Day: April 25, 2012

Oh, Izzy, you are the happiest, most cheerful and energetic of creatures, how sad to see you suffer and become so weary and dispirited before my eyes. It is hard to bear, and I am so glad I had a good and long cry with you tonight, lying in my lap by the computer where you have spent so much time with me.  You have been the perfect dog in so many ways. Despite living alone on a farm for years, you were the most generous and loving of creatures. You did your hospice work, and then you helped Maria enter our lives and sat with her to do her work in her Studio.

Sitting here in my lap, looking at me in the most pleading of ways, I have to be so careful not to put my words into your head, because your eyes are telling me in the most powerful and distinct and wrenching way that you are tired, and you are hurting, and you are asking me to let you go. And so we will do that. Maria and I have talked, and we have talked with our vets, and there is nothing reasonable or realistic that we can do for you that will not cause you the most prolonged and uncertain kinds of suffering.  So we will give you the gift and the honor of letting you leave the world in peace and comfort and dignity, as you helped so many people do.

I remember our first hospice visit, to Glen in the Adirondacks and one day, after he came to know you well, he put his hand on your head and he said, “Izzy, I am tired and I am ready to leave the world. I want to go,” and he died with his hand on your head. You helped him leave this life the way he wished to go.  The last few days, that is the message I have been getting from you, and the same message I want to send you: time, dear friend, to go in peace, to let go. No more suffering. In our time, people sometimes seem shocked at the idea that animals die, and they sometimes cling to the idea that they can and ought to be kept alive forever, just as people cling to the same idea. Death is hard to face. We want everyone to live in a painless and no-kill world.

Oh, Izzy,  you know better than any creature in the world that there is no such place on this earth, but perhaps there is one beyond,  given the love you have offered and the good you have done and the loyalty you have shown in your sometimes very hard existence.You began your life as a wild and abandoned creature and then entered a life of love and service. You brought me nothing but joy. You were the best media hound I have ever known, and you loved the life of the celebrity dog, the attention and affection and the camera much more than chasing sheep.

Tomorrow we will say goodbye to you, and we will bring you home to the farm and bury you in your favorite place. Even though we will be leaving you and this place sometime soon, we believe your spirit will best rest here, where you lived so happily and did so much good. I do not expect to meet you in any other life, nor do I ask that you wait for me by any bridge. I know your spirit will always be with me.  Your work here was great. Your work here is done.

At the end of your time, I can offer you nothing but love and gratitude.

Tomorrow, may your load  lighten, your struggles cease, your pain melt away.

Fly to Paradise, Izzy.

I was telling George Forss how I saw Rocky in the pasture in front of his collapsed barn and pulled off the road to ask if I could take a photo. “Oh,” he said, “a pony and a collapsed barn. Great. Of course.”

George Forss is one of the most famous and accomplished photographers in the world, and it was meaningful beyond words to spend the afternoon with George at Bedam Farm, taking photographs with him, watching him, photographing him. George’s work is mythic about photographers – you can check it out at the Park Slope Gallery website, which sells his work. George brought his friend and companion artist Donna Wynbrandt – her work is being shown at the next Pig Barn Art Gallery Show at Bedlam Farm June 23-24 – and it was a remarkable experience to watch George work. I have nowhere near his photographic skills, but our minds are strangely alike and we love the same kind of photos.

George and I are going to go out and do some landscapes once or twice a week. George shoots mostly with film, and has some photographic equipment I have never even seen. Taking a photo for him is so much more complex than with digital photography, where you tend to shoot away and sort it out later. Each photo is a complex, multi-step process for George involving careful study of light, shutter and aperture settings. It is expensive to shoot with film and to develop it so George really things about everything in his photos. I’ll write more about this and post more photos later. It was a wonderful experience, and he is very gracious about teaching me some of what he knows. I did not know George was living right near me in Cambridge, N.Y., where he runs the Ginofor Gallery on Main Street. He is the nicest and most interesting man and a great story-teller and I am very lucky to get to know him.

George photographing Izzy.

As promised, I want to be open about Izzy and also maintain as much privacy as is appropriate under the circumstances. Not an easy line in this new kind of community where boundaries are constantly changing, growing, evolving. The news is not good, as seemed evident from watching Izzy struggle. It appears that Izzy has a very aggressive and rapidly spreading cancer. We can see and feel the tumors, and he is struggling to eat, move and be comfortable. There are a number of options for us to consider, and we will consider them. Maria and I will talk with one another, and with our very good and compassionate vets at the Cambridge Valley Veterinary Service and decide where to go from here. Maria and I are as one, and we will move forward hand in hand.

I am very grateful for all the many messages of warmth, love, support and understanding and I will struggle to be tolerant of the amateur vets, remote diagnosticians, compulsive advice givers and the people who call themselves animal advocates who are already accusing me of various crimes against nature. I can learn from all of them, and the divine lives in the broken heads and broken hearts of all of us.

I think the next part needs to be private as Maria and I talk things through, and confer with our vet, Suzanne Fariello. I will be open, as I always try to be, about the decisions we make. Thanks so very much for your great love and generosity and appreciation of Izzy’s great  spirit. Connie Brooks of Battenkill books tell me she is already swamped with people wanting copies of “Izzy & Lenore,” my book about our hospice work together, and I will sign and personalize each of them. You can call her at 518 677-2515 or e-mail her at [email protected] and I will see that any royalties due to me on these sales go to Hospice. It is nice that whatever happens, some additional good will come of it.

Izzy is a great dog, a spirit dog, and we will do well by him, as he has done for us and so many others.

I’m not really a garden lover, or wasn’t until I started hungering for the colors in my photography. This morning, at 6:30, I knew the sun would be rising right behind these tulips and they would be opening, going to work. So I wanted to go to work with the tulips. Like dog training, photography is teaching me patience, and to follow my instincts.