For the last six months, our Golden Retriever, Annie, has been getting increasingly lethargic. She sleeps more than ever. She walks slower than ever. She has Horner’s disease which has caused her eye to droop to the point where she can no longer see out of her right eye. She use to sleep in the bedroom with my wife and me and she no longer does so. She won’t eat out of her bowl. We have to put the food in our hands and offer it to her. She didn’t eat at all several days last week. At her last exam, we discovered that her weight had dropped by 15 pounds since January.

We put her on thyroid medication thinking that would perk her up and it did. But while she no longer slept all day long, she would spend many minutes pacing in circles around the living room of our house, lie down for a time and then start pacing again.

We took her to a vet last week and he thinks there may be a neurological issue. He told us to take her off the thyroid medication. Next week, we may have an MRI done to see if we can learn what’s going on although, at 11 years old, we wouldn’t put her through surgery. Perhaps there’s medication she can take.

In the meantime, last night at 10 PM, as we were just falling off to sleep, Annie had a seizure. We didn’t know it was a seizure until the vet at the 24-hour clinic we took her to, told us that’s what it was. We thought she was having a nightmare.

My wife Carol heard thumping in the living room and there was Annie, desperately trying to get up from the tile floor. She kept falling back down. We’d help her up and she’d fall back down.

As we were helping her up, she began walking around the room like a drunk, banging into the walls and furniture.

By the time we got to the clinic 15 minutes away, the seizure was over and Annie was able to walk into the clinic (in fact, the seizure ended just about the time we lifted Annie into the car for the ride to the clinic).

At the clinic, the vet sedated her, drew blood, did a chest X-ray and observed her. All the tests were negative. We’re left with the possibility that her regular vet was right in suspecting neurological damage. We have an appointment with that vet in two days.

Thanks for sticking with this lengthy litany of woes because I have a point I want to make. Once again, Annie has taught me something. She has taught me that, indeed, suffering is optional.

Unlike my wife and me, Annie doesn’t appear to be suffering over any of this. The emergency vet and our regular vet don’t think she’s in pain. As I write this, she is sleeping soundly, apparently unconcerned that another seizure might occur. We took her on a long walk this morning and she was her usual sniffing, peeing, pooping self.

Perhaps she is suffering. She can’t tell me. All I know for sure is that I am. And I’m suffering not because of what’s here in the present. Suffering is rarely in the present.

No, I’m suffering because, suddenly, I’m living into a possible future that won’t include Annie and I’ve been rehearsing what that future may be like. Instead of fully loving Annie now, as she is, my life is tinged with the sadness of that possible future. Doing so, keeps me from enjoying her fully right here and right now. And I’m committed to enjoying her fully because I love her fully.

It made me think of all the other moments I don’t enjoy fully because of thoughts about the future. I was having coffee with a friend and, as we were talking, my mind drifted to some work I had to complete. I ran into a neighbor as I was walking Annie and, as we were conversing, I was thinking about how I had to get home to watch some television show. I was on the phone with my sister and I watched the clock to calculate when it would be okay to end the conversation. As I type this, my mind strays to the to do list on the desk.

There’s a man at my gym that I see every morning. He’s about 70 and always has a smile on his face. One day, he told me he has severe asthma and diabetes that requires him to carefully monitor everything he eats. Yet there he is every morning with a smile on his face and a “HI, how are you?” for everyone.

I asked him how he maintains his positive attitude and he told me that he wakes every morning and repeats several times, “I’m happy, I’m healthy, I’m healing.”

I’ve started doing that. I wonder what Annie’s version of that mantra is. She is my role model. She never seems to choose suffering. I’m committed to doing the same.

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