My Dog Knew I Had Cancer Before I Did

New ways of measuring our lifespans

“You have good veins,” the nurse says, patting the soft blue hill in the bend of my arm with her index finger. Everytime she says this I feel blushingly proud. Proud like I did something to earn my good veins. Like my good veins are cobblestone streets and I worked overtime for years laying each red brick myself. Like my good veins were once bad veins that found Jesus, got sober, and landed a respectable job in my body.

The nurse ties a rubber band around my bicep and asks if I have any fun plans for the day. Twelve weeks in a row she has asked this and twelve weeks I’ve answered, “probably gonna go on a walk with the dogs”, even though the dogs don’t go on walks these days. They go on smells. This isn’t because cancer has slowed me down. It’s because that’s what they demand, and if anyone can make me their bitch it’s a dog, and since I live with three dogs––I am a trinity of bitches in one person.

On our smells, the dogs spend two or three minutes sniffing each blade of grass, pressing their snouts to the meadow like rich folks at fancy restaurants sniff the butts of wine glasses. “Just lovely,” Winnie says, “Subtle hints of deer poop and wild sage.” “Do you have something a bit more earthy?” Squash asks. “Brightened perhaps with a splash of bunny urine?” Idgie, the bunny hunter, begs.

We go on our smells in the meadows near our home in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. At night, as we crawl into bed, hundreds of coyotes scream their hunt-scream through those fields, and all three of the dogs stare at the window, stiffening like statues, looking back at me every few seconds, “Are you sure about the walls? Sure about the doors? You––with the good veins––you certain this house you got us will keep out the coyotes?”

I’m not bothered by the nightly repetition of this question. I have my own coyotes to deal with now, and understand the importance of having humans one can depend on for repetitive, persistent reassurance. “Not only can my good veins keep out the coyotes,” I say, with my best bedside manner, “they can also keep out the bears and the mountain lions and the vultures and the bobcats and the thunder and the hail and the mail carrier and instacart delivery person.”

“And the plumber?” Idgie asks. “And the vacuum?” Squash demands. The dogs know I can’t keep out the plumber or the vacuum but they still have to ask. “Remember,” I say, “there are some scary things we can’t keep out. And when that happens we have to work hard to use the challenge as an opportunity to further open our hearts, to let the fear catapult us into more compassionate versions of ourselves.” Squash listens considerately, then barks, “The next time that vacuum steps foot in this house I’m going to snap its neck like a cricket in a hawk’s jaw.”

The two young pups, Winnie and Idgie, have absolutely no idea I’m sick. I know this because even on the days I feel like I’ve drank cyanide while being struck by lightning, they begin their wrestling match at 6am and have absolutely no hesitation about making a wrestling mat of my snoring face. Additionally, there’s a chemo port in my chest that pokes up beneath my skin like a radioactive button and they step on it, attack it, or attempt to eat it fifty times a day.

But my ten year old terrier, Squash, knew I had cancer before I did. Sometime, at the very end of spring, she became my tiny furry shadow, paws following my heels morning to night. I’m certain this began the instant the first cancer cell started knocking on the door of my left ovary. How badly Squashy must have wanted to attack that cell. How desperately she must have wished for a way to rip that intruder to shreds. All these months later, she still refuses to let me out of her sight. I take a bath and she sleeps on the bathmat beside the tub, or pokes her nose through the door, over and over, to make sure I haven’t drowned.

I used to believe that loving an animal was a uniquely courageous undertaking––their lifespans being generally far shorter than our own. But “generally” means nothing to me these days. And “lifespan” is a word I no longer use to measure length––but width. “How wide can my heart open to this life, to this world, and to everyone in it?” feels like a far more important question now than, “How long will I live?” A long life doesn’t innately equate to a full one. A short life doesn’t innately equate to a life cut short. None of us know whose good veins will last the year and whose won’t. Therefore, to love, no matter who you are loving, is courageous. Is as heroic and as valiant as anything we will do on this planet made of so much worth cherishing, so much worth sniffing the beautiful butts of.

Last night, when the dogs fell asleep, I snuck out from under the covers and used my good veins to open the window a little wider. I sat at the end of the bed listening. Listening to the howl of the hunting coyotes, and for the part of myself working to grow wise enough to know, that too, is a song.

Love, Andrea 🖤

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