Wag the Tail, Throw the Ball (Page 1 of 1)

The eight-inch length of lower intestine sat on the stainless steel table like a slippery Thanksgiving turkey neck. The smell was sour, and the consistency reminded me of the chicken livers I've used to bait my hooks for catfish. Brown fluid leaked from the end. Dr. Sam Meisler held the cut in his gloved hands.

"This is where I made the first incision," he said. He then went on to show me how the tumor was closing off the passage of waste for Fish, my eight-year-old mutt. This explained why he'd quit eating. The sides of the intestine were hardening and thickening, closing in like a crumbling wormhole. Dr. Meisler took me to a laptop and showed me the ultrasound image. A round mass the size and shape of a golf ball centered the picture.

Meanwhile, as Dr. Meisler and I discussed the operation, Fish heard my voice and began to cry softly from the kennel in the adjacent room. Dr. Meisler drew a diagram of the procedure on the whiteboard, and he asked Beth, a smiling vet tech, to go and sit with Fish while we talked. During the surgery, after removing the shrinking, cancerous section, Dr. Meisler had rerouted the intestine and reattached it to Fish's colon.

And now it all depends on what happens microscopically at the attachment site. If the new merger of Fish's digestive system doesn't begin to heal, the seam will not hold inside him, and things will go downhill fast. And painfully.

Eight years ago, my girlfriend at the time came home one day with another rescued mutt. He was a scrawny little redhead, worm-filled and leaky-eyed. I looked at the thing bundled in her arms and saw a vet bill: de-worming, vaccinations, scheduled check-ups. She already had two large-breed sled dogs that swallowed enormous amounts of food. We were playing host to six homeless barn kittens that roamed the yard and terrorized the birds. I agreed to foster the puppy until we could find him a permanent address.

And that address became mine. He was the stereotypical rescued mutt: appreciative, eager to please and desperate for attention. As he grew, his metabolic rate was like a round-track sports-car race; he never tired, he ran full-tilt everywhere and he liked to chew on socks and shoes. I tried once to place him in another home. I gave him to the parents of a friend of mine. They changed his name from Fish to Jake. Luckily, though, he spent a long weekend gnawing everything at ground level, so the couple returned him to me.

Since that time, he's been my consummate traveling partner. He carries his own backpack when we go hiking. I took him with me once to the North Dakota Badlands, and because the only potable water was stretched apart at 25-mile intervals, he lugged nearly half his bodyweight on his back. If the weather's nice, I leave him outside the tent, where he sleeps by the door and keeps me worry-free from bears. If the temperature is cold or chilly, I bring him into the tent where he serves as my personal heater. Like many dogs, he loves to jump in the truck and hit the road. He spins in circles and bounces up and down when he hears me pick up my keys.

When I travel without him, he stays at home in a fenced-in pen beside my garage. My neighbor feeds him daily, and even if my absence is extended, the second I return, he forgets he's been alone. He's all about right now, in the moment, wag the tail and throw the ball.

When I lifted him into the truck after the surgery, he was stiff and woozy. His eyes were glassy, and his head swayed drunkenly from side-to-side. I set him on a blanket and drove to the gym where I was to be coaching a basketball game. I covered him with a Mountain Hardwear winter coat and went inside. When I came out after the game and opened the door, he looked up at me, dark trails of water staining his muzzle below his eyes. His tail thumped a few times against the passenger side door.

As I write this, it's been less than 24 hours since the operation. He's stretched on his side in the closet floor, where he likes to sleep. Periodically he strolls into the living room and rests his head in my lap, his tail swishing across the carpet. Dr. Meisler has called twice to check on him since the surgery: "He's captured everyone's heart," he says.

The next step for Fish is to make it through this week — seven days — to allow for the binding of his new intestinal pathway. Then his tumor samples will be sent to the lab. I'll be dropping him off at My Pets Animal Hospital on my way to work each day so they can monitor him. And I'll be driving over at lunch to scratch his head.