Lucy

My dog is old; 91 in human years. Her name is Lucy and I think she has begun to suffer from some form of doggy dementia, now that she is well into her twilight years. She spends her days, lying on her beanbag, looking as if she bears the world’s problems on her furry shoulders: as though she is in charge of Middle Eastern peace talks or responsible for the compilation of the British Rail timetable...but she can’t quite remember why. She wears a permanently miserable expression. I’ve become convinced that she has never ever really looked truly content at any point in her doggy existence, even as a puppy. My mother is quick to assure me that Lucy’s dour expression is a consequence of bone loss in her wobbly, worn old teeth. I personally believe she is in an enduring state of disgruntlement. 

Occasionally, she plods out into the garden, and will quite happily remain there for about ten minutes or so, staring into the middle distance, until she finally decides to leave what my father terms ‘a product’ in one specific corner of the garden. More often than not, she does not even manage this, but just stares, vacantly, with her cloudy, cataract-riddled eyes.

It had reached the point in the household where we would openly discuss what would happen to Lucy “once her time comes”. My father would suggest burying her in the garden, to which my mother would reply “Oh Martin, how could you! She’s only lying over there!”, perhaps forgetting that Lucy has been as deaf as a post since 2009.  

She has a serious eating disorder; this is because she is also a pathological liar. People come and go in our house all the time, and Lucy manages to convince each resident or visitor that she has been starved of nourishment for a week. Out of ‘desperation’, she would raid the bin each time the house was empty. 

She is also stupid. This is because her life-time habit of bin-raiding recently caught up with her. She has her own food, yet the fool decided that the bin would hold a more promising variety of delectable treats. Why on earth she thought a piece of corn on the cob would be palatable, I don’t know. Regardless, Lucy somehow manages to swallow it, unbeknown to my family and I. So follows three days of a literal playing-out of the term ‘sick as a dog’. By Wednesday, however, things had taken a significant turn for the worst. I thought her tiny little dog brain was finally succumbing to its slow but expected demise, little more than a useless sponge that told her to do two things: 1) stare into space some more 2) inexplicably dig holes in the flower border. A rushed visit to the vet revealed an ‘obstruction’ in the shape of a corn on the cob, and immediate surgery. Had we left it any longer, the vet said, then Lucy would have died. 

Naturally, Lucy is blissfully unaware of this. Dogs do things that humans are unable to do (except psychopaths or people reared by wolves). Dogs have no conscience; they do not suffer from feelings of guilt. Lucy remains unfazed by my father’s numerous barbed remarks over the ominous vet bill. She will not wake up in the night, drenched in sweat, thinking about the astronomical costs of anesthetic and gastrointestinal recovery food. Dogs don’t suffer from existential angst. 

One look at Lucy’s greying old face and shaved, bruised legs where her drip had been, and I started to question the point of animal and human existence. Why are we here? Lucy lived to eat, that much was true, and little else ever popped into her tiny little brain. But now that she’s home and recovering, her strange behavior has evaporated into little more than sleeping and eating mouthfuls of cat food, and eyeing each of us with equal amounts of disdain. Naturally her sleep is being constantly disturbed by stumbling, swearing people. Not to mention the furry intervention of the youthful equivalent of her great-great-great-great-great-great-great granddaughter, Ella, shoving her nose into Lucy’s stitches with great enthusiasm. 

Yet, she appears to take this all in a spirit of haughty, ancient doggy tolerance, proving that at the age of 91, there’s life in the old gal yet.