My intention today was Patience, because I had to take Wren to the vet forty-five minutes away. Monday morning she was fine, but after she’d been in the sunroom awhile, where she likes to lie in the windowsill, and also roll on the rug, she came back to the living room with her brown eye squinted shut and weeping. When I gently prised it open, it didn’t look bloody, or swollen, and I didn’t see any foreign object in it. So I watched it. On Tuesday, it was no better, so I called and made an appointment for today. Yesterday it was no better, but no worse, and this morning she seemed to be opening it just a little bit more often. Clearly it was still uncomfortable, so down to Delta we drove.

We waited calmly together in the same room we had last time. I was calm because of mindful intention, and she was calm because I had carefully doped her up a few hours before, so that she might not freak out as she did last time. She trembled when we first arrived, but because we had a nice long wait, she calmed down by the time the skilled tech came in. I offered her some treats to offer Wren, and she sat down beside us and showed me a trick that worked like a charm: she held my hand and offered it to Wren to sniff, quickly rotated our hands to put hers in front of Wren’s nose, and back and forth a few times before we exchanged treats. It was fascinating to watch Wren’s subtle resistance to D’s hand dissipate, and her fear of taking a treat from a strange hand melt away. Then D slipped a lead on her, gathered her up, and carried her off.

I was grateful all happened before the tragic wailing commenced in the next room over. The walls are thin, and the doors loose sliders. I was already feeling empathy for the man in the room west of me, who had carried his dog in and laid him on blankets, as the tech asked how long the dog had been unable to walk, and heard that he’d been having seizures. I thought of Stellar’s last few days, and could relate to his distress. I’m grateful for empathy. And then, a woman in the room on the other side suddenly wailed and began to sob. There is only one thing that causes that sound in a vet’s office.

I knew she had just received word that her dog would have to be euthanized. I became very still, and allowed her weeping to hold my attention. I let her pain wash through me as I relived that trip home from the vet two years ago when I wailed for twenty miles over the body of my beloved Stellar. I felt the empathy that I imagine my friends in the front of the van felt for me then. I heard her use my very words, my best boy, as her keening waned. There were murmurs from others in the room, and earnest explanations that I couldn’t discern, and her sobs rose again. My chest swelled and emotion rippled through me, down my arms, and out my hands. My eyes filled, and a tear overflowed. All the while, I held her pain, knowing she would never know, but nevertheless sending compassion out toward her, and toward the man on the other side. How helplessly we love our dogs.

Soon, it was over. It was suggested that they sedate Wren because she wouldn’t let them dye her eye to see if there was a scratch, and if there was she’d need a temporary stitch in her third eyelid (that membrane that slides up from the inside corner when they blink), after which I’d have to give her antibiotic drops twice a day for a week. I asked if I could skip straight to the drops and see if that solved it. I wanted both of us out of there. It had already been a long day. If the drops don’t help, I’ll bring her back in a week, in the morning before their day is complicated by an overtime surgery and at least one emergency euthanasia.

As we were checking out, Dr. Natalie walked by and smiled at us. “Little Monster,” she said. I assume she meant it in the Lady Gaga term-of-endearment way. I asked her to pause and give my little monster a few treats, and she kindly did so. We stopped for a milkshake on the way home and she got the whipped cream. She fought the first application of drops, but allowed the second more readily. I think they’re already helping.