We have been quite worried about our old dog Vicki. For the last couple of weeks, she has been limping, a hobble that just showed up after a long and pleasant walk in the woods. No big deal, we’ve been thinking, and it would show signs of lessening, and then she would bound off the porch after some squirrels, or Duke, the huskie who lives across the river, would walk down Todd Lane like he owned the place, and Vicki would have to hop and bark at him the length of the fence, and then she’d be limping again, worse than before. This has gone on for a couple of weeks, leaving us to conclude little other than she’s getting pretty old and just doesn’t bounce back like she used to. Vicki, however, remains dauntless. Saturday at 3:30 AM, both Vicki and our most unadulterated cat Playful detected some alien presence on the porch. I offered my usual display of noise and lights to allow the intruder time to escape–always advisable, since the pests we’ve met met in the past have included a couple of remorseless skunks–and then let the hopping and woofing Vicki out the door. Bad leg and all, Vicki charged down the steps, out to the gate, around the western side of the house, back around front, up the steps of the porch (up which she had limped most pathetically only hours earlier), and off to the Todd Lane side and around back. I could no 
longer see her, but moments later, I could hear her, emitting a terrible whine/growl/bay/yelp combination. Thinking that Vicki was engaged in some kind of combat, and losing, I ran out the door after her (in my underwear) and across the lawn. Glassless, aided by wan porch light, I unreliably witnessed Vicki release something, a charcoal smudge of something that quickly undulated into the bushes in the raised bed. An otter? A muskrat? By then, Vicki, winded but no longer yowling, was joined by me and Ginny, Molly and even Wendy (Cara heard the ruckus, but feared that Vicki was meeting her demise at the hands of the local coyote, and slunk under the covers), and soon hobbled back into the house. The next morning, limping around the yard, Vicki joined us for some gardening, and investigated the raised bed for signs of her recent adversary, though to no avail. At long last, she sat in the shade, and as her protoge Wendy patrolled the perimeter, the old dog proudly rested, still mistress of her domain.
I wrote a lot about my old dog when he was in his last days…such good stuff.
Old dog, indeed! Just three days shy of three years later, Vicki finally succumbed to a set of chronic conditions. Four days before she died, Vicki was still defending her household, dismissing off three teenage boys on Pleasantville Road with a single, disdainful woof.