It Is Done

Today at work I groomed a dog I will probably never see again.  He's an older boy at fifteen, and has been blind and mostly deaf for the year and a half that I've been seeing him.  And he is such a good boy he breaks my heart.  He came in today completely incontinent with a smell that wouldn't wash out even after five baths.  And five baths is a hard thing for a poor little old man to go through.  Then he's dripping urine and other things while I'm trying to clip pee-soaked hair that doesn't want to clip, and his hips are too stiff for me to lift one leg to get at the really nasty hair, and it's disgusting, I've had his smell in my nose since eight a.m., but worse than that I've had the tears and ache of him clogging me up all day, because I love this little dog, and all I want to do is hug him and tell it will all be all right and it will be over soon.  I had to recommend that his parents take him to the vet for his next groom, where medical supervision will be standing by.  And even while I'm making this recommendation and his mom is trying not to tear up, I know and his mom knows he will probably not live to see this next grooming appointment.

None of this has anything to do with today's news posting, except that apparently death punctuates all my new releases.  I've just uploaded CURVE OF MOON for sale, Curve of Moon being the rewritten version of Wolves' Blood, my not-so-successful attempt at a straight paranormal romance.  There's a long-ass explanation on my reasons for re-writing the novel as a gay romance in the back of it...  in brief, it says, because I wanted to.  And I like it this way.  I like Nico.  And I will never rewrite this particular story again.

Eight months ago I uploaded the final manuscript of Iron and Bone hours before my mother died.  Today I'm uploading the final manuscript of Curve of Moon and praying that somewhere out there a little old dog is not dying.  Or maybe I'm praying that he is dying, peacefully, going to sleep and slipping away without pain or shame into a beautiful After.