I love this guy. He is driving me to despair.

I know, I know: this is hard on him. He’s adapting, but I still see that rictus grin that indicates distress. So many dogs in his territory. And what is his territory, exactly? He wouldn’t sleep on his dog bed until I put it in the closet, where he feels snug and den-safe. But it’s mostly the inability to be alone that’s hard on me as well. I can’t leave him in the apartment without barks and yips and whines and cries. Yesterday was another series of training exercises, short exits and absences, and they all ended in failure. BARK BARK BARK. I don’t know if the Weed Bros are bothered, but my Lutheran abhorrence for inconveniencing others makes me wince when I walk down the hall and he’s still shouting. I read advice online about how to avoid triggering them - don’t pick up your keys and go, but just pick up your keys and stay until he loses the association. Same with putting on coat or shoes. It should work after two to eight months!

The afternoon is thus full of despair: will I ever be able to leave the unit alone? Ever? I can’t go to a movie. I can’t go out to dinner with friends. I can’t go downstairs to run on the treadmill. Tuesday we made one trip to the Post Office. Birch sat in the car while I paid $5.39 to mail the Divorce papers, thus ticking off that day’s “insult to injury” box. The clerk was very efficient in that Serious Postal Worker mode, the very model of a modern gummint employee. I got a notification on my phone while I was inside, noting that I was away from my car’s AirTag. For a moment I hoped it had been stolen. No no NO you don’t, do not think those things but dammit, I have moments of tremendous resentment. And it is odd to resent your dog.

It was never so. There was always someone at home, for the most part, so he was content to be around his pack. When Wife went for a run he would go to the window and cry as she went out of sight, then come upstairs to my studio and weep and wail. We were always all together, and he spent a lot of time in the backyard, just enjoying the outdoors. I always knew where he was; he was always pinging on my radar. Life was good for us all.

“You’ve had it good,” she said one night, with heavy sarcasm, indicating that I had an life of untroubled ease while she busted her butt, and this green and glorious place was, more or less, unearned by me. It’s not as if I worked in the adult sense, after all. It’s not as if I busted my butt. Neither did the dog, but, well, you don’t expect them to contribute anything except companionship. I am grateful for his presence now, but I also am tired of incorporating him into every second of every day. It’s like having a toddler again, without the part where they grow up and say your name, and of course toddlers just pee where they are and then you change them. Now in the morn it’s down seven floors for a fast slash on the boulevard by the fast traffic before I’ve had coffee or breakfast. I used to just get up and let him out.

Can’t blame him for that change, though. Anyone I could blame? I’ll get back to you on that. Someone might come to mind.

If she loved him so much, why didn’t she take him with? Because he, too, was a burden, and all the burdens were to be shed.

Then I remember: he has a brain tumor.

Maybe. Statistically likely. Not epilepsy at his breed and age. I don’t know how long he has. He’s about due for a seizure soon - the breakthroughs happen once a month, but the last was three weeks after the previous iteration. And then we bump up the meds again, so he can have another . . . month? Or two? Or six? They say the time to let them go is when they start clustering, and there’s nothing you can do to stop them from happening over and over. You don’t cut to the chase. The idea of bringing over the Supernatural Anesthetist while he’s compos mentis, walking around, looking forward to lunch, bright-eyed - it’s unbearable. It makes me want to get a house so he can lie down in the cool grass again without a leash or a care.

Anyway. I’m going to have to pop for some doggie daycare, which costs money. Should’ve put canine maintenance in the settlement papers.