January 27, 2008 – It is possible to know what a dog thinks or feels? Sometimes, maybe. But we have to be careful about it. Dogs are not people, which makes them so remarkable, and I don’t want them to be like us, or they’d start suing each other and going on cable talk shows to shout and scream. It’s too easy to attribute our behavior to dog’s, our thought to them. But they are animals, and their minds are alien, mysterious, instinctive. Still…
  Still, there is no doubt, especially in the wake of Glen’s calling hours yesterday, that Izzy is not himself. Since Glen’s death last week, Izzy has barely moved, curling up by my feet, holding up under his hideaway chairs and sofas. Izzy lay by Glen’s casket yesterday, then spent time with Ann, and the family, and then came home and has hardly moved, other than to come up in the middle of the night, jump up onto the bed, put his shoulder on my chest, and sigh a few times.
  Izzy is one of the most cheerful and active creatures I’ve ever met, so this behavior is clearly different.
  On his walks, he sniffs a bit, and then seems spent. In fact, spent is the term I would use for him. He is deflated, law-affect, drained. It’s possible that he was just working harder during this hospice work than I realized, or it’s possible that he sees himself as having failed in some way, because of Glen’s death and the family’s sadness. I have to be honest –  I don’t know. And I don’t think I know. I’m not even sure I want to know.
  I do want Izzy to recover, and this morning, we went out to the big pasture, and I threw the slingshot ball for Rose, and Izzy chased her, and then Lenore chased him, and then I let Rose and Izzy go to the sheep, and the two of them had a blast, running the sheep from the pen to the feeder together.
  I took this photo of him right after. He looked better, and is now resting again.