"It's been a long December, and there's reason to believe, that maybe this year year will be better than the last".

Or, there's Carlin: "Life is a series of dogs". Life is just a never-ending series of dogs. They are with you eight, ten, MAYBE, fifteen years. Then they are gone.

Don't stop crying. This is cry worthy. This is fucking awful. Maybe it is nothing? Maybe this the the fatty lump in my boob named Mort who is just chilling with me. Me and Mort are friends. My mom has one, I have one, and every month or so I get a good handful and I say hello to Mort. But if it is something? Even if you had a billion dollars, putting her through painful, awful treatment isn't the answer. You might buy her time, but you won't buy her life back. Her life was already set. As was yours. Life is a SERIES of dogs.

There was Lady, 90 Lbs of German Shepherd Husky that would have killed someone rather than let them hurt me. But she also mauled kittens because, who knows. Tough, strong, stoic, hard-headed, hated everyone, LOVED me, never comfortable if I was scared or sad. When I found her dead at the bottom of the steps, I had to call my mom at work and she took the day off. She came and got me, and then got my dad (they had be separated for YEARS, but he was the dog she had with him, he belonged and we both loved him) and we met in bar to have lunch, tell her stories, cry, and remember her.

Then there was Darla. MY dog. She was mine from the get go. BC/Husky, I took her from a friend of a co-worker going through a divorce and she just couldn't keep her. She and I walked more lonely streets at ten, eleven, two in the morning than I can remember. I had a walkman, I had mixed tapes, I was a teenager who needed to get out of the house, and she and I just walked. And when my youngest sister accidentally let her off the leash (little kids are just little kids) and she was hit on the highway? I know the last person she looked at loved her, held her, and she went peacefully. That's all any of us can ask for. And, what's totally NOT funny is my mom couldn't tell me because I had to call her and tell her about Mort for the first time, and she couldn't put that on me all at once. I had to wait till I actually got home to know. But I loved her for it.

Now I have my own Husky and Border Collie-Mix. We're married now, but my husband and I had been dating two years when we got him, the husky, and he's turning seven. Seven! I just started, this week, coming to terms with the fact that we'll lose him soon. Not "this year" but soon. Maybe he gets away from me on a leash. It's happened. Maybe its cancer, maybe it is arthritis that makes him so brittle and frail. I don't know, but I have to plan because his little sister, the BC-mix, will be LOST without him. I'm already starting to plan for the puppy we'll need to get before he goes, so she won't be alone because she's not a dog who could handle it.

Life is a series of dogs. This one found you. Her big brown eyes found you. She found your family and she moved right in. Nothing, not even death, will take her away from you. The money is not the crisis. You just wait to hear at this point. Its either nothing or its not. But you're not going to take a nine year old dog through chemo. Even if you had the money, you wouldn't do that. She's just going to be your dog, through sickness and through health. You are going to hold her and pet her and snuggle her and love her and when the end comes (be it this recent tragedy or some beloved new one) you are going to weather it. Just...do what we did. Sit down, pour some cocktails and some soda, have a big lunch, and tell all her stories. Then keep telling them. Remember her, remember the place she held, honor it, keep it alive for your kids, and for yourself. Life is just a fucking series of dogs. They love us unconditionally, but only for so long. Then we have to say goodbye.

So...here's to hoping her goodbye is a long, long time from now! I am with you, we all are.