My Shero

"The whole glorious history of animals with people 
is about joy and connection. 

It's about loving this creature and letting this creature love you."

Jon Katz

While I’ve been looking back over her time with us, Maizey, much like Roo, has been living her life. Not exactly large, but on her own, crazy terms. She has slowed down some, but at least once a day she goes out to the pool. Sometimes she just sits on the steps, orange, not yellow, ball in her mouth watching as John barbecues her chicken dinner and Buddy catches balls, yellow not orange, like he’s a part of the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp. (I’m kind of embarrassed to even admit that is the name of our minor league team.) 

Pool sitting is not necessarily a quiet pastime for Maizey. She barks for a ball- preferable orange - to be thrown to her. If she misses (not often) she barks for a do-over. On a good day she runs around the pool, takes a flying leap, hits the water with a cannon ball-like splash, grabs the ball, and heads for the bye-bye. Like most of us, Maizey doesn’t like to get water up her nose, so she’s learned to hold her breath. This is not the best thing for a dog to do while trying to swim with a mouth full of tennis ball and pool water. John yells at her to breathe from the sidelines which is usually enough of a reminder to do just that. It doesn’t always work if she is in deeper water. In this case, John jumps to the rescue, often fully clothed.  

Socks - Grammy's stop chewing remedy

Spending so much time in the pool and having a recurring skin condition that makes her feet itch means Maizey spends a lot of her inside time, licking her feet. The more she licks, the more they hurt. John has learned to treat her itches with a trip to the beach or salt water soaks. No more steroids as that is the food of choice for cancer cells. 

At least once a day, Maizey and Buddy play tug o’ war over some ratty piece of rope. Buddy outweighs Maizey now, but still lets her win. Not without a few good body slams, but a win is a win. All that to say, except for a noticeable slowing down, Maizey doesn’t appear to be sick.  Maybe I shouldn’t but I baby her as much as I do, but I can't help it.

I don’t think I qualify as a crazy pet lady. I love a dog (or cat) as much as the next person, but I refuse to treat them like 4-legged children. I don’t believe in dog birthday parties. My dogs have never been to doggie day care. Once Suzi Q spent a couple of nights at Pet Paradise when we went out of town, but I draw the line at day camp, spa treatments and runs outfitted with cable TV and a mini fridge. 

All that changed when Maizey came to live with us. I can’t even tell you why. She is a dog version of a fruitcake, barks too loud and, right this very minute, she is huddled under my chair, both of us quaking in fear of some thunder that may have broken the sound barrier.  There’s something about Maizey that draws me in, turns me into one of "those" people,  like no other dog has. 

Perhaps it’s because I consider her my shero. 

A couple years ago, on a scorching July afternoon, I made a fateful and rather disastrous decision to pull some potato vines off the bushes in the back yard. How hard could it be? I soon learned how it was that Tarzan was able to swing from tree to tree on nothing more than some twisted up vines. Those suckers have a grip on their host tree that outweighs the earth’s gravitational pull.  Something I learned the hard way. 

While I was in the back yard, John was mowing the lawn in the front. (Who mows the lawn in the middle of a tropical heat wave?) Jack was secluded in his office. Two month old Buddy was exploring all the interesting smells. Maizey, the only smart one in the bunch, stayed inside where it was cool. I reached up, grabbed hold of a vine I wanted to get rid of, gave it a yank, but the vine yanked back, threw me off balance and knocked me to the ground. My foot found a hole, my ankle made a hideous cracking sound. I went down face first into the brush. 

I began to scream. I yelled for Jack. I yelled for John and I yelled for Jesus. I got no response. I

If I’d been quiet for a few minutes I would have heard Maizey. Looking through the screen door at her Grammy lying in the bushes, with enough of retriever DNA in her to sound the alarm, Maizey did what she does best … barked her fool head off. Each time John passed by the front window he looked to see what Maizey was up to. After a few passes, he wondered why she was acting nuts by the back door. Knowing the puppy was outside, John feared Buddy fallen in the pool. He stopped mowing to check. As soon as the motor stopped, he heard my pleas for help. 

“Mom, what are you doing in the bushes?" he asked as if I might be there for the fun it.
That's when he discovered little Buddy under big me. Not to mention my ankle turned at a 90 degree angle. 

Thank goodness all's well that ends well. I was carted off to the hospital by EMT’s. Buddy appeared unharmed, until a year later when an x-ray was taken for something else and a tiny scar was discovered on the film. The vine remained in tact. And Maizey the wonder dog became my fur-covered guardian angel from that day forward. 

Uh, Grammy, can I sit in your lap?

So when I heard she has cancer, I decided to reverse the roles. She is not my dog. John has all the hard decisions to make. But when it comes to making her a birthday cake, feeding her a few extra slices of cheese, crawling into bed with her because she doesn’t like to sleep alone, or tossing her a ball a hundred times over, I’m going to do it. I’m pretty sure she’d do the same for me.