by Carol Roper

The house was quiet now at a few minutes to 8:00 a.m. The first two hours upon awakening were pandemonium, a word rarely used in contemporary times but a suitable description of the events that occurred each morning around 5 a.m.

But now the sun was above the two-floor house across the street and I was at the outside table on the deck. Nearby were the two dogs: the white, ten-to thirteen-year-old geriatric terrier mix female I’d adopted eight years ago and the newly acquired, brown approximately three-month-old puppy possibly Lab/Ridgeback mix I’d rescued three weeks ago. Both were fed. The geriatric dog sat at a distance, balefully eyeing the puppy spread out on a dog bed, chewing the head off a Frankenstein dog toy.

I felt sorry for my older dog’s plight. I’d tried treats and special attention on walks together, which she enjoyed, but when they ended, she went back to eyeing the puppy like a jealous lover. Worse, if the friendly, puppy tried to engage, the older dog, she growled, which didn’t dissuade the puppy at all.

Jealousy is an ailment for which, like the common cold, there’s no cure—it must run its course. To ease my geriatric dog’s distress, I gave her cannabidiol drops. It was difficult to know if CBD oil had the desired effect, but I thought it might because the one morning I forgot it, she was soon sniffing around me until I went to the kitchen, retrieved the bottle, drew the amount into the dropper as demonstrated by our veterinarian and squeezed it into her mouth. She licked her lips.

Let me give you a brief description of how this morning unfolded.

On or around 5:40 a.m., I opened my eyes. That was all. I didn’t cough or stretch or move—I just opened my eyes. Instantly, there came the poignant whine of the puppy, who slept more or less, on a dog bed on the floor near my bed and whose ears were so sensitive that apparently, she could hear the flutter of my eyelids. Or maybe a change in my breath that indicated I was conscious. Then came this woeful cry of loneliness. Sometimes I ignored her and she stopped in about 30 seconds. Today though, I leaned over and saw her front paws on the bed frame and her big brown eyes looking into mine. A few days ago, I’d lifted her onto the bed only to have her excitedly rooting around for tissues and potentially a spot to pee and I swiftly returned her to the floor. But this morning I scooped her tiny body up onto the bed so she could be close to the giant human. (Compared to her I was giant; to anyone else I was a 5-foot-tall, 126-pound human female of a certain age.) As soon as her feet touched the sheets, she dove toward the curve of my neck, a little close to my jugular vein, I reached protectively for cover but realized she was just trying to nuzzle, not kill, me. The next moment she was in puppy-land sleep. I felt her breath on my neck, her soft fur under my hand, the rhythmic beat of her heart on my chest, and I smiled. I never knew life could be this content.

BLOG written  by  Carol Roper

ⒸCarol Roper Copyright 2025

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