A Summer Feeling

with a side story filled with too much information

I wanted to write about summer food this week. The kind that is served crisp and cold, like the melon, cucumber and herby green yogurt salad from the Anna Jones newsletter last week.¹ Or a plate of cold watermelon topped with feta, olive oil and sea salt under soft summer sun.² Or how about a simple bowl of cherries, served over ice? It’s a feeling I wanted to capture, of glistening water, of summer heat, of refreshment, of summer on a plate.

Instead I’m writing from my bed with a sprained back. I’m not sure what I did; it could have been an enthusiastic move at the gym, a spin at dance class, the pot hole that jostled things, or heck, maybe it happened reaching for a bottle of shampoo in the shower. All I know is that here I am, watching leaves from the ash tree sway in the breeze outside my window between moments of scrolling through images of summery food. Beams of afternoon sun are streaming across Dottie who is stretched out, so limber, on the floor.

Oh Dottie. Earlier this week, before I went down, I drove back from the cottage with the dog but without her tin of food. I have lots of time, lying here in bed, to explain the gravity of this situation. So here I go.

We keep Dottie’s food in a tinned steel mess container issued by the Royal Army in WWII to keep food stuff dry and vermin proof. The tin belonged to my mother-in-law’s father, where it sat in their kitchen on the outskirts of Birmingham, housing bread and biscuits and other things needing mice-proofing. Now it lives on the floor in the corner of our kitchen, filled with Dottie’s dry dog food - Purina Pro-Plan Sport, specifically. It houses enough for a week’s worth of meals, and saves us from dragging the giant bag - the kind that looks like a lifeless dead body in your arms - when we travel. We tip portions of the bag into the container, top it with Dottie’s container of meds, then close the loud, heavy, metal lid. It’s not just vermin proof, it’s Larbrador proof as well.

On top of the lid are two metal handles that rotate on a rudimentary hinge. Pinched between the handles are three recipe cards reading EATEN BREAKFAST / EATEN LUNCH WITH MEDS / EATEN SUPPER, a system that James devised to let family members know where Dottie is in her feeding schedule (the cards are essential - Dottie will tell you she hasn’t eaten, lying with her eyes, her face, her body language). We drag this tin, with the paper feeding system and the meds, everywhere we go. Last weekend it went to visit Rose, then it went back into the car and travelled to the Northumberland Strait. My sister keeps food for her dog at our shared cottage, all summer long. She doesn’t drag food around, or have to wedge a hoodie between the tin and a seat to keep the metal from clanging as we bump along back roads. But we stick to this system, dragging this bulky relic everywhere Dottie goes. It helps us remember to pack the most important thing of all: Dottie’s meds. Without them our sweet five year-old yellow lab will wet the bed.

The incontinence began at age two, shortly after she was spayed. We would find Dottie waking up from a nap, laying on a wet dog bed, staring at us through embarrassed eyes. We’d wake up to wet sheets after Dottie had snuck up on our bed in the night, only to fall asleep then wet our bed. There were soaked sofas. Soaked kids beds. Soaked beds at friends’ houses. We always let her out to pee throughout the day and before bed. She clocked thousands of steps a day in a beautiful, wooded park. Her stitches did split open after her spay surgery and James and I had to rush her to the emergency vet hospital, intestines on display, but that surgery healed well and she had seemingly forgotten the trauma of it all. What else could be going on?

I took Dottie back to the vet to find out. Dr. Croft met us in an examining room and squatted down to greet Dottie with a treat. “Are you having trouble with your estrogen, Dottie?” she asked as our normally shy dog rolled over for a belly rub. “When we took out your ovaries and uterus, your estrogen plummeted!” Dr. Croft explained. “Us ladies understand these things,” she said to Dottie, now stretched across Dr. Croft’s lap. “Estrogen is responsible for strengthening and toning the sphincter muscles that keep the urethra tightly closed,” she told me, sensing my need to understand as well. Sphincter. She tracked my eyes as they drifted up and out the window, lost to a Wayne’s World “Sphincter says what?” moment. “There are actually over 60 sphincters in the body,” she said, snapping me back into focus. “We’ll give Dottie some meds to help boost her estrogen and that’ll hopefully get things back in working order.”

Dottie is now on Proin, an estrogen replacement in the form of large, chewable pills. We’ve played with one pill a day (there was leakage.) We forgot one day (that was a disaster). We’ve tried two pills a day (Dr. Croft thought that was too hard on her liver). For now we’ve settled on 1 ½ pills at lunchtime (see above card that reads EATEN LUNCH WITH MEDS). At $2.25 a pill it’s worth it, for the clean sheets alone.

This is why I panicked when I forgot the bulky tinned steel container with her meds and the feeding schedule attached to the handles at the cottage last weekend. On Monday morning, pre-back injury, I lugged a new bag of dog food from the pet store, then put in a request with Dr. Croft for a few emergency pills to tie us over. I’ve just received word that my mom has rescued the tin from the cottage and is bringing to us as I write. She could barely lift it. The tin is the size of a small rectangular suitcase, the kind my grandmother used as a carryon for train travel, the same one my boys later filled with Playmobil and carried around for years. Except Dottie’s tin was meant to be carried by a soldier at war. It’s not practical. But we are a “use what you have” family.

And wait a second, perhaps this is why I am a bad back person?

So if you happen to have fresh cherries and ice cubes in the freezer, do me a favour: place them in a bowl and go sit outside in the sunshine. Or make a cold salad with cucumbers and melon. Or crawl into this July scene from my camera roll a few years ago. Inhale the lemons and dangle red currants, glistening in the afternoon sun, from your earlobes. Who knows what I was making that day. It doesn’t matter; it’s a feeling we are going for here.

1. I love Anna Jones’s food - doesn’t this look good?

2. Inspired by this dreamy scene from Stephanie Stamatis.