The dog is breathing heavily in the corner, the coolest part of the living room for him, since he's still heavily coated this time of year. We just went through another "episode" with him and I thought he might be a goner. A couple of months ago it was pancreatitis, his eyes got dull, he refused food and became more and more lethargic. But with the right diet, pills, and $180 to the vet, he pulled through that one. A couple of days ago he came limping up to the porch, dragging his right back leg. It was swollen and cut and the first thing we feared was snakebite. Usually with a snake bite the swelling comes on quickly and spreads fast, this seemed localized and it's early for snakes, but still, we had to rule it out. Back to the vet, more pills, another $180 and the determination that he had been bitten all right, but it was probably another dog. We suspect one of the two raggedy ass pit bulls that live down the road and try to own it now and then.

He's getting better fast, but seems to need close ties to us these days. I don't know what that's about since he's always been a dog's dog till now. When his "brother" Wuf died two years ago he went into shock and depression which he has only recently fully emerged from. But he was never close to people the way Wuf was. Things are changing in him these days and he likes to be wherever we are. Which means we are stuck with heavy breathing. And bad breath. The price of relationship with a dog.

I did an inventory of my relationship life, with female humans, today for Elizabeth. I don't know why it came up, I think the topic was "risk taking". I was relating that I've always been the kind of person who jumped into things without really planning much and to illustrate I told the story of deciding to take off cross country through the desert one early evening decades ago. We, my then wife Helen, and our two girls, about 9 and 4, were having a little outing in the desert east of El Paso. We were out in our new four-wheel drive Scout and I was probably having a few canteen cups of wine. It was getting close to sunset so we packed up and I said, "Let's just take off straight west and see what this four wheel drive can do." I had set it up specifically to get through the dune country we were in, so I had some confidence that it would go where I wanted it to go.

Confidence, but no proof. Except for the "proof" in the wine.

Of course with every dune we topped with the headlights only illuminating the sky I had no idea what the plunge into the next dark valley would bring, so I just plunged on ahead and kept going generally west towards the highway I knew lay in that direction. It took longer than I thought, a lot longer, and got to be very interesting several times, but we never got stuck and finally made it to the hard top. It took us another forty-five minutes to get home and as we pulled into the driveway, Winter, our four year old said with a sigh, "We made it. We made it." relieving us all of the anxiety the whole adventure had created for everybody.

That story led me to relate other tales of jumping into situations which I thought I would be able to handle no matter what the risk; like getting into a relationship with a woman who was way too immature to be in one and who I thought I could love into growing up. Instead I became the target of her tantrums. For anyone else with a less romantic nature, this would have been predictable.

And then there was the marrying my second wife twice, not taking into consideration the outrageous circumstances of her childhood, which predicted a rather unstable adulthood no matter how many times I tried to prove that my love was reliable and secure.

I got clarity on all of this in retrospect of course.

When I met Elizabeth I knew we could make it. Even though I was taking on her three young kids as well, I knew we could do whatever needed to be done together. I don't know if that was intuition, or maturity, or some kind of magical thinking, but I knew. Of course neither of us knew how hard the kids would turn out to be. I had had some experience with raising kids but it was no rehearsal for what we would experience. Each of them presented us with a "special" problem and it wasn't one we could have been prepared for. Our oldest running away at 16 and hooked on drugs, our middle, in whom we can find no evidence of a conscience to govern her choice making and who took to meth early on, and our youngest who has OCD and a problem with controlling her emotional outbursts.

But we got through it all with comparatively few serious injuries to our relationship because we are good together.

We made it. We made it.

My father became more and more cautious as he grew older. He told me once that he didn't like going up on ladders any more for example. I don't feel more cautious at this point, though I notice I don't leap about on ledges in high places much as I once did. This may be less due to caution and more to do with the fact that I prefer taking photos of flowers that are close to the ground rather than on cliff faces. I doubt that I would have made some of the choices in my life if I had known then what I know now. I would not have taken off across unknown desert country at night, or gotten into that relationship with the child-woman, and maybe I wouldn't have married my second wife twice.

I think the "romantic" seduced me into that one.

But I would have married Elizabeth.that's a sure bet. I, sort of, knew what I was doing by that time.

Mostly.

And I would have kept this smelly old dog too. Some relationships are simply meant to be......and well worth the risk.

Dick Prosapio ©2005, All Rights Reserved
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