Erin's Journals

By the time you read this, summer will probably have begun, having arrived at 3:07 am Pacific time. Of course, that’s the astronomical start of summer; for so many parts of the world, it’s considered to be June, July and August. Whatever – Happy Summer!
 
Rob and I have embarked on a road trip and we’ll have stories to share when we get back, but I’m going to make sure you get journals until that time! I will write new ones, but I also want to share a few favourites, like the one I’m linking to today. It reminds me of one of the absolute best things about summer in Southern Ontario and who knows? Maybe it’ll spark a few ideas for you, too.
 
Please click here to enjoy today’s journal and its pictures and come on back for a new one to wrap up the week here tomorrow. And again – Happy Summer!
 

Thank you for your kind notes and posts about Miss Molly yesterday. We’re really at peace with everything and we wanted you to know that. She seems to be in pretty good shape (especially for a pup going on 14 years old) and we hope she’s going to be around for a good long while – just as long as she enjoys her life. That’s all we want.
 
Of course, if you know anything about me and my husband, Rob, it’s that we always find the humour in even the worst things. Don’t forget that the night of Lauren’s first memorial in Ottawa (there was a second ten days later in Toronto), when something that was on the menu at the bar in our hotel was no longer available, we told the smiling waitress that this was the worst thing that had happened to us all day! I mean, if you don’t laugh…right?
 
So, Molly’s head has been cocked at about a 45 to 80 degree angle since being diagnosed with these awful crystals in her inner ear. Mind you, the angle has lessened with each passing day, so that now she can run around outside and if you didn’t notice that she was going in circles, you’d probably not even see the angle her head is at. But it’s been going on long enough that we’ve given her a nickname that sounds like the phrase “I lean.” Yes, there’s a lot of “C’mon Eileen” being sung around the house these days. Poor sweetie.
 

 
You’d have laughed at us as we were trying to fulfill the vet’s instructions when first she was diagnosed: get a pee sample. Wait, what? As a human, it’s a fairly easy endeavour (especially if you’re lucky enough in this instance to be a guy). But a dog? Keep in mind that Molly is a little dog and is very close to the ground to begin with. What was I going to use – blotter paper?
 
The vet said when they get samples, they use a soup ladle. (“From the Dollar Store,” she added, as though I thought she was hauling out her grandmother’s silver.) But I thought, There’s no way I can slide a ladle under the business end of our pup without distracting her entirely from the job at, um, hand (mine, I guess). So I had to come up with something better – and I did!
 

 
Meet our corn on the cob dish! Okay, let me rephrase that – our former corn on the cob dish; we have ceramic ones that I was given by my sister, so we retired the plastic set. But when I needed something long, lean and shallow, that’s what came to mind. It worked perfectly and even had a little pouring spout at the end so I could hit the sample bottle when we were ready to fill it. 
 
Sometimes I’m just too smart for my own good, wouldn’t you say? Tuck that idea away. I don’t know if you’ll ever need it, and I hope you don’t, but I was pretty darned proud of myself!
 
Talk to you here tomorrow with a welcome to summer that is quite likely just down the road from you.
 

In the life of every pet parent, there come dark days. Our last sad day was in the summer of 2015 just a few months after we’d lost Lauren. Pepper’s condition deteriorated due to age and, at 17-and-a-half, we had to take him on his last car ride to the vet. He was such a good dog and we knew that when his life was no longer fun for him, it was time to let him go.
 
This past week, we turned a corner and are seeing our future with Molly. She usually runs like a puppy when we get home every day, tearing off in circles and diving for a toy to bring to us. But the other morning when we got up, Molly was staggering as though drunk. I thought she’d had a stroke. I alerted Rob, we got dressed and took her immediately to her vet, just a few kilometres away. 
 
As we approached the clinic, that familiar heavy tightness had overtaken my chest. What was this visit going to mean?
 
Several blood tests and a thorough examination later, we learned that our almost-14-year-old had not suffered a stroke (thankfully), but seemed to be experiencing crystals in her inner ear that were throwing off her balance, her vision, her depth perception and any number of other functions. This vestibular neuritis is not too uncommon in older dogs and (if indeed this is what she has) it will dissipate within a few weeks. Until then, she staggers and tilts her head in a state of confusion, although it is getting better by the day. 
 
We did get other news, though, that won’t bring such a happy ending: Molly’s living with kidney disease and we have learned that this will probably be the cause of her (hopefully gradual) demise over the next while, perhaps even years. It’s hard to imagine even writing these words when she is so puppy-like in her behaviour and appearance!
 
Now we come to the time in our lives where decisions have to be made about her care while we’re away. When Pepper was becoming an elderly pup, we were with him almost all year round (or took him with us on trips to Ottawa) as I was still working full-time. But over the next several months, our travel plans are laid out and some of those include leaving Molly at home.
 
We’re so fortunate to have friends coming into our home to take care of Molly while we’re away, those times we can’t take her with us. But we know there might be hard decisions to make when we’re away, too. It’s an awful thing to ask of people, but we trust them as devoted pet parents who have adopted and rescued dogs and love them dearly.
 
As much as we adore Molly, we know that the circle of life has a beginning and an ending. We were always meant to make her life as happy as she has made ours and we know that that includes providing an end for it that comes when she is ready. 
 
That time – we hope – is a long way off. For now, we just continue to love every day we have with our miss Molly Malone and we remember to be grateful for everything: every beginning and every middle and even every end.
 
Have a gentle day. Tomorrow, a few ways we’ve found to laugh over our situation with our sweet girl.
 

We’re taking a couple of weeks off the audio journal portion of this website. Rob and I are on the road for a bit of a breather, so I’m giving him a break from producing them. 
 
I hope you had a lovely Father’s Day. It’s not something we mark in our home – at Rob’s request – but, of course, I remind him often of how great a dad he was. And he knows it. 
 
Lauren got a lot of things from me, but she definitely inherited a very handy streak from her father. She always recognized his talent: as a little girl, she’d often say – in a voice that just sounded like someone wrapping someone else around her finger – “Daddy can fix anything…” and, with only a few exceptions, he could. (Of course, she wasn’t old enough to remember the time he assembled her high chair and had about five parts left over. I was pretty adamant that he take it apart and start over!)
 
But she watched him and learned and we couldn’t have been more proud of her when she showed us that she had single-handedly (and with help from a youtube video) hooked up a kitchen sprayer to the toilet water supply line in her bathroom. The purpose was to be able to pre-wash cloth diapers and, boy, it worked!
 
Our grandson Colin’s new mama – and daddy Phil’s fiancée – Brooke is equally handy, I’m happy to report. From installing a child safety gate to putting in locks and doing general repairs, she’s always up to a challenge. And best of all, she doesn’t hesitate to give Rob a call when she has any questions. We’re grateful for that, as sad as we are for her that her own dad is no longer around to be able to help solve her problems. It’s just another reason we’re so glad to have found and opened our hearts to each other. 
 
Because even though there’s no one to call him “Daddy” anymore, it sure doesn’t mean he wants to stop sharing any gifts he can. And what a joy it is to be asked again. Have a lovely Monday and we’ll be back with you here tomorrow.