[L'il Pink Sock] Where is your heart?

Poasted by gekko at 9:29 AM and filed under "Peeperie"

For The Girl, it was beating in the eyes of a pup. Her pup.

Cinders Ella IV, purebred lab, was The Girl's dog. The bond of love between the blonde child and the glossy black dog could not be torn. When childish snobbery caused tears to stream, a puppy's tongue was there to dry them. When liquid brown eyes gazed mournfully through the glass door at the laden supper table, you knew a girl's pocket would bulge with a morsel or three for later.

It was the Girl's habit of gazing lovingly into her best friend's eyes that alerted her to something wrong.

"Mom? There's something wrong with Cinders' eye."

I looked. Her right eye was swollen, cloudy, and drippy. We took her to the vet.

"It's a tumor. We can operate, but she'll likely lose her vision in that eye."

"Do it."

"It's costly."

"Do it."

The tumor, though, was cancerous.

"We may have been able to get it all. We don't know, though. If it starts again, it may progress to the dog's brain before we catch it."

The decision was difficult. Selfish need told us to operate. Wisdom and love told us to let her sleep.

They were inseparable. Who could reckon with cancer, though? Who knew that there would be only four short years of play time for the pair? A decade has passed since the dog was laid to rest, and still the girl, now a young woman, reaches to stroke a glossy black head that is there only in her heart.

You've heard of the Rainbow Bridge, I'm sure. A day will come, in the distant future, when girl and dog will come together again, and tears will once again flow only to be licked away.

It's cold in here ... somebody warm me up, please!