We often think our pain and heartbreak are unprecedented, and if our eyes and hearts are open, learn this is false.

Empathy is a hard and long lesson. Then we live and experience life. The things that torment me the most are the things that connect me to all of the people who are alive.

Oddly, in my hospice and therapy work, i have seen death and illness close-up and many times, and it has taught me a great deal about empathy.

But my life with dogs has been different, rich, challenging, rewarding. I have had the pleasure of having some great dogs, and when they left the world, they left quickly, they were ready to go.

Gus is one of these experiences of life that challenges me emotionally.  This is new to me.

All of my dogs who died have gone suddenly and quickly, I had not yet had to endure a chronic, always fatal disease with a dog, a disease that moves slowly and mysteriously, and about which almost nothing is really known.

Gus is not ready to go, he loves every minute of life, and brings us great laughter and joy.  His spirit is on fire, and no dog with a spirit like that is ready to go.

Yet his sickness is never far away, a challenge to me and the way I have always looked at the world and lived my life. I can’t control this illness or fully comprehend it, I can only tinker with it and make things a little better or a little worse.

Yesterday, Gus rode with us to Vermont to pick up Maria’s wool. He stood on the panel between us, put his head on my shoulder and fell asleep, snoring like a an old B-25 bomber in a World War II movie. Eventually he made he way onto my chest and fell asleep again on my shoulder.

Moments like this are especially meaningful to me, I love to nurture and I love to be loved. I haven’t always had love, and I appreciate it when I see it and feel it. By the end of the trip, Gus had spit up on me twice, spitting some foul-smelling bile onto my jeans and my shirt and sweater.

It was an hour or so before we would get home, and I foolishly had brought no towels or disinfectant spray.

He vomited a third time, this one on the panel between us, bright between the panel and the driver’s seat, deep down and onto the floor. We held our  breath on the way home, on that journey there is really no place to stop.

Later in the day, Gus hopped up onto my favorite chair and spit up again, this time on my sweater and pants again. And again, I changed my clothes.

What was it, I asked myself over and over again. Too much yoghurt or recovery food? Too much of the bland gastroenteric food? Not wet enough? Too wet? Too much of the new food too son? Was it the car ride? Time of day? Something he ate on his walk in the yard? In the house? In his vomit, we often find rabbit and sheep pellets, they are everywhere, even if we never see him eating them. Was that it?

The answer was the same every day. Don’t know, aren’t sure.

I hate helplessness, I have felt it often and deeply in my life, and I vowed not to feel it again. I was kidding myself.

Once a week I tell Maria this can’t work, I don’t wish to live like this, we really can’t do this for years and years. We need to think about putting him down. We work hard we have little free time, I don’t want to waste it cleaning up or trying new foods or holding Gus upright after every meal.

Then, a minute later, I’ll find Gus sitting on my chair or perched on the sofa with a toy for me to throw or play tug-of-war. Remember that dogs are not allowed on the sofas in our house and i don’t play tug of war with dogs.

When I go upstairs to bed, Gus is always waiting for me on the bed, I don’t know how he always knows I’m coming. His squiggles like a fleeing garter snake, and jumps up and showers me with kisses,  then growls and challenges me to wrestle with him. I oblige, always.

Once or twice a week, I tell Maria that I’m out of ideas, I’ve tried every combination of food there is, I’m out of gas, we should think about finding another home for him, if possible. Some people are committed to doing this, I’m not. It’s not how I wish to live with dogs.

Maria usually smiles, and says, “oh, you just love Gus so much.” Not that much, I usually mutter. This morning, I tried yet another combination of foods, this one simpler and more nutritious. If Gus loses  weight, that would be the beginning of the end.

Five days a week, I think I am finally getting on top of it, finding the right foods, feeding him upright, offering the right amounts at the right time. And good for me we’ll be fine.

Today was a very good day. I saw Gus spit up a bit, once on the kitchen floor, once in his own mouth, he swallowed it. Sometimes I can see his comfort when he regurgitates, but Gus is not a moper or a sulker. He bounces right back and is ready to play, run outside, take ride in the car, or hop up onto a lap.

He is a world-class cuddler. In the morning, when I wake up he is on the pillow, hovering above me, waiting for my eyes to open. When they do, he pounces, licking me up one side of the face and down the other, making all kinds of strange grunting sounds.

What, really, can you do with a dog like this, other than to keep mixing and matching, recording vomits, spit-ups and regurgitations, washing a lot of clothes and keeping a good supply of Nature’s Miracle under the kitchen sink.

Human beings are remarkable creatures, truly, I think the answer is always just around the corner, when the answer is, of course, right under my nose.

There is nothing heavier, than compassion, wrote Milan Kundera. Not even one’s own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone or something, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.