The Unsinkable German Shepherd

An Animal Rescue Story

I am on the wrong coast and I hate it here. It is soft and quiet and misty and the trees are majestic and everyone on the highway is very polite and I have not seen a single rat or heard a single car horn since I got here. I cannot live like this. How can anyone live like this.

I am here in Portland, Oregon, a place I once swore I’d never return to, because the dog that once lived with me and my ex-husband, then just with me, and now with just my ex-husband, is dying. This does not necessarily mean that she is going to die. Luna has been dying on and off for four years, but no one has told her this and anyway she’s always been stubborn and willful and frankly a bit of an asshole and she has so far simply refused to succumb to the nose cancer that has been trying to kill her since late 2019. With radiation treatment, they said, she might live 18 months if we were lucky. That was over four years ago. Who will bark at the passers-by, if she sheds this mortal coil? Who will eat liverwurst and gourmet hamburgers and whatever other nonsense my ex husband spoils her with?

Still, it’s not looking good. She is tired like I have never seen her tired. Her appetite goes in and out. Her nosebleeds are getting worse. She sounds like a Harley Davidson when she breathes. She has not barked at anyone in days. It is unfair to ask her to continue to live like this. I have promised her that, one way or another, she won’t have to feel like this for much longer.

In one week, Luna will go for her third round of radiation, because unlike me, my ex husband is sensible enough to be “employed in tech” with a “steady paycheck” and can afford to pour sacks and sacks of money into the German-Shepherd-shaped black hole that lives in his house. If he couldn’t, I’d have to work a diffferent job so I could. I paid for her first round of radiation back in 2019. Never did I ever think I’d be one of those people willing to pay this much for a dog, and I cannot explain to you rationally why I have become one of those people now. If you met her, I think you’d understand at least a little. She is a brilliant fluffy asshole with a million opinions who barks at anyone with the audacity to walk past her property as though she is going to tear them limb from limb and has never, ever been physically aggressive with anyone. She is the most manipulative creature I have ever met, her hustle is off the charts. I feel a deep kinship with this dog. She taught me how to love…