The girl is mine, the doggone girl is mine

I am feeling relief and trepidation both. Holly decided to make a change in her future plans. She is of emancipation age in the state of Alaska, after all, and has the right to self-determination. She has also been showing me some neurological symptoms recently. Yesterday she was diagnosed with a brain lesion, and her doctor said there will be no travel for her to join her family in Canada.

Her dad Gary and I had to make some very large decisions in the space of a few minutes and with a couple thousand miles between us. And so now Holly owns us both, and her home is with me.

Gary has had her since she was eight weeks old and I have no right to this dog whatsoever. I feel like I stole something precious, or reached through the phone and did surgery on him without anesthesia. I can't imagine how he must feel to take this act of faith now. I am challenged (and determined) to make sure he never looks back on this with regret and that his heart will heal faster because what he did was selfless.

I also think it strangely coincidental (or not) that just around the time that I lost both my dogs, one to old age (Piper) and one to cancers of the brain and skull (Hunter, a few days later), Holly began her stays with me off and on. It seems to have uniquely positioned me to parent a very old dog with brain cancer. However, Holly is still way more functional than most dogs 5 years her junior, so I am not really considering this a short-term obligation.

Enough. Holly's 17th birthday is June 14 and we have a party to plan.