A Big Little Life

nerve free passage.
    Gerda looked grim when she asked what might go wrong during such a procedure, and Wayne was admirably direct and succinct. If damage occurred to the spinal nerve during surgery, Trixie’s back legs might be paralyzed for life. Or she might be incontinent for life. Or both paralyzed and incontinent.
    He gave us a moment to absorb those possibilities, and then with a quiet confidence that had about it no slightest quality of a boast, he said, “But neither of those things has ever happened to an animal when I’ve done this surgery.”
    As we scheduled the procedure, they brought Trixie to us, fresh from her MRI. The difference between her condition after surviving Dr. Death and her condition after going through the same test under Wayne’s care could not have been more dramatic. She was wide-awake and delighted to see us. She needed neither pantomime nor sound effects to convey to me how much she wanted the breakfast that she had been tricked out of seven hours earlier.
    Wayne said, “In her condition, she’ll have moderate to severe discomfort through a wide range of motion. But you say she only cried out that once on the stairs.”
    “And maybe once when she was chasing a ball the day before,” I remembered. “It was a thin, sharp sound, very brief. At the time, I wasn’t even sure it was Trix. But it was similar to the sound she made when she froze on the stairs.”
    He shook his head. “She’s a very stoic little dog.”
    I nodded because I could not speak. When we have the deepest of affection for a dog, we do not possess that love but are possessed by it, and sometimes it takes us by surprise, overwhelms us. As quick and agile and strong as a dog may be, as in harmony with nature and as sure of its place in the vertical of sacred order as it may be, a dog is vulnerable to all the afflictions and misfortunes of this world. When we take a dog into our lives, we ask for its trust, and the trust is freely given. We promise, I will always love you and bring you through troubled times. This promise is sincerely, solemnly made. But in the dog’s life as in our own, there come those moments when we are not in control, when weare forced to acknowledge our essential helplessness. To want desperately to protect a dog and to have to trust instead in others—even a fine surgeon—compels us to yield to the recognition of the limits of the human condition, about which we daily avoid consideration. Looking into the trusting eyes of the dog, which feels safe in our care, and knowing that we do not deserve the totality of its faith in us, we are shaken and humbled.
    Again I think of lines from “East Coker” by T. S. Eliot: “The only wisdom we can hope to acquire / Is the wisdom of humility.”
    Within a couple of days of her second MRI, Trixie underwent spinal surgery. No complications ensued. She was neither left paralyzed nor incontinent, and she had no more pain.
    She needed three weeks to convalesce, half the time required when she had surgery on the elbow joint. She couldn’t reach the dorsal incision, which meant she didn’t have to wear a cone.
    Because I was working on a deadline to complete Odd Thomas , Trixie’s care fell mostly to Gerda through those three weeks. Odd Thomas is a novel about perseverance in the face of terrible loss, about holding fast to rational hope in a world of pain, about finding peace—not bitterness—in the memory of love taken by untimely death.
    Trixie’s back was decorated with twenty-nine steel sutures, like a long zipper in a dog suit. I called her Frankenpuppy. She didn’t think that was as amusing as I did.
    This surgery gave her years more of a high-quality life,during which she fully enjoyed the fenced acreage of our new house. As any dog is remarkably grateful for each kindness it receives, Gerda and I were grateful for every day this joyous creature graced our lives. The only wisdom is humility, which engenders gratitude, and humility is the condition of the heart essential for us to know peace.

XXI
critic, author, dog entrepreneur
    OUR NEW HOUSE has a home theater with a large screen. The first time we settled there to watch a film, a Sandra Bullock comedy, we were surprised when Trixie leaped onto the seat beside Gerda’s before I could sit down. Trix took advantage of furniture privileges only where they were given; and we had not extended them to the theater.
    Instead of telling her to get down, we granted privileges after the fact.