[Dailydrool] Young Charlie's first birthday ATB

[Elizabeth]

I am eating the last piece of the birthday cake I baked in honor of what would have been young Charlie’s fifteenth birthday last Friday. His favorite peanut butter carrot cake with honey for sweetening. When I baked it on Friday, I found I couldn’t bring myself to eat it that day.

The morning of his first birthday at The Bridge began very early because I had to get The Wee One (my eighty-four-year-old mother’s Chihuahua mix who lives with me because my mother can no longer care for her) to the vet for her drop-in appointment. The Wee One had spent twenty-four hours in the ER with acute pancreatitis and severe dehydration three weeks prior. Such things can flatten a six-pound dog incredibly quickly.

This was the earliest since the ER stay that I’d been able to schedule a recheck with the vet, who’d been out for two weeks of quarantine. The Wee One (her legal name is Molly) would spend the day in a kennel there, waiting for the vet to have a moment to go over her between her scheduled appointments. Later that day I would be told she’s in good shape and must now live on nothing but prescription dog food.

The sunrise had only just begun when I handed The Wee One to the vet tech in the parking lot. I turned around to go back to my car and saw through the gloom a large, solid-looking, mostly black-and-white senior basset ambling along, nose to the ground, in the dog walk area on the other side of the parking lot.

I miss Charlie so very much that tears are still always close to the surface. I miss having a basset in my life, giving me reasons to laugh and inviting me to share in the general silliness of being a basset. It seemed almost a gift Charlie had sent to me, a senior basset on the morning of what would have been his fifteenth birthday.

The masked human on the other end of the basset’s leash said I, also masked, could come close enough to pat her hound. I think she called her Holly. I squatted in front of Holly and felt her lean into my hands as I slowly massaged her neck, ears, shoulders as I used to massage all my now-gone bassets: our Jane, our Elsinore, Macy, Owen, and now young Charlie.

Her human told me all about her and how she’d found her through GABR. They’ve never been to the picnic or waddle in Dwight, and I urged them to when the pandemic is over. We discovered we both like shopping at the ABC Slobber Shoppe, which usually has a large booth at that picnic. She said GABR is a nice rescue group to work with should I decided to send them an application. They even have some foster families in Indiana, where I now live.

Holly’s fur felt almost as soft as Charlie’s had, and she has the same lovely loose skin that feels so good under one’s hands. The sky began to lighten. My heart felt less heavy, less overly full. Holly must have felt her work with me was done because she put her nose to the ground and found a smell several feet away that needed her attention next. The sun came up over the horizon and turned everything pink. The color of Charlie’s favorite little purses to play with.

Fifteen. I’d secretly been harboring hope that young Charlie would be able to keep on living cheerfully and naughtily until he was at least fifteen. He’d been doing so well in his senior years that I’d even begun wondering if he’d be the one who’d live to see sixteen. And then the hemangiosarcomic tumor on his spleen was found in May, and the second-to-last day of July he was gone. 

Still, he was the basset who’s lived the longest and who I’ve had in my life the longest. There will only ever be one of young Charlie Basset, and I was the person lucky enough to have him be mine. A gift from my husband on my forty-second birthday. His is not a bad record to go out on.

Thank you, Holly. You made a sad day for me less so. I’m thinking of you with gratitude as I eat this last slice of young Charlie’s birthday cake. 

Elizabeth