Sadie lifts her head off the towel and stares blankly toward the front door. It’s dark outside, and the blanket of snow muffles everything anyway. In years past this look would mean something—I’d hear a car drive past or a person’s voice rise up from the street 10 seconds after Sadie appeared to be listening to nothing. By then she’d be barking.

Sadie used to bark at any sign of an impending intruder. She’d bark with the same ferocity at a school bus lurching by or a dear friend we invited in and hugged hello. She could sound fierce, but really it was her only line of defense. I’ve spent years shouting pleasantries and reassurances about our timid pitbull mix sweetheart to whoever just entered the house: “Don’t worry, she’s just scared!” I’d shout as Sadie barked like hell and ran clear into another room to escape the stranger. “Just ignore her and she’ll settle down!”

Ninety percent of the time this directive was flatly ignored. “I’m a dog person! I love dogs!” they’d say, heading right toward her with a hand held out as she cowered and trembled and growled. “HI SADIE! COME HERE, SADIE!”

You can’t blame dog people, really. When you’ve felt the unconditional love of a dog, the endorphin high of a pup licking your hand and nuzzling into you, it’s a hard hit to pass up. But still.

“No, really, just ignore her!”

Now I never ignore her. Now I dote on her with the guilty conscience of someone who feels time growing short. Now I wish I had let her on the sofa or on my bed to snuggle with me every night. Now I yearn for another afternoon of throwing balls in the backyard or across a wide open field, back when she could chase them down like a wide receiver going long on fourth-and-forever.

Now I have an acute awareness of this sweet creature who’s offered us love and companionship without taking a day off for almost 16 years. She is the living being that has seen me weep more than any other, a quiet witness to all the times I’ve waited until the house was empty to break down.

But it wasn’t empty. It was the best kind of not-empty.

She’s the pet that welcomed and protected both our babies when we brought them to live in her house without even asking her. And as they made more noise than she did, disrupted all our lives and marked up her territory in a thousand irreversible ways, she did nothing but love them in return. They grabbed for her and sat on her and chased her and she never once nipped or bit or barked at them. Sometimes, though, I’d catch her sigh, and she’d get a knowing pat or a treat. I know, girl. They love you though. We all do.

Now she does growl at them sometimes, when she’s fallen again on their dad’s kitchen floor and Kostyn is dutifully trying to help her to her feet. She is protective of her lumpy body, the arthritis in her hips and the football-sized tumor on her right hind leg that slow her down. The cataracts over her eyes have turned everything into ominous shadows and patches of light, and it’s hard to discern friend from foe when hands reach out and grab you from behind.

When she whimpers in her sleep, we yell her name to try to rouse her but eventually have to shake her awake. I hope we are cutting short a nightmare, not prematurely ending a dream where she is young and strong and barky again. According to the American Veterinary Medical Association, her equivalent human age will be 94 years old this spring. Ninety-four-year-olds sure do sleep a lot. They have earned the rest.

I watch her sleep on that towel that’s stretched out beneath a long table that holds a framed photo of her and I, and a smaller one of her as a puppy. Her brindled coat and sweet brown eyes made me fall hard and fast the day I picked her out to give to my ex, the birthday present he’d begged for. A rescue pup, the runt of the litter. Her back is still rich with stripes of orange and shades of brown, but her snout is gray now.

I tell the boys when she was younger she could throw her 45-pound muscular frame 6 feet in the air and grab a tennis ball right from our outstretched hands. They want to believe me, but it’s hard for them to remember her before how she is now, sleepy and leaky. Bladder control is largely a thing of the past.

I think she might have dementia. Sometimes she acts like she needs to be let out two minutes after she has just come back in. Don’t you remember you were just out there? I let her back out anyway, 20 times a day. She slides down the icy steps, walks a few paces and stands still, looking around as if she isn’t sure why she’s there. It reminds me of one of my very first hospice patients, who used to stand up suddenly, with purpose, in the middle of our conversation and stride across the room toward the kitchenette or her bedroom, before faltering.

“Sarah,” I’d say, “what do you need?”

She’d furrow her brow. “Well…”

Well.

Sadie stares off toward the snowy hill behind our house. She stoops over and sniffs her own poop. Does she know it’s hers? I wonder if she gets confused, whether the eight different backyards she’s lived in are blending together in her mind.

Her dad got a new puppy last summer. The puppy is cute and soft and growing fast; he has boundless energy and trips her up when she’s trying to get to her bowls. She is not agile and quick like him. The puppy’s scent confuses her, too, and she marks her territory where she shouldn’t, so now at his house she is relegated to just the kitchen floor or her crate. Her dad shoos her away when she wanders into the living room. “Kennel up, Sadie,” he says, and she backtracks toward her metal home, away from the boys she loves and from the other dog that is allowed on the carpets and the couch.

There is no crate here, though I have to change the towel, which has a protective lining under it, a couple times a day, sometimes more. Through tears I Google things like “signs a dog is dying” and read about a marked decrease in appetite that hasn’t come. She eats more than ever, and mostly that fills me with relief.

But other times I see the bowl empty again and I watch her move stiffly and sit so gingerly on a fresh towel I’ve just changed, I watch her slump her head down onto the floor and sigh and close her eyes, and my heart breaks open for all of us, for the life she lives now and for the end of it. I don’t know how in the world I’ll be able to let go, and maybe she knows this. Maybe she’ll just keep eating her roasted chicken-flavored dry dog food, the special one for senior dogs, maybe she’ll just keep acting like it’s the best thing I’ve ever fed her, until the moment she somehow knows I’ll be OK the next time I wait until the house is empty to break down, and it really is.

[Postscript: We lost Sadie on Monday, May 13, 2019, just after her 16th birthday. She will be loved and missed forever.]

A million thank yous, sweet girl.