The Chemo Chronicles, Part IV: Uncharted Territory

Albuquerque, N.M., Aug. 7, 2014—Weighed down by an odd sense of trepidation and a congratulatory cake stashed in the cooler behind the seat, we drove out of Albuquerque with a weak, yet excited Henry dog, his faithful wiggly companion, Doodles, and the foreboding realization that we are now headed into unknown territory.

Like all good dogs, Henry waits patiently for permission before
attacking a cake, even if it is made especially for dogs.

After 20 weeks, Henry finally finished his last round of chemotherapy. It is a bittersweet relief. There is no doubt that the weekly treatments had been hard on him. At one point early on in his regimen, he had lost nearly 20 pounds—a quarter of his body weight—and we couldn't help but notice how, at the conclusion of each treatment, a marked lethargy and almost subliminal sadness would creep over our otherwise Gung-ho companion, leading us to question whether the monumental decision to put our six-year-old dog through an uncomfortable gauntlet of extremely costly biochemistry experiments was for his benefit or for ours?

When you can't see the forest for the trees, it's
always good to elevate your perspective to get a clear
view.

While chemotherapy has been shown to reliably poison the cancer cells within a host's body into submission—remission being the proper medical term for it—the collateral damage to the host can be monumental. The vet had told us that chemo for a dog is not nearly as horrible as chemo is for a human, but we're still not convinced. For days after each treatment, we could see real physical and emotional changes in our friend. His eyes would lose their shine, his shoulders would slump, and we could tell he had bad nausea and diarrhea. Thankfully, we noticed the latter early on, so adding some additional medications during the treatments made Henry feel better, and by the 10th week or so we were able to get the weight back on him.

 There ain't no cure for the summertime blues

As we headed into the Jemez mountains after Henry's final treatment in search of a scenic and serene spot where the doggies could enjoy the cake that the great folks at VCA Animal Hospital had given us upon Henry's "graduation" from treatment, we decided a dirt road to an unknown location would be a fitting adventure. Though 20 weeks of chemotherapy have led to "clinical remission"—no detectable cancer cells in Henry's body—there is nearly a mathematical certainty that somewhere inside Henry's 85-pound frame a lone cancer cell lurks. More than likely, there is a reservoir of such cells somewhere within his body. Like patients with HIV infections, disease cells retreat into parts of the body where they thrive despite the onslaught of therapeutic drugs. Once the chemo attack ends, the cells emerge again and begin doing their thing: reproducing and slowly robbing their host of life. Henry's cancer was extremely aggressive. If or when it returns, it probably will do so with a vengeance.

When feeling punky, it's best to go out and find flowers that are
taller than you are.

On the other hand, remission could last a year or two. Perhaps we could even see a miracle and Henry could live out the rest of his life. We just don't know, so we're treating every day as if it could be the last one for our dog. And that's not such a bad thing. I have grown convinced that dogs live their own lives with a similar spirit anyway. If you've ever seen a dog wake up after a night of sleep, you'll know what I'm talking about; they greet each new sunrise with what seems like a surprised exuberance that says, "Wow! I survived another night! How lucky I am!"

Living in the moment

 Even during the worst stretches of Chemo, Henry awoke with undiminished canine gusto. He was eager to see the sun, smell the events that had transpired during the night in our back yard, and taste his breakfast, even if it happened to be the same breakfast he's been eating over and over for six years. Dogs, it seems, rarely seem to dwell on what the future could bring, but instead live in the moment. If only we humans could embrace such unaffected appreciation of the joy of living.

Nothing beats a quiet nap in the shade.

We were winding treacherously along a steep, rocky and rutted dirt road when we saw a juvenile cougar. The beautiful cat took a moment to stare us down as we gawked. Our city dogs, hypnotized by other unfamiliar sights, sounds and smells of the wilderness, apparently did not notice the predator, or if they did, they didn't bark. Moments later, the magnificent animal slunk silently away into the trees, becoming invisible as quickly and unexpectedly as his appearance moments earlier.

At the bottom of a lush canyon, we searched in vain for a stream recorded on maps and believed by land managers to be permanent. Despite the abundant summer rains, the stream bed was dry. The waters apparently had retreated below ground and out of sight, like the bad cells inside of Henry's body had done. We took this as an auspicious sign. Drunk with the desperation that comes with terminal sickness, it's much easier to fall under the spell of magical thinking, to imbue ordinary events with meaning or to see the future in a pile of runes.

Quiet resolve

Near a field of one-eyed Susans, Henry and Doodles feasted on the cake they had been given. It was so quiet that it felt as if we were the only people in the world. The next day we found similar silence on Cat Mesa, where Henry and Doodles camped for the first time in their lives, while the heavens ramped up for the second Super Moon of summer.

Night falls on Cat Mesa and all is well with the world.

The area was eerily quiet. It was as if every other creature had retreated to make way for the namesake mountain lions that have claimed the area as their own.

A small crackling fire, hot cocoa imbued with peppermint schnapps, and a tent with some good mosquito netting made the warm evening even more comfortable. The area was so quiet that it felt as if someone had clapped their hands over both of my ears and were squeezing my skull. It was a heavy silence, but not foreboding. Caroline remarked that it was as if we had popped into a different dimension created specifically for us—one where we could ponder our place in the world without interruption.

At midnight the moon was so bright that the world was still in full color. Instead of staring at the usual gloomy grays of evening, we were seeing the vivid reds, greens and yellows of dusk. This unexpected visual acuity stood in stark contrast to the sobering silence. It was as if we were dreaming.

Inside the tent, our novice-camper dogs were of two different mindsets. Doodles immediately figured out what was going on, so she curled up in her bed instantly. Henry, on the other hand, fidgeted from place to place, finally settling upon the crevice between us. A few moments later, sleep held us all captive until sunrise.

Once the chemo wears off, it's business as usual: Tug-o-war!

In the morning, Cat Mesa was alive again with the normal sounds of the world. Although the difference between the previous day and the morning was not lost on us, we wasted no time pondering the runes that had been tossed by an unseen hand so obviously in front of us. Sometimes things just happen, I guess, and what it really boils down to is whether you trust the road that lies ahead or not. 

Despite having to clear one dead-fall along the way, we found our way out of the mountains and back home. 

See you on down the road.

The Chemo Chronicles, Part III: Getting in Hot Water and Pulling the Pinkie

Los Alamos, N.M.—We celebrated the completion of round four of Henry's five-round, 20-week chemotherapy regimen by partying on a weeknight at San Antonio Hot Springs, a wonderful oasis of geothermal activity located right in our back yard in the Jemez Mountains.

A dog wary of the hot springs

We got the idea while driving back from Henry's chemo appointment a few days earlier. The fourth round of Henry's CHOP protocol—in which one of four extremely nasty drugs that destroy cellular DNA and suppress cell division are administered each week as a way to poison Henry's cancer into submission—is extremely difficult on Henry. The inter-venous toxin can destroy normal tissue or destroy the heart muscle if administered incorrectly, so you can imagine that if it's drubbing the shit out of cancer cells within the poor dog's body, what it must be doing to his normal cells at the same time.

Nevertheless, every time Henry gets out of the car at the VCA Hospital in Albuquerque, he gets a chemo-woody. As we sat in the waiting room before his therapy, a same-sex couple fussing over a Bichon Frise with some type of oozing-eye ailment suddenly went deathly quiet. They were staring, mouths agape, at Henry, who was reclining casually with his hind legs splayed out and his fully erect pink stick poking proudly out of its fur covered scabbard. I looked at the couple and shrugged; there's a reason someone coined the expression "behaving like dogs."

The vet assistant didn't miss a beat as she came into the waiting room and efficiently took the leash from my hand and led an eager Henry off toward the therapy room.

"Looks like someone's excited for his treatment," she chirped!

Detour

Excited dogs get to ride in the cab of the
truck instead of the way back!

A few hours later, Henry came back out into the waiting room, full of poison, bonerless, and a lot more lethargic than he had been just a few hours earlier. He was weak and thirsty, and the Duke City was hotter than a dancer at TD's Show Club on a Friday night after Pay Day. We decided that a drive through the Jemez and into the cooler shadows of the pines might perk the poor boy up a little. The afternoon rains had started in earnest, and a large anvil-shaped cloud was brewing above the mountains. After detouring toward Fenton Lake—only to find the area extremely crowded and trashed out by throngs of filthy city dwellers—we took a dirt road east. After a short rest in the cool green grass of a pine meadow, we all felt better. Instead of heading straight home, however, we thought a drive down toward San Antonio Hot Springs might be in order.

A few minutes down the road, we heard a strange whoosh, as if I had gone through a shallow puddle. But the road was dry. I stopped the car and we walked back up the road to see what we might have run over. We found a few odd-looking squares of a glassy material that looked like obsidian, a black volcanic glass that can be found easily in the Jemez if you know where to look. But there was no other obsidian on the road or nearby.

The scene of the crime.

"That's odd," I muttered to myself.

Suddenly, I was struck with a realization, and a terrifying one at that. I jogged over toward the camper shell and noticed that the rear window had shattered. All of the glass, except for the few morsels we found on the road, had landed in a pile inside the camper shell. Right next to the dogs.

We panicked.

After clearing them out and checking them over for damage, we realized how lucky we had gotten. They were fine. But there sure was a lot of sharp fine glass to pick up. We did our best, but there were enough shards left over that we didn't want to put the dogs back in. We moved our gear to the back of the truck and let the dogs hang out in the access cab. It was an exciting prospect for Henry's little friend, Doodles, who excitedly looked out the window as we drove. Henry settled in for a nap. A little ways down the road, we met a gate. The driving part of our journey was over. We walked a ways down the road past the gate and toward the hot springs, but we realized that the springs were still a ways away. It was late in the day, so we turned around, loaded up and made our way home.

Partying on a school night

You should play with a big, pink rubber
bone every chance you get.

But the thought of soaking in the warm waters of San Antonio hot springs beckoned us for the next few days, haunting our sleep and our daily conversation. I hadn't taken a dip in the those magical waters since my college days. We decided to head up after work mid-week. A steady drizzle and an American culture conditioned not to pursue leisure activities (other than drinking in bars or pubs, which is totally culturally accepted) after work ensured that we'd have the place to ourselves.

Sure enough, we were right. We doffed our clothes, giggled and jumped in the nice hot pool just as the sun disappeared over the ridge. The dogs were intrigued by the spectacle. Henry put his paws in the warm water and quickly retreated. He took a short taste. Disgusted and confused, the dogs stayed at bay while we soaked under the relentless rain.

As we drove home, the excitement in the vehicle was palpable. It had been another big adventure for a dog whose days are numbered. The nearly full moon was waxing into Super Moon status, so the woods were bright enough to navigate without headlights. 

When it's all said and done, a dog can
never get too much love—even if that dog
happens to be a hamburger thief.

 Spoiling the dog

Henry's lymphoma has gone into complete remission, and we've been trying to spoil him in a good way by taking him on adventures, giving him lots of pets and conversation, and surprising him with unexpected culinary delights.

He seems to have gotten used to the latter, because a few days after returning from our hot springs soak and in the company of dinner guests, Henry decided to help himself to an extra homemade cheeseburger that was up on the counter waiting to be claimed. Our dinner party guests spoke too late for a second burger, because before we knew it, Henry had put his paws on the counter—a stunt he's never pulled before—and gobbled down the cheeseburger before we could holler, "No!" (Early on, the vet had warned us that prednisone can give a dog an insatiable appetite that can inspire bad behavior, but Henry has always been a compliant little fellow, so we had been unconcerned about such things during the first 16 weeks of treatment.)

As we looked at him sternly, we could see a little smile creep across his face. He must have thought, "you won't do anything to me because I have cancer." He is a smart dog.

Shortly after the hamburglary, we were out playing tug of war with a ridiculous pink bone. Life is good for Henry right now and I suddenly understand why going to the vet gives him a boner. I guess I'd have one, too, if I felt as good after being on Death's doorstep.

See you on down the road! 

The Chemo Chronicles, Part II: Solstice Sunset and the Trials of Time Travel

LA BAJADA MESA, N.M., June 21, 2014—The Summer Solstice is a time of chances—an opportunity for renewal and new growth. In some cultures it marked the beginning of the year; in others, people celebrated the day in brilliant white robes and headdresses of flowers, dancing carefree until the last drop of daylight evaporated from the sky and ushered in the nurturing warmth of summer.

Henry, left, loves adventure; Doodles, on the other hand, gets nervous

 With the knowledge that this year could possibly be the final summer for our dog, Henry, we set off to find a new location for our annual ritual of toasting in the summer season at sunset on the longest day of the year. Our past solstice celebrations have included climbing to the top of a water tank where we had precisely inscribed the sun's point of departure along the horizon, hiking to natural landmarks that capture a glint of sunlight and project them onto symbols pecked into stone, or simply gazing at Earth's one and only mysterious life-giving orb as it dove deep into the Pacific Ocean.

Life and beauty are tenacious

Our home in the mountains is not optimal for viewing the solstice sunset, so I had thought for several days about a location that would allow us to watch the sun traverse the sky and set majestically in the west after illuminating our little part of the world for more than 14 hours. Unfortunately for us, mankind's thirst for "progress" has made suitable spots harder to find over the years: the water tower has been torn down, we are a long way from the ocean, and many sacred calendar sites have been eradicated to make way for development. As the day drew near, I finally came up with a grand idea—a spot that would provide Henry with the cat-bird's seat for the Sun's traverse along the Tropic of Cancer.

Bright Idea

About 20 miles southwest of Santa Fe, the desert landscape suddenly plunges some 700 feet to the bottom of a formidable escarpment of volcanic rock. The landmark is so well known in the state and in Spanish legend, that it became the demarcation point of two distinct regions of New Mexico: the Rio Arriba, or upper river section; and the Rio Abajo, the lower river section of the state. This dividing line is known as La Bajada, or "The Descent," and it seemed a perfect place to watch the transition of spring into summer.

At the Edge of the Cochiti reservation, an alignment of the old Route 66 winds its way up the lava cliffs from the lowlands to the mesa above. Three miles to the south, a never-ending line of cars whizzes to the top of the escarpment along a kinder, now modern path now known as Interstate 25.

The old Route 66 bridge still exists near Cochiti Reservoir

Tradition says the original serpentine road spiraling up the cliff face has been in use for more than 800 years and dates back to the days of the Camino Real. The same road used by invading Spaniards later became a route for Model T Fords to drive up backward (a necessity of gravity-fed gas tanks) during trips along the Mother Road. Hospitality maven Fred Harvey called for improvements to the road to bolster the burgeoning tourist trade as Americans became fascinated with The West and Harvey Motor Coaches transported curious Easterners from the Territorial Capital of Santa Fe to the mysterious pueblos of nearby Native Americans.

The relatively recent basalt ledges upon which the 18-foot-wide road grade rests were constructed by prison inmates and laborers from nearby pueblos. The road remained in use until about 1924, when it received a gentler alignment that became obsolete 13 years later when the current route became the official highway between Santa Fe and Albuquerque.

 Magic in the Air

We held out hope that the power of the Solstice could help transport us back in time to the days of Route 66 and the heyday of New Mexico culture if we gathered atop La Bajada for our annual ritual this year. Perhaps, if luck and the Old Gods were with us, if we viewed the solstice from such a sacrosanct vantage point, we would be transported into the past and to an era before the cancer cells had taken root in Henry's lymph nodes, and we would be able to return to present day along a parallel route in the time-space continuum to good health and restoration.

The beginning of our journey was auspicious. As we wound out of Los Alamos toward Totavi, we saw a modern manifestation of the trickster Kokopelli walking on the shoulder of U.S. 502. The hunchbacked figure wore a wide brimmed hat and was carrying a long flute as he made his way toward the Phillips 66 gas station at the bottom of the hill. He was not hitchhiking and he seemed unconcerned to be walking alongside a busy highway. I did a double take in the rear view mirror.


"Did you see that?" I asked Caroline.

"Kokopelli, you mean? Yeah. I saw him."

For whatever reason, neither of us was particularly surprised by the unexpected appearance.

A few miles down the road at San Ildefonso Pueblo, I saw a native gentleman standing out in the open desert holding an iPad up in front of his face with both hands. The scene was strangely poignant—reminiscent of an older ritual in which one of his ancestors would be presenting an offering to the sacred winds. Unlike our ancestors who were in close contact with the natural world, we modern men record our deeds with digital petroglyphs and consult Wikipedia instead of our elders.

I guided the truck toward our destination with the same hands that earlier had fed Henry five poisonous tablets concealed in cheese. The dose had been prescribed as treatment for cancer and delivered in a medicine bottle, although the instructions cautioned me not to administer the chemical—enough to kill a three-year-old child—without gloves. Although this protocol is widely accepted as one of the four normal courses of treatment in chemotherapy, I still hold a certain amount of guilt and trepidation knowing that I've used something as wholesome as cheese to trick my dog into ingesting something lethal. The Germans lured jews in for a shower during the Third Reich; I sometimes wonder whether my "gift" for my dog is any less dastardly. 

 Stones in my Passway

La Bajada provides a formidable landscape

Cognitive dissonance aside, we reached the old Route 66 bridge at Cochiti about two hours before sunset. Someone had lined the roadway with upturned roofing nails. Luckily I saw them before they could do any damage, and I stopped and removed as many of them as I could find. Nearby, free roaming cows munched nonchalantly on the green grass that stood in stark contrast to the rest of the desert surroundings thanks to a trickle from the Rio Santa Fe and gurgling acequias piped in from Cochiti Lake. The waterways were lousy with cow dung and I wondered why people take the health of their water for granted in a land that has precious little water to begin with?

The little dirt road turning off the main road toward the old Route 66 alignment was narrow, rutted and treacherous. I put the truck in four wheel drive and cautiously crawled up the road. About 500 yards later, the grade deteriorated into a sketchy landscape of deep, off-camber ruts littered with jagged volcanic boulders. This bend in the road afforded me a slight chance of turning around—perhaps the last one I might have until the top of the grade. I decided to get out and survey the road before I passed this seeming point of no return.

I believe my truck might have been able to make it through the next 500 yards of hellish terrain, but I had some nagging doubts in my mind. At any rate, the possibility of navigating a terrible unknown four-wheel-drive track an hour before sunset with two dogs in the back and in a landscape where the residents mine the passageway with roofing nails seemed foolish at best. I put the truck in four-wheel-low and executed a tricky three point turnaround without incident.

At the edge of the Rio Arriba and the Rio Abajo

We found ourselves on the present day alignment climbing up La Bajada hill feeling slightly defeated and wondering what to do next. I had read up on the history of the road and knew that the old alignment made its way into Santa Fe via La Cienega and the village of Cineguilla. I reckoned that the area must still have dirt roads leading out to the mesa's edge, and after a quick consultation of Google Earth, I saw evidence of passage scraped lightly into the desert landscape. After a couple of false starts in La Cienega, one which led us down a dead-end road to a private residence where the owner had adorned his fence posts with boots—perhaps the boots of hapless travelers?—we wound our way out of the fertile river valley and up onto the mesa top.

Using Tetilla Peak to the north as our reference, we rumbled through the desert and finally picked up a power-line road that had seen better days. I recognized the terrain from Google Earth, so I headed west with confidence that we would reach the edge of the La Bajada escarpment well before sunset.

 A Destination Worth Reaching

Toasting the summer solstice

With just a half an hour left in the day, we pulled up to the top of the last switchback of the road we had abandoned an hour earlier. We had reached the top of the old Route 66 alignment!

The dogs were thirsty, so we allowed them the first toast of the day. We grabbed our gear and walked down the road to the first big switchback, which overlooked the great expanses of the Rio Abajo section of the state. From this vantage point the sun blazed high in the west above the peaks that would have obscured it at home. In the valley below, sunlight glinted off of Cochiti Reservoir and the fat free-range cows looked like slow-moving ants.

End of the day but not the end of days for this dog

As tradition dictates, we toasted the end of the day with fine cold beers, a large wedge of brie, olives, fruits and other assorted delicacies. As the sun made its final curtain call, the winds suddenly stopped and the world was plunged into a most excellent silence. Henry the dog climbed up on an outcropping of dark lava rock to watch the sunset, while his little companion Doodles chased grasshoppers and searched for rodents.

Once the sun winked out of sight, we walked down the road to see whether vehicle passage would have been possible. Our short survey was inconclusive. As we climbed back up the road bed with a warmth in our hearts, the initials of long-gone and recent travelers scratched into the rocks alongside the path reminded us that no one but heroes can take a journey on ground where none have trod. The Earth is for mere mortals such as us.

See you on down the road.

The Chemo Chronicles, Part I: Doggie Make-A-Wish and Father's Day Memories

Jemez Mountains, NM—About 10 weeks ago our dog, Henry, was diagnosed with an extremely aggressive Stage IV lymphoma. As he lay dying before our very eyes late one Saturday night at the emergency vet 100 miles away from home, the veterinarian told us that chemotherapy or euthanasia were basically our only options. When your dog is only six years old and he goes from being extremely healthy and happy one day to very sick and sad three days later, there's not a lot of time to consider options, particularly when the vet says she could see the cancer cells taken from his badly enlarged lymph glands subdividing before her eyes right there in the microscope. We had no good choices.

So we chose the chemo.

 The Canine Chemo Conundrum

Many of our friends thought we were nuts. "He's only a dog, a stray rescued from the pound," some would say.

"How much did you say that cost?" others would ask suspiciously, raising their eyebrows and wondering whether we had suddenly come into some kind of windfall that they didn't know about.

But to us, there was no other choice. Yes, Henry was a stray who ended up at the pound—a damaged  and otherwise unremarkable animal who had managed by sheer luck to escape from awful circumstances—and yes, when we decided to adopt him, he pretty much hit the jackpot: Already in his short time on Earth, Henry has had a life that some dogs might only dream of. He has been bathed in love; he has received the greatest care, with good long walks each day, a fine doggie playmate to romp with, a soft bed to sleep in, never-ending supplies of rubber bones and antlers to chew on, and two pairs of eager hands that are always willing to provide a good scratching around the ears or under the chin to remind him what a good boy he is.

Some people have told us that in itself is more than enough—that we should call it good, save some money, avoid some long-term pain, and administer an inexpensive and trauma-free dose of heavy barbiturate to dispatch our little friend off to wait beside the Rainbow Bridge. And maybe they're right. We will face that eventuality soon enough. It is pretty much a mathematical certainty that once Henry has completed his 20 weeks of chemo, it's only a matter of time before the lymphoma takes over again. He could have two weeks or a year or perhaps more after the conclusion of chemotherapy. But the odds for longer-term survival are not in Henry's favor. Probably a very short time after the veterinarians administer their final dose of poisonous treatment to Henry, the cancer will repopulate his body with a zeal and efficiency unseen in few organisms, and the invaders will take over and steal the light from his eyes, the joy from his perfect disposition and the softness from those wonderful ears of his. Once that happens, we will have but one humane choice.

And this is exactly why we have endeavored to compress an exciting, happy life into whatever time Henry has left. We have decided to create our own version of Make-A-Wish for our dog.

 Caution: Live Animals on Board!

Last week we had finally caught up on our credit-card payments (it is true that chemo therapy for a dog is ridiculously expensive) and adventure planning, so it seemed fitting that Father's Day would be our first big adventure. We loaded dogs, pancake batter, cooking utensils, water, orange juice, bug repellent, first-aid kits, phones, towels, sleeping bags, guns, doggie beds and pretty much anything else we could think of into the car and headed off for the woods.

My father and mother used to do the same thing when I was a kid. Except they had no pets. My brother or my childhood friends and I took on that role, and we happily rode in the back of the pickup truck more times than I can count. Mom was obsessive about eating and dad was obsessive about driving and shooting at things, so once a month we'd make a pilgrimage into the woods for blueberry pancakes and exploratory journeys down long, unmarked dirt roads. Those adventures have fed my memories for decades, so we figured they'd do the same for our dogs.

In the shadow of the Bald Mountain (Cerro Pelon) in Rio Arriba County and near the northern edge of the Valles Caldera National Preserve, we prepared pancakes in a meadow that had not been burned by wildfire. I had forgotten what live trees looked like, particularly fir and spruce varieties. While we dined on bacon and eggs, and pancakes dressed in enough Mrs. Butterworth's to draw in yellow jackets from points far and near, I pictured my father's smiling face. He would have been holding out his plate for another helping of pancakes with one hand, while using the other one to tuck a pant leg into the top of a cowboy boot. The hot June sun overhead would have caused him to squint, but even then, the light in his eyes would have still outshone the brilliant, golden orb floating in a sea of robin-egg blue sky high above the trees.

I don't even have a photo of my father. The Cerro Grande fire robbed me of all of those, as well as countless other tangible reminders of bygone days. But memories are powerful and they create their own snapshots—the kind that don't yellow or fade with age. Unlike Polaroids or scrapbooks, memories become more saturated and colorful with each passing day. As I looked down at my canine companions, who were covered in a layer of dust that had been kicked up during a mad dash after some kind of forest-dwelling rodent, and fed them each a tiny scrap of bacon, I wondered whether dogs remember things, or do they simply live out each day as if it's the only one there is?

As we loaded back up for the rest of the trip, I reckoned that if none of us woke up tomorrow, we could say we'd had a pretty great last day on Earth. If we did wake up tomorrow, then we'd be able to remember one heck of a time. Either way, we had been successful.

 Swimming in Fun

 As we drove down out of the mountains, which were surprisingly uncrowded despite the fact that it was Father's Day, we stopped at Abiquiu Lake. I thought of what Henry might say if he could ask the Make-A-Wish people for something, and I swear I could hear his voice in my head, plain as day, saying, "Well, Mister, I've never been a very good swimmer, and I could stand a bit more practice before I go."

Heavy waves from high winds began to take over the lake, and representatives from the Army Corps of Engineers took up megaphones to coax boaters out of the water just as we rolled up to the lake's edge. Henry wasted no time channeling his inner Labrador and wading out into the waves. Once his feet could no longer touch bottom, we saw how painfully awkward his swimming style was. He began to yaw in the heavy surf, and for a moment I contemplated whether I would need to play lifeguard to an 80-pound dog. But he recovered nicely and was game to retrieve a stick several times from deep water.

Although the dogs had been restless and pacing in the back of the truck earlier in the day, there was nary a sign of them as we made our way home. A tired dog is a good dog, and both of them were on their best behavior somewhere in the heart of dreamland.

Back home, we enjoyed a beer while reflecting on a satisfying day. Henry enjoyed chips and salsa while our backs were turned. He seems to know he can get away with a lot more stuff these days now that he's dying of cancer. I don't fault him a bit.

See you on down the road.