I came to Austin intending a writer’s retreat while Jared did his Jared things.
And I got some things done to this end.
I think Austin was as much about me getting away from what’s hard, as anything else.
Abby is still not doing super well. I personally think the end is near.
We received terrible news about another dear friend today, someone we’ve been close to for a decade.
I’m still recovering from losing Trixie, truthfully.
And, home life is different because Porter and Liam are off at college now.
I think I really came to Austin just for the change of scenery and to have a minute to breathe.
Tonight’s adventure sees backroads to Vidalia, Louisana.
I have actually been to Vidalia, Louisiana before. I have even been through one of their drive through liquor stores, which served open container drinks, actually.
I remember a gorgeous view of the bridge between Vidalia and Natchez, Mississippi, over the Mississippi River.
So, we are staying in Vidalia tonight and I hope to get a photo of that bridge in the morning.
Then it will be backroads of Mississippi up to Laurel to I-59 before returning to being a grownup, to come face what we will find at home.
I’m not overly religious, but I do think God looks out for us sometimes. In this case, I think this is one of those times, for me. I needed to get away to think.
Abby is stable, but I do not think she has very long, truthfully.
And I spoke to my dear friend of over a decade for the last time yesterday.
Nobody ever said adventure is without heartache. I think that is part of the point.
Abby and I are settling into a routine. We are a pair, in 2026.
And I guess, we have been a pair since 2013, and I’ve had phases where I tried to dissociate. I would beckon the boys to take her out; I would beg Jared to tend to her; I went through whole seasons where I let the rest of the household make sure she was fed and had water.
Something snapped when we lost Trixie.
And since July 14, 2026, with only a few exceptions, it has been me to take her outside.
And we don’t go stand right outside the front door: we walk the entirety of our corner lot. Just about every time.
And this pup that has lived most of her life on dry food now gets Kirkland Oven-Roasted Refrigerated Human-Grade chicken-based fresh food, with our vet’s approval, for three solid meals every day.
And whether I am tired or not, whether I plan to sleep in or not, I get up and take her out at or before 7 AM. I might go back to sleep, but Abby is lifted off her perch at my feet on the bed (she doesn’t jump on the bed anymore), and carried to the front door to go outside. Most mornings when we come back in, she immediately gets her breakfast instead of having to wait until I am ready to eat.
And her bowl goes into the dishwasher with our dishes every night.
And she goes out probably seven times every day.
She has had one puppy pad use since July 14 and I am sure that is some time I forgot or was late taking her out. The two unused puppy pads currently sitting in their spot were put there on July 14, after I changed them after Trixie left the house the last time.
Abby is definitely still house trained.
And she has settled into an outside walking rhythm that is different than when we used to go outside with Trixie: often she wants to walk to the left at the front of the driveway, walking the entire length of our front yard to the other side of the circular driveway, instead of bolting for the stop sign at the corner of the yard, which was her regular haunt with Trixie.
And we go out twice before bed; once just before it gets too dark to walk to the end of the street— I am afraid of wild animals because of our heavily wooded neighborhood— and then once again just to the bottom of the front steps in the front yard just before we head to the bedroom for the night.
And, I am clinging to Abby, because she will be one of the child-babies left in the house; she will still need me on a daily basis in a month.
It is Abby who is carrying me through the transition to life without Trixie; this week it will also be Abby who carries me through the transition to life without our big boys living full-time at home with us as they go off to college.
Since she was a puppy, I have resisted making Abby be a go-everywhere kind of pup. I really got lazy in most of her years.
But I am the one who feeds her now. Most of the time I am the one seeing to her and the cats’ water. I am the one who takes her out 99 percent of the time now; I am the one who lifts her onto the bed at night; I am the one who lifts her off the bed in the morning.
I splurged at her last grooming, a few days after we lost Trixie, and got her a bougie matching Furlou padded harness and leash.
But, she doesn’t wear it 24/7. The harness only comes on and off when we are going outside. She doesn’t love the on or off process, but she tolerates it: I think going harness-free most of the time is a great tradeoff that she happily accepts.
And yes, somewhere in the back of my mind, despite our vet assuring me that dogs in her condition and breed can live to be up to 20 years old: somewhere in my mind I know I am overcompensating right now since we lost Trixie.
I am still grieving. And I am grieving the half-empty house that is soon to come.
But, Abby is my therapy dog. She has seen me through my last pregnancy; through the baby and toddler years with Oliver; through the aftermath of bankruptcy; through the loss of my grandmother.
It is Abby that insisted on sleeping with me through the hard years at Holmes Drive, when I would do my best to edge her closer to Jared, away from me, in the bed, even when she knew I desperately needed her in my depression. She has seen me through the years of trying to essentially buy myself into a photography business; she is seeing me through my angst of not knowing what to do even though I have writing goals now.
Abby is the one here sitting at my feet as I know that the photography is likely not an actual career path: she is the one who is here as I realize that mediocre talent is not going to make people want to hire me; that I am generally only good for the free photography I have offered friends over the years. She is the one who is here while I swallow my pride and realize that success in my particular life does not equal how high a salary I have brought in; it does not equal a professional life that people envy.
Abby is the one who is here as I sit with and try to internalize that the playing field was never equal: I have battled physical, mental, and social demons that most people never encounter in their lifetimes.
And now, Abby is 13 years old. And I am determined to see that her senior years: whether there are a few months or whether we do indeed have six-plus years left with her: She is going to be treated like the princess she always was.
Life changes when a pet dies. In our case, our dog Trixie died yesterday.
They don’t tell you life changes, beyond the immediate, obvious loss. But, it does.
There’s probably twenty ways life is different this morning than it was before yesterday in our household.
Like, this piece of posterboard lying on the kitchen floor, right now, that I just took a photo of.
Until this morning, this posterboard was lining the bottom half of the window next to our front door. It was there because Trixie barked at her own reflection in the middle of the night. Abby doesn’t do that, so we don’t need the posterboard anymore.
Like the fact that I went in yesterday afternoon and cancelled four autoship Chewy subscriptions that we no longer need.
I knew we’d all be sad for a while. I didn’t know that would translate to neither Jared nor myself sleeping very well last night. I didn’t realize we’d miss church today. I didn’t realize Jared would still be in the bed at 11:30 AM, which is very unlike him.
I didn’t really anticipate the vacuum left by one less pet. When you have five pets in the house, and then suddenly there’s only four, on paper it doesn’t feel like the air should be that different. Trixie was not a barky dog. But, there’s vacuum. The house feels different.
And yes, there’s the petty math I did….. There will be, at minimum, $170 a month more in our bank accounts every month without the grooming, without the medications, without the vet visits, without the prescription food.
But nobody told me that without Trixie around, we’d be scrambling to figure out exactly what Abby needs, because the prescription food was for Trixie, not Abby. We just let both of them eat it, and now we will need slowly transition Abby to a new senior food.
No one tells you that your absolute first instinct is to say “never again” to a new pet in the house, but that you might go looking at Petfinder.com anyway, only to say “never again” when looking at photos of different pets available for adoption. But you go looking anyway, knowing you just won’t ever be able to do it.
No one tells you, though maybe they should, that the other pets will mourn. That maybe you do need to return the blanket that accompanied Trixie to the vet for her final visit right back to the spot it was between the chairs on the floor, vomit-covered and all, so all the other pets can explore the scents and figure out what happened.
No one tells you that Abby will return over half a dozen times, instantly upon going outside every time, to the last spot Trixie peed in the yard yesterday morning.
No one really even tells you that you probably won’t need the puppy pads anymore— that while Abby will use them, she will still bark when she needs to go out. Trixie was the one who really needed the puppy pads. I picked the used ones up after Porter and Jared left for Trixie to go to the vet and put down new ones, and the new ones are still there, completely pristine because Abby goes every time she goes out, and barks when she does need to go.
No one tells you that conversations have to be had, and decisions made, about what to do with leftover medication. My inclination would have been to trash it all, even the unopened stuff. Jared told Porter we would at least see if the animal shelter could take any of it first.
No one tells you that your adult child who was firmly not a cat person, whose beloved childhood pet died yesterday, will suddenly, still saying he is a dog person, cling to any cat that enters his space.
No one tells you that suddenly your house that was really a house with too many pets is all of a sudden more reasonable. One dog and three cats sounds a lot better than two dogs and three cats. Even if it feels heavy to say so. Even if the adult child who belonged to the recently departed dog said himself that until yesterday our house was overloaded.
No one tells you that even the cats will sniff around, knowing things are different now.
No one tells you that the children’s lives will be practically different, too— that we won’t need baby gates in front of Porter or Oliver’s door anymore, because Trixie was the main instigator behind eating the cat poop out of the litter boxes. Turns out, Abby isn’t that interested when there isn’t a leader in that particular activity.
No one tells you that cooking will be different. There won’t be that constant presence waiting for you to drop something, immediately underfoot.
Nobody tells you that loading the dishwasher will be different, even though Trixie hasn’t been able to lick the dirty dishes since we moved into this house in November of 2021 like she could at the old house. It never once stopped her from hopefully trying every single time the dishwasher was open for the past four and a half years.
No one tells you how different the first walk outside will be. Walking one dog out to go potty is way different than walking two. It has been years since I got tripped up in their leashes; Abby and Trixie had their own rhythms and walking patterns. Walking just Abby out was where the tears came.
It wasn’t until I took Abby out by herself that I remembered exactly how nervous she gets outside. I always see it, but Trixie was there to offset Abby’s angst. Abby is on hyper-alert going outside now.
And she always, first, goes to sniff the last place Trixie went, even though Abby usually prefers the other side of the walkway for her own business. Till yesterday, anyway.
And no one tells you, that even with all the ways that life will, admittedly, now be easier, and cheaper, that there is a heaviness that one less soul in this household has left behind now that Trixie’s lightheartedness is gone.
Trixie turned 14 at the end of May. She has surpassed in her longevity all of all our wildest expectations; this is the dog who had major surgery for bladder stones in 2019. She has been on some form of prescription food since then.
Porter was pretty sure she wouldn’t last long after her left for his first year of college, and here we just sent off his proof of rental insurance for his apartment for his third year of college.
I know Porter wanted to stay in Athens this summer. But I am glad he and this girl have had each other.
She is his dog. She arrived to our household just when Porter needed her, in 5th grade. He desperately wanted a dog to cuddle and Abby refused to stay in his room at night with him. Trixie entered Porter’s life after his autism diagnosis and his IEP were in place, but before the astoundingly kind, fiercely loyal friend group he found for himself in middle school.
We were pretty sure we were sending Trixie off to the great rainbow bridge on Monday: she had terrible diarrhea and was breathing super fast. We all said our goodbyes before Jared and Porter swept her off to the vet, just not knowing.
At 14, with a grade 4 heart murmur, you never know.
But, she had a fever, and antibiotics, probiotics, a canned food later, no more diarrhea and we presume no fever.
She isn’t eating much. Jared finally got her to eat some low sodium canned salmon last night, just to see if she’d eat anything. Tonight he managed to get her to eat a little of her prescription canned food with some salmon mixed in, but not much.
Which brought me to realize: Abby and Trixie are 13 and 14 years old. We have been buying $100 bags of dog food since 2019….. maybe, just maybe, that gave them a higher quality of life. And being used to super low sodium means we can’t inundate their systems with off the shelf Alpo or Pedigree cans now, either. But there is a world in between, and maybe these girls have earned some yumminess beyond their normal small daily blueberry handful. Maybe worrying about getting just the right prescription food is beside the point anymore.
We love our girls. This part is hard, though.
Hi there– I write daily about midlife, parenting, photography, long marriage, mental health, and everyday adventures.
Two-thirds of my kiddos are off at college, and I am figuring out life by processing out loud.
