2019 Jun 18

10 minutes: I like his ears.

They perked up whenever something happened, and I would have to look where he looked.

"Over there! What's that?" he'd shout, running off excitedly. Even when it was nothing.

Especially when it was nothing.

But that didn't matter to him. He'd return just as excited as he was when he ran off.

Everything was an adventure for him. Everday a new discovery. It was hard not to see life through his eyes, hear it through his ears. There was a curiosity there that was limitless.

"Something exciting is always just around the corner," he'd tell me. "You just have to know where to look."

And he was always good at showing me where to look. His entire personality was contagious.

Charismatic? Maybe. Or maybe life was just more pleasant when seen through his eyes. Because I preferred to see it through his eyes. He was always full of energy in those years.

In those years.

I guess we didn't really notice when he started to come down from his highs. It was so gradual, so slow, that I'm not even sure he noticed.

But there did come a day when only his ears would perk up, but not any other part of his body. We took him in to get checked out.

They told us it was terminal. There was nothing we could do.

I couldn't bear to be in the room when they put him down. The vet would later say he was frantically looking around, trying to find us, anybody he still recognized.