Apparently, I’m not the only one in the household with dementia. My best friend, Sadie, a dog who’d never been inside a house until I got her (I think she didn’t even have a doghouse), who has shared this house with me, has gotten old and a bit confused. So we have a new thing in common.

Ever since I adopted her, Sadie has never willingly gone out the front door - until a week or so ago. Before, she seemed happiest in her secret closet, and would hide if I asked, “Do you want to go for a walk?” - which I had to do in order to get her to stop barking at visitors ever since she was first traumatized by a visitor (a non-dog person of course) back in 2020.

Sadie’s life here has consisted of hanging around in the house wherever she wanted (though she’d never get up on the couch with me and Fang, or jump up on the bed - which she tried once, missed, and never tried again), or using the dog door to get to the side yard.

The past couple of weeks, however, she’s been sleeping on the floor either at the foot of my bed or near the front door - day or night, and happily racing out to explore the front yard when I open the door. This is the opposite of her behavior the five years I’ve had her. So tonight, halfway through my happy hour drink, I clipped the leash to her collar, and we took a walk around the back-back, and then I set the drink on a fence-post and we walked the neighborhood. Sadie has never been in the back before, nor walked around the neighborhood, so this was new for both of us.

I didn’t want to push our luck or freak her out, so after letting her take her time out back - all new territory to her - we only walked half a block any direction from the corner of Summit and Green Mountain. Out back, she really got her muzzle snuffling into and then eating something that - it took a minute for it to waft up to my nose - smelled like shit. Before we got back to the house, she threw it up, along with half her supper. Live and learn.

I had clipped a retractable leash to her collar so she’d feel freer to sniff things without yanking me hither and yon. If she pulled farther than I thought we should go on our first time out, I simply said, “This way” and she’d turn back without me having to tug on the leash. It made me feel so good to have her out sniffing the environment she’d always been afraid of before. So my take on this is that dementia can be simply a new way to look at things for her. Which it certainly has been for me.

After our wonderful and companionable walk, she settled back into her old cubbyhole, and I remembered to fetch my drink I’d left out on the fence-post. When I got back to the porch, I saw that there was a daddy long-legs floating in the glass. (This was the second daddy long-legs floating in liquid I’d rescued this week; but the first one was just in the dogs’ porch water bowl.) I tipped the glass over, and what was left of the drink poured out, but daddy seemed unable to recognize his re-found freedom and stuck to the inside of the glass. So I tilted the glass over my pot of lobelia, and nudged him out with my forefinger.

I would like to think he was happy to stagger onto a more welcoming surface; I was happy he hadn’t drowned. (Or “drownded” as I’ve heard said.)

Back to Sadie: I am thrilled I finally - again - have a dog who enjoys a walk. I’ve missed it, and I’ve gained a lot of weight because of A) having - for five years - dogs who didn’t like to go for walks, and B) living in a one-story house. (I had leg muscles when I lived out in Higgins. =sigh=)

Cheers,

Lucy