SLICE OF LIFE

She is eleven now.
Her face, once jet black, gets whiter every month.
She spends most of her day napping in the sunniest places she can find,
one ear slightly cocked,
listening for the sound of the refrigerator opening.
She can no longer jump onto the bed by herself.
Instead she leans against the bed,
front paws on the boxsprings
(which I have placed slightly askew especially for this purpose)
waiting for me to get up and hoist her rear end onto the bed.
Sometimes her back legs give way on the stairs and she slides backwards on her belly.
She is no longer a young pup.

Except for one brief thirty-minute segment of every day.
Walk time.
How well she knows our routine.
I come in the door.
Change my clothes.
Eat something.
Call my mom.
And then I grab her leash and a couple of plastic bags out of the bag in the pantry,  and we head out the door.
And she becomes a pup again.

Dragging me down the walk.
Every night, at least one person asks me who is walking who.
Panting so loudly that people regularly comment that maybe she is thirsty.
She usually isn't, because she stops to drink out of every sprinkler that we pass.
Snorting like a piglet every time she senses that there might be a snack nearby.
Eighty percent of the time she is right.

We used to go three, four, five miles every night.
Now we usually don't go more than two.
But we go almost every night,
because for that hour
she is a pup again.