Dogs Have a Sixth Sense

7 May 2014

My brother took my mom to the ER on Monday night. She has colitis. Being a widow for longer than she was married, is painful. It hurts. The colitis stole her appetite. There’s nothing worse than having an empty heart and an empty stomach.

I checked on my mom at lunch and offered to visit after school. She’s just twenty minutes away. But, because the drive is a canyon, she worries about me.

 After school, I called again. She asked if I could come down and bring just one of the dogs because she wasn’t feeling up to all three.

 “Could you just bring Gus?” she asked.

 I drove home, fed all the dogs, picked up the poop in the backyard, and set Gus in a comfy bed on the passenger’s side. He looked at me. Gus doesn’t like to leave home. He likes our house and our neighborhood.

 Having lived in a puppy mill for the first three years of his life, it’s only been recently that he’s started to bark, take food from my hand, and play with toys.

Gus doesn’t snuggle. At night, he has his zone on the bed. He doesn’t like it when I hold him.

 Fortunately, mom and I have very different dietary desires. She had hot dogs in her icebox. I made a hot dog, sliced it up and took it into the family room. Even without the promise of a hot dog (which he’d never had), he jumped right up onto the sofa and snuggled against my mom.

I gave her pieces of hot dog to encourage him to stay.

He did.

It seems dogs have a sixth sense when it comes to helping those with heartaches, or any kind of aches.

Mom ate. She ate rice. Mom drank half a bottle of Gatorade. That’s more than she’s put in her eighty-year-old body in three days. 

Gus helped.