Crossing the Rainbow Bridge

On Losing a Dog

"My Only Fans would just be videos of me chasing my elderly dog down the street braless," I said to Vince after bringing Ein back in from a potty break in the front yard.

"You'd have tons of subscribers," he replied with a laugh.

“She tried to make a break for it this morning, and I had to scoop her up just as a truck careened around the corner. I'm pretty sure the driver got an eyeful."

We laugh, but my dog is a few months away from 16 years old, and her senior moments are increasingly senior minutes. Sometimes when she’s outside, she seems to lose her focus, and I get the impression she thinks I’m a stranger following her. It’s kind of weird and sad but also a blessing in its own way. Her aging brain has come into razor sharp focus for me because only a few weeks ago, I lost my younger dog, the one I thought I would have for a few more years, to an insidious case of kidney disease that progressed rapidly from asymptomatic to end-stage. I've lost pets before, but this was the first ani…