk to a mature canine? I’m 192 in dog years, and these whipper snapper puppies bring out the Kujo in me. My human gets mad at me when I bite them until they bleed and squeal for mercy, but what the hell else am I supposed to do when six (count them, SIX) puppies are gnawing on my ears? Just today my human called me a “bad girl” for rolling Chiley over on her back and lunging for her jugular, as if I was the problem in that scenario. If our human likes &%$# puppies so much, let him sleep in a kennel with them. But I digress.

I sense in your question a certain sadness. I wish I could be with you in person (or in dog, as case may be) so I could lick your ear canals to make you feel better.

I have been where you are standing, sister. I don’t talk about this much, as it is very painful, but a few years ago, my mate Ra died in a horrific way. He was the light of my life. We met when I was a tick-covered teenaged pup my human found in the middle of a mesa. He brought me home, and there Ra was, sprawled on the couch, licking his testicles. I won’t lie. It was love at first sight. Within minutes of meeting, Ra and I had sniffed each other’s butts, and within an hour, I had already taught him how to dig out of the yard and run through neighborhood laughing while our owner chased us bellowing bad words. Oh, for a time machine to take me back to the halcyon days of yore! His nickname was “Handsome,” and if you saw him, you would understand why. Imagine Danny Devito as a chihuahua. We envisioned spending our twilight years together, just doing lazy dog stuff. Lying by the fire. Eating excrement. (Ordering out sometimes, because who wants to prepare a meal, am I right?) Ripping newspapers into microscopic pieces and spreading them all over the living room and watching our human cry while cleaning them up.

Tragically, the universe had other plans.

One fateful summer day, we were outside gleefully peeing on our human’s porch swing, and two big-big-big dogs came onto our property and killed Ra. He fought valiantly, but he was no match for two big-big-big dogs. I watched the whole thing. Talk about PTSD. I was so heartbroken, I couldn’t eat my own poop for months, much less anyone else’s.

After he was gone, I could barely find reason to go on breathing. I just kept remembering how brave he was, dying fighting to protect our pack from those monsters. I wished I’d told him more often how much I loved his bulgy eyes and how his little snub tail really did it for me. I obsessed over all the little beautiful things he did that made me adore him. The way he growled at our human for no reason every time he walked into the room. The mischievous glint in his eye when he tore yet another ottoman to shreds. The tenacity he showed when he straight up refused to pee anywhere but in our human’s slippers, even when our human got really, really mad at him for it and made him go sit in The Chair. (FYI: Going to sit for a time out in The Chair is very, very bad. You do NOT want to ever have to endure that particular brand of sadism. Take my word for it.) That one Christmas he surprised me and our human with a desiccated rat he found in the rain gutter. (When he saw it, our human was so happy, he screamed with joy. He was very selfish though. He hid the treat in that big black box with wheels on it outside. I imagine he ate it himself after we went to sleep that night. Rat bastard. Pun intended.)

In an instant, I was robbed of my dreams for the future. Suddenly, my romantic fantasies of my twilight years morphed into a horror story that was just starting to unfold. I thought that I would never be happy again. My human kept trying to make me feel better, holding me 24/7 and shoving me into those ridiculous sweaters he thinks make me feel “cozy.” Shockingly, it didn’t work, though I will admit I did milk the depression thing in order to get treats. He wanted me to do all the fun, wholesome things I used to do, but I couldn’t bring myself disembowel a squirrel by myself. It just wasn’t the same without Ra egging me on.

Have you ever heard the expression, “Everything happens for a reason”? I I used to think it was a pile of horse sh*t. (Excuse my French, but I call it like I see it.) I got really, really mad when people and dogs said it to me about my Ra leaving this world in such a horrible way. But I found out it’s true.

After Ra died, my human was looking for a companion for me, but none of them felt right. So he gave up and asked God to give him another chihuahua when we were ready. Minutes after he prayed that, a friend of his found a momma chihuahua and her puppy abandoned in a ditch. Our human decided this was the universe answering his prayer (he does crap like that a lot), and we threw a bunch of sh*t into the car and shot off on a 12-hour road trip to get the ditch-dogs. As we drove, I hung my head out the window, letting my grief and the good smells wash over me. The ride went on forever, and I got human food every time we stopped. I was almost starting to feel ok. Then we pulled into this driveway. A sausage-esque chihuahua and a hamster-sized puppy trembled in the grass, looking all jacked up and nervous, like they’d just been forced to take a bath or something. Only they weren’t wet. My hackles went up. I did NOT like them.

My human jumped out of the car, picked up the puppy, and started to cry. “I love you already,” he announced. (I rolled my eyes. He is SO dramatic.) My human hefted the new dogs into the car and gave them new toys he’d brought along, which I had been sure he was saving as a special surprise for me. As he drove, he turned the radio way loud and sang sappy songs to the new dogs, like I wasn’t even there. When he noticed me staring at him, attempting to locate the perfect spot to drive a shank into his face, he said, “Hey, Icy, no worries. I still love you big! This is your new brother and sister. We just gotta give them extra love until they’ve adjusted to their new home.” Brother and sister? I threw up all the human treats I’d eaten that day into the cup holder when he said that.

We took this little sh*t and his mom back to a strange room with a big box that blew hot air on the wall. I tried to ease my anxiety by chewing the tiny soap bars in the bathroom to bits. They were mint flavored, with notes of bleach, which was nice, and on any other day would have really zenned me the hell out, but I couldn’t relax. I chewed the hair dryer cord until it was nothing but a frayed bunch of wires. Still no luck. That night, I didn’t sleep a wink. I will confess, looking at those two invaders curled up in that scratchy bed with my human like they were part of our pack, I considered ripping my human’s throat out while he slept. I couldn’t believe he was making my life even worse by bringing these two freaks into it.

But then we got home. And the girl dog, whom my human named Sekhmet because he’s all into Egyptian myth and doesn’t understand that we are fat chihuahuas, not noble steeds, turned out to be pretty ok.

Sekhmet is the Most Interesting Dog in the World. She doesn’t always eat dog food, but when she does, it’s Ol’ Roy.

She would lick my ears when I was sad and sometimes, she would share her treats with me. Her puppy, on the other hand, whom our human named Horus, for the same asinine reasons I mentioned above, was a real pain in the ass, always barking and biting and stealing my toys. (He ripped my purple hippo in half. I still haven’t forgotten, nor will I ever forgive.) I thought about drowning him in the toilet, but I don’t have opposable thumbs.

Suffice it to say, Horus was a handful, and Sehkmet was perpetually worn out. One night, she started howling from her kennel, saying, “OMG, my nipples hurt, will this little dog stop sucking on them, and WHEN will I ever be able to sleep again without a rodent-esque creature crawling all over me, chewing on my tail???”

It took me right back to my younger years, before our human found me in the mesa. I had puppies then, and hearing Sehkmet cry brought it all back. I remembered how exhausted I was taking care of shrieking pups day in and day out, how much I longed for a nice romp in the yard without three little gremlins trying to latch onto my teats. I also remembered how much I missed the puppies after they were gone, how much I wished I had spent more time licking them and less time biting them.

So I dragged myself up on my old, sore bones and called to Sehkmet from across the room, “Try licking your nipples. It helps.” Her howling died down, and I could tell by the sounds coming from her kennel that she was taking my advice. I wanted to go back to sleep, but I figured if I did, she’d just start yowling again. “I know how hard being a mom can be,” I added. “I had puppies once too.”

“You did?” Sekhmet stopped licking herself long enough to ask.

“Indeed, I did,” I said. “Dandelion, Daisy, and Sunflower.” Just saying my puppies’ names made me choke up. It had been 160 dog years since I had seen them, but I could almost smell the milk on their breath.

“You had three? I can barely handle one.” Sekhmet started making the menacing little growling sound she makes when she’s starting to freak out. Our vet says she has PTSD from the abuse she went through in her first home. That was after she pooped on him and bit him when our human took her to get spayed. The vet said she needed time to adjust to her new life before going through surgery, but I think he just didn’t want her to sh*t on him again. Anyway, that’s how we ended up with four MORE puppies (somebody shoot me), but I will save that story for another time.

“I know,” I said gently, using the soothing mommy voice I used with my puppies and also with Ra when he was being cantankerous and needed a nap. “It’s so much work, and you probably feel like you will never be able to sleep again. But I’ll tell you a secret. Someday, when you look back on this, you’ll barely remember how tired you were. Instead, you’ll remember how Horus wagged his tail every time he saw you, how sweet and silly he was when he attacked our human’s feet and made him fall screaming and flailing to the floor. You’ll remember how your heart swelled with love while you were nursing him, and the cute little noises he made in his sleep. You’ll wish you could wave a magic wand and have his tiny body curled up by your side for just one more minute. So take care of you. Try to sleep when he’s sleeping, and take time to lick your nipples regularly so they don’t get chapped. But try to appreciate the beautiful moments too, because life passes so quickly, and someday, you will miss them.”

Sekhmet was quiet. For a minute, I thought I’d pissed her off. But then, I heard her whimpering. She was crying. “Thank you, Isis,” she said. The way she said those words. I could tell she really meant it. “How did you get so wise?” she asked.

“I had 192 dog years to get wise,” I replied. And then, all of the sudden, it hit me like a stray tennis ball during a particularly boisterous fetch game. I had become an elder.

I don’t know if you know this, but according to dog lore, ancient dog tribes revered their elders, cherished them because they carried the treasure of the wisdom of a lifetime in their beautiful hearts and shared it with those who had not yet lived long enough to become that kind of rich. Modern dogs don’t usually live in tribes like ancient dogs, so we have lost this sense of sacred reverence for our elders, but that doesn’t mean our elders are any less precious than they were back then. Modern dog packs have just lost the way.

But Twilight Years, just because the puppies these days are dumb doesn’t mean you have to buy into their B.S. I have a sneaking suspicion you’re too smart for that. I don’t know how many dog years you’ve lived, but it sounds to me like it’s long enough to have picked up some wisdom along the way. And I bet a million jerky treats your pack really, really needs the wisdom you have to offer. Without you, they’d be lost. You are an elder. Don’t listen to those who behave as if the only members of the pack who matter are the young ones. Sure, they can hunt down a skunk and serve it up for lunch, but do they know what to do with chapped teats? Do they know how precious life is and how quickly it passes? Can they remind the pack to cherish one another and keep love alive? Can they tell the other pack members that chewing on the T.V. cord while it’s plugged in is a really bad idea because lightning comes out of it sometimes? The answer is no, they most decidedly cannot. We get old for a reason, and the reason is to keep those naïve little ^%$#@s from destroying themselves, each other, and the whole pack.

And lest you fear that the younger generation doesn’t appreciate your contribution, I will tell you that I know a human who is a teacher. She makes human pups write stories about people who have inspired and loved them, and guess who they write about the most? Their grandparents. Pups aren’t always good at saying thank you, but trust me when I say your love is making an indelible impression on their hearts.

As much as it gutted me to lose my Ra, if I hadn’t, I would never have met Sekhmet and Horus. They probably would have died. Sekhmet’s next littler would have never been born, so I wouldn’t have my extremely irritating but also (between you and me) much loved younger pack members. And I never would have known the fulfillment of being a mentor to the next generation of ill-behaved fat chihuahuas with names that don’t suit them at all.

Once upon a time, it was just teenage-me, Ra, and our human. Now it’s ancient-me, six (count them, SIX) pain in the ass whipper snappers, and our human. We live so many lives in a lifetime, don’t we? And all of them are precious and necessary for our soul’s development. I know that because I’m old.

A song my human listens to sometimes has a lyric that says, “You ask if I’ll grow wise, and I ask if I’ll grow old.” Wisdom is a gift given only those who have lived many, many miraculous and painful years. You have treasure inside you that no pup, no matter how strong or smart or brave, could ever offer. Without you, your pack would fall apart in minutes. Trust me on this.

Just this morning, I went with my human to visit a friend, and by the time I came back, the house was in shambles. Horus had eaten a rope toy and thrown it up in the corner. Sekhmet had gathered all the bones in her kennel and was growling maniacally at anyone who tried to come near her. Chiley had dug a new hole in the couch and was hiding under the bed howling, as if she knew she was going to have to sit in The Chair. Mariposa, Burger, and Ostara were all running around in circles, chasing their tails like lunatics.

Darling, take my word for this: they are lost without us.

Since I can’t be with you in person, I’m sending you a billion dog kisses. And while we’re talking, could you do me a solid? I understand Human, but I don’t speak it, and my human’s grasp on Canine is abysmal. Could you let my human know I HATE those #&*@$%^ sweaters? (My human has this old brown coat he wears everywhere. He looks ridiculous. Why would he think I'd want to emulate THAT look???)

Love, `

Isis