Super girl

Mum and I in Florence back in 2006.

Yesterday I was in Florence and at one point I wandered past Via Santa Elisabetta. I lived in an apartment on this street back in 2006 for about eleven months. I never actively seek out this street when I am in the city so it took me a little by surprise to be standing outside it. All I could think was how I had been there 11 years ago and how Three Paw had been living a parallel life somewhere else at the exact same time; our lives not yet enriched and enmeshed.

And I wondered how I was able to live without her back then and how I will be able to live without her in the future.

I feel especially disappointed in myself for not documenting her past four months post-amputation with more vigour. I like to think it is because I was too busy living each triumphant bound and leap with her. And that if you spend all your time behind the lens or the keyboard, you might just be missing the real magic anyway.

Still, the beauty of having a memory (relatively intact despite a persistently impressive grape intake) means I can recount the highlights now anyway. 

The thing that stands out for me the most was her total acceptance of the change and immediate decision to accept it. From running across the hospital floor within twenty-four hours of her amputation ( and Alberto's accompanying joyful face) to her adaption to the toilet I specially designed for her so that she has not once lain in her own previous work. I mean I like to take a little credit for the genius contraption (an enormous plastic dog bed lined with a pet pad) but the way she spins herself like a wheel so she never lies in the same spot is true genius. 

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6JwDrXCpQgib1ZMSlFDZXl1NkpvbEtMRkgtOFRiTjB4b09F





During these months she has never cried out ( and I wouldn't have blamed her if she did) nor sulked. She has scaled the garden stairs, run the ramp I built up to my bed, and worked out that if she runs to the cushion I set up in the kitchen she can get a meal. Her intelligence and optimism and love of life has been a gift and lesson to me and my love for her is as layered and rich as any other love I have ever felt.

And now she even has a boyfriend...a randaggio from my garden.  Her talents, simply, never cease.

But above all this, she is happy and at peace. And that is what  I love most of all.