Peeing in Private

    My sixteen-year old yellow lab is a reincarnation of my mom.  I love her and then I need to spend hours three house away from home and her for fear of losing my mind.  She's a tad nutty.    

    "What does Olivia do when I'm gone?"  I ask my husband.  

    "Oh, she just sleeps."  "And when I get home, how is she different?"  I ask because whenever I get up from the couch or the chair or simply walk across the room my dog is hot on my heels.  

    While I am unloading the dishwasher in the kitchen or rummaging through the refrigerator for an after-dinner snack, I feel two pair of eyes staring me down like a hawk eyes it's prey. 

    What does she want?  I often ask myself.  

    "Well, once you get home she is all about you." My husband reveals even though I didn't ask.  

     "Oh that's just because I feed her and give her treats."  I announce to my husband but maybe it's more than that.  

    If I am gone more than ten minutes and return she pants for thirty.  She pants at the bottom of the stairs if the door is closed and I am upstairs on a Zoom call or doing yoga or making the bed.      

    "Do you think she's having breathing problems?"  I asked my mild-mannered husband who smiles.  

    When I pee she is my audience of one.  My mom didn't do that while she walked the Earth but she was always up in my business and not in a friendly way.  

    To ease her deeply embedded angst, made worse by the pandemic and the hours we spent at home, I've tried everything from the Thunder Shirt to drugs.  The Thunder Shirt was a waste of money.  Swaddled in a  tightly velcroed stretchy "shirt" my dog became immobile and looked like she might die.  I think she was embarrassed.  

    "I wonder if they make Thunder Shirts for humans.  Maybe that would'a helped your mom's mood?"  My husband joked.  

    The vet suggested Benadryl.  Drugs worked for my mom, maybe it'd help the dog.  Although our beloved canine didn't have hives or inflammation and wasn't coughing or sneezing, usual human uses for an antihistamine, it was worth a try.  

    At the outset of our very next roadtrip we fed our dog a single tab of Benadryl jammed into a piece of her favorite cheese.  No effect.  

    "How about two tabs?" I wondered aloud to my husband as the panting from the backseat began to feel like water torture on our otherwise peaceful six-hour drive.  Olivia continued to pant as if she'd return from a 72 miles run along the beach.  

    By the fourth doses we thought we might accidentally kill our nutty dog.  And so we left her panting, standing up and laying down in the backseat of our car over and over for the entire trip.  She was a jack-in-the-box or one of those cute little meerkats that pop up and down from their burrows when on alert.  I felt bad but helpless.  

    A friend suggested we try aromatherapy.  That might work, I thought.  My lavender pillow case helps me drift off into dreamland.  "Try putting some Bergamot or Cedarwood essential oils on her back.  Or in her water.  Should calm her down.  I'm actually selling that.  Here's my card." 

    Although cedarwood smells heavenly and earthy and outdoorsy like the sticky, glistening sap of the giant fir tree we recently chopped down and repels mosquitos and ticks which is a nice natural side benefit, our dog's anxiety lived on.  

    Someday I will miss my old dog's quirks and crazies and panting, like I miss my mom.  Well, my mom didn't pant but definitely tortured me in other ways only my therapist knows.  But I do think about the end of her long and happy, and somewhat anxiety-ridden life now that she can't hear me from more than a foot away. My sweet, neurotic yellow lab.  

    I heartfully dread the day I can't turn look up from the toilet and find her big brown eyes staring at me like a spy keeping her eye on it's target.   

    My tears will last a lifetime.  

    But at least I will be able to pee in private again.