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.