miracle of the pancakes

The old girl, Ginger, has been fading. She has lost most of her hearing and eyesight, and her hips and back legs don't always move in her usual coordinated collie fashion. (She is not the old girl who stumbles over her feet and hits her nose as she walks past corners and doors.)

About a month ago, I began the springtime brushing of Ginger. She was her usual perky, don't-brush-me-there-self. It took me a week and a half of brushing, a bit of dog each night, to finish clearing out her undercoat. The only remaining clumps to remove were under and behind her ears, in that silky-soft-behind-the-collie's-ears fur.

Two and a half weeks ago, I went out to brush her again, to remove the bits of undercoat that I'd missed and to brush out the ear-fur knots. That is when I began to feel her bones. If there is one word that has always described Ginger, it would have to be fat. Well, not fat fat, but fat as in big ole fat happy girl. But the day I attempted to brush out the ear-fur knots, Ginger was no longer fat. No matter that she had been fat only four days before. She was now bony. I ran my fingers over her body and could feel her ribs, her shoulders, her neck, and her hips. Jr brought up the talking scale from the basement and weighed himself and the dog and then himself alone and we realized that in a very short time, Ginger went from 92 lbs to 60 lbs.

Since that night, the only thing Ginger would eat was milk bones or human food. She was content to lay on the grass, even after Jack hooked up the swamp cooler on the deck for the girls--the swamp cooler that the neighbors think we use to try to cool the whole world because it is cooling the deck that is outside of our home.

Still, she seemed content to lay around, occasionally moving to a new place on the grass or wandering towards the water trough that refills itself every four hours with fresh cold water--thanks to Jr's sprinkler smarts.

Every morning, I've gone to the deck to watch her laying on the grass, to determine whether or not she was still breathing and every morning, she was. Last night, I got home around ten and Jr said she wasn't doing so well. I went out to check her and decided that it was probably time to take her to the vet one last time.

I woke this morning with that thought in mind. Jr had a friend stay overnight, so he rose early and made homemade pancakes--the same homemade pancakes that are second only to homemade waffles in Ginger's list of human food she loves. I picked up a couple of the pancakes and a bottle of orange juice and headed out to sit on the deck steps about ten feet from Ginger.

Of course, Dolly immediately trotted over hoping against all hope that I'd toss a pancake her way. Ginger lay still, breathing, but so still.

And then, the miracle happened. Ginger's long collie nose began to sniff, and it sniffed her muzzle up and sniffed her whole head up off of the grass and then she began sniffing the air, back and forth, trying to determine where the wonderful pancake smell was coming from. Jr came out and I told him about what I'd seen, so he headed over and gave her a pancake, which she wolfed down and then I gave her a pancake that she wolfed down and then we moved a bowl of water by her and she drank some.

And then her tail wagged.


I don't know how much longer Ginger will be with us, but it felt good to watch her, still able to use that amazingly long collie nose to locate one of her favorite foods and to enjoy that food.

I always knew those pancakes were delicious, but I never suspected that they were miraculous.