I still take Ruby with us everywhere we go. She’s the one at home that lately watches me very carefully, and makes sure always to stay near. I am touching her with my toe right now. There’s pretty much no way I can easily split apart the team so we always do everything together. She’s been the reliable one for so long, nobody has to worry about Ruby. Rarely wears a leash, the kind of dog you don’t even notice because she doesn’t do anything bad. Just trots along at my heel and goes along with whatever the plan of the day is. No problem.

It’s easy to not notice Ruby. I’m not yelling at her to shut up, I’m not doing 4 million recalls with her and trying to get her to play with me or take a treat in the forest. I’m not taking away the giant stick she’s dragging around and using as a weapon or trying to get her to swim back across the creek. She’s not doing awesome leave-it and focus when we see another dog, she’s not trying to crawl into a stranger’s purse and go home with them. Ruby’s just right there, and she’s just being a good dog. Quietly. Just because.

She wasn’t always like that. Ruby is the dog that took me down the dog training road and it’s her fault I wear muddy pants everywhere and select clothing based on excellence of pockets. All this agility is definitely all her fault. I learned about positive reinforcement with her out of of sheer, freaked out necessity. I learned how clicker training and tricks can turn a wild, little animal eating, top of the refrigerator reaching, feral thing into a really good dog. Keeping her busy in agility class somehow translated into her being a dog that didn’t want to growl at other dogs on leashes or chase skateboarding kids. Practicing for agility class made us best pals. Ruby made me realize not all dogs just fit into the category of Regular Old Dog.

She’s always had all this stuff wrong with her. Never really that sound. Chronic tendonitis in her biceps, one theory. One of those jumping early dogs, who spent her agility career crashing into stuff until it freaked me out enough to stop. Her back and hind legs can go wonky. She has a permanent immune something something in one of her eyes and progressive retinal atrophy in them both. She can see, but I don’t think very far. And now, not very much hearing.

I don’t think Ruby is even all that old. Maybe about 11. She’s always had that wise old owl vibe. A bit grizzled and leathery. The Mrs. Grandma of the team. You know that when you meet her. Stares past you like she’s thinking about cosmic, philosophic topics. Contemplating string theory. Even though she might just be scoping out potential locations of cat food.

With her sight and hearing loss though, she’s starting to get lost. She got lost just hanging out at work the other day, on her pleasant, grassy knoll. And in the forest the day before. Not lost-lost, but lost enough to her that she couldn’t see or hear us, even though me and the other dogs were right there. This is what breaks my heart. You see her just over there, look up, not see my waving arms or hear my yelling and do this panic look around, twist her head all ways, then run off some random direction so she really gets disoriented. You’ve seen it if you have an old dog. I saw Timmy go through this.

You see this happen and you feel the panic stab you in the heart just like it does your dog. And you know maybe you have to start keeping them on a rope now, tied to you so that never happens bad enough they get lost-lost. Not in the woods, not at work, not in the neighborhood, not somewhere they run off into the water or somewhere they can get hurt.

I think that’s where Ruby’s at now. I could never let anything happen to Ruby.