Maya

Just a week or ten days ago, I could toss her a biscuit and she would effortlessly catch it in mid air.

This morning she doesn't even see it and has to hunt it down.  I watch her stumble on the aluminum food bowl and come perilously close to walking into the cabinet.  To be sure, I tear a slice of cheese into strips and hold it in front of her - she stares to the left of it, sniffs anxiously - but doesn't see it.  I kneel down, take her muzzle in my hand and look at her eyes, praying that it's a trick of the light, knowing that it's cataracts.  My little girl is blind.  Maybe not completely, surely not fatally, but certainly close enough.

Before we leave for the vet's, I let her and the other two out in the back yard.  She steps off the low end of the deck and trips, nearly falls.  The front steps are more than she navigate.  I lift her into the passenger seat and she sits quietly for this last drive.

The vet confirms the blindness and the blood sample confirms diabetes.  Her glucose is so high it doesn't register on the monitor.  The prognosis is not good - a special diet and daily injections for the rest of her life - and she'd still be blind.  He hates telling me this almost as much as I hate hearing it.  

I shake my head.

The injection is quick, administered gently.  She lays her head on my arm, her eyes close, and in less than a minute her heart stops.  It's a kindness.  It's humane.  It's the right decision.  I've never believed in extending life just because we can.

I miss her.