The Broken Road

We had a power cut just then and knowing Elska was afraid of the dark I scooped her up in my arms and took her to the sofa. We sat there huddled together as the sky turned from twilight rose to night’s  deep blue, my worry rippling in waves threatening to spill over in helpless tears. Meal time came and Elska showed no interest in her food, a first since the day I had got her. We prepared a special soup and squirted some in her jowls through a syringe and though Elska didn’t want to eat her food she could not bring herself to waste the few drops that fell to the floor. She lapped those up anyway in the way that only a dog who has known the enduring pangs of hunger would.

We got our electricity back and I watched my darling girl struggle to sit. What had previously been a dog who would fall so sound asleep if I held her even the heat of these March days, now would not even look me in the eye. She kept retreating to corners and obsessively digging at the cement floor, turning around and around in circles. I called the emergency number for the vet.

I explained her symptoms and they asked me to bring her over, and at that precise moment a friend visited so we were able to take her in his car. Just before we left, even he held her head in his hands and said ‘Get better ok? You’re going to be fine’. Elska just had that endearing quality to her, anyone who met her would like her in minutes.

Big miss and little miss ready to go!

It was only during the journey to the vet that I was truly confronted by the stark reality that Elska may not make it. I had woven a rich tapestry of all the various moments that Elska would share with me in the fabric of my imagination, not once truly allowing for the slightest possibility that Elska may die. It was the same kind of inflexible belief I had when brought her home. I knew she could have rabies, that she could bite me, that she could make my own dogs sick. But I knew she wouldn’t. Childishly I believed that because I had taken her home with love in my heart, that that same love would protect us. That love would protect us because it had to. And in the same way I had never once truly admitted to myself that Elska would die because she wouldn’t. She would live because she had to. Her life could not end here, after two days of a full belly and a thousand kisses. Everything that I held in this universe to be true would shatter if Elska didn’t survive. Nothing would make sense to me anymore.

Kisses!

I felt like a fool. I felt so naïve. How could this be happening? And overwhelmingly it began to get clearer and clearer what it would mean to me if she died. I had known for two days. But I loved her. I loved her as much as the dogs who I had seen from puppyhood to now and then I loved her a little bit more. I loved her extra for the love she had lost and the love she had never known. And then in the car on the way to the vet, I cried for my Elska once more.

The doctors informed me that they suspected that Elska’s malnourished frame could not take the heavy medication they had to give her. They gave her a heavy dose of antihistamines to counteract any allergic reaction she might have and also to help her sleep. The treatment for filarial heartworms, I learned is indeed very difficult on a dog’s system and is almost always administered with a combination of other drugs for the various side effects. On a healthy dog, it is tough enough, but on one such as Elska I shuddered inwardly to imagine. We thanked the doctors profusely and got back into the car. Neither of us said anything but through the thickness of worry I realized a favourite song of mine was playing on the radio.

“Every long lost dream, led me to where you are

Others who broke my heart; they were like northern stars

Guiding me on my way, into your loving arms

This much I know, is true

That God blessed the broken road, that led me straight to you”

A single tear escaped my eye. But this; was a happy one.