For Juno (I haven't forgotten you)

You are too soon an old dog and sleep out your days deeply, your nose pressed against the sliding glass door, looking at nothing with open eyes. And yet you dream. I know you dream because your front legs race through the air as though two legs were quite enough, after all.

Everyone tells me your time is up, that I should take you to the vet and do right by you—put you down, as they say, cut short your life of sleep and dream. But here you are running like a filly in your sleep, your huge white paws galloping. Where? Perhaps across a field of grass and purple heather. Perhaps through winding streets into pine woods where squirrels gather nuts, where cats meow, where rabbits twitch their pink noses and scurry into the underbrush.

Tomorrow morning, I’ll lean into your sleeping face and whisper, “Breakfast.”

You’ll lift your wobbly head, one eye closed, fur matted on half your face, your tail half-sweeping the floor, your memory half-aware that something good always follows the word breakfast. When I put your food in front of you, it will take you a good half minute to understand that it’s yours, that in order to enjoy more than the scent of it, you’ll have to open your mouth around it and chew. You’ll take your time, savoring each morsel as though it were your first or last.

You’ll spend an hour or so sitting outside with Saki and Magregor, maybe watching cars speed by, maybe studying the low-cut grass under your nose. You might even manage a half-bark at a passerby; but a tiny breeze will comb your fur or a red bird will land on the fence, and the reason for your half-bark will be forgotten. 

The day after that, it will be the same, and the day after that, too. You’ll sleep; you’ll run in dreams, and there will be music in your waking hours, cars to watch, friends and grass to sniff, breakfast to contemplate, and then more dreams of bouncing through the yard as you did in younger days when life had years and years to go before the final curve.

And then one day, there will be no more breakfasts or dreams. I know it’s coming soon. I know by the way Saki and Magregor sit close to you, the way they sniff you and then look to me for an answer. We are prepared. We are grateful for the many good mornings of this long goodbye. When you’re gone, people will say you were a magnificent dog and that you had a good life. There will be comfort in hearing this.