My little vizsla valentine
My human valentine was away on a work trip on the 14th, but Nosie was happy to stand in.
Sitting here on my living room sofa, morning sunlight streaming in through the wavy-glass farmhouse windows, I think for the millionth time how lucky I am to have the solid warmth of my vizsla dog curled tightly into my side.
I have a migraine this morning—still. Spots above my left cheekbone and upper lip tingle and twitch intermittently. The skin over my left temple feels hot, like I might break out in a sweat, but I never quite do. A pulsing pressure surrounds my left eye, the ominous ghost of the stabbing pain that Ubrelvy just barely keeps at bay. Nausea swishes in my gut, and at the same time, I feel the urge to get up and eat any dopamine-increasing food I can find in the kitchen—chocolate, coffee, sugar. Anything to counteract the dreaded chemical drop, as the hopelessness of this fifth day of premenstrual pain tries to engulf me.
Then, my sleeping dog lifts his nose and kisses my hand on the keyboard. I remember that I have to fight my way through this for him. We’re partners, after all, bonded for life. He’s once again the bright spot that can shine through the depths of my migraine darkness.
This dog on my hip is part pet, part best friend, and part service dog. I adopted him specifically to do seizure work when I was first diagnosed with epilepsy. I chose the breed because they’re active and outdoorsy but also clingy “velcro dogs” in the house, hyper-attuned to their people. If I shed a tear, he’s by my side with hugs and kisses. If I have a migraine, he goes temporarily dormant, lowering his own energy level to match mine so that he can calmly watch over me until I feel better. If I end up on the floor, which happened more often than I’d like to admit in the past year, Nosie puts paws under my head to prop me up and then uses his 47 pounds of sheer muscle to get me into a sitting position. He pushes his back into me so I can lean on him while I stand. He really, really wants me to stand back up in those moments. He also taught himself to help me up the stairs when I was having nightly convulsions after my sudden cardiac arrest.
I’m making Nosie sound like a miracle dog, and he is. But I do not recommend a vizsla unless you need one. They are exceptionally clingy. I heard before adopting Nosie that if you like going to the bathroom alone, you shouldn’t bring this little red bird dog into your house. It’s so much worse than that, though. Despite the fact that our bodies are touching for a large portion of each day (I bought an office chair with room for two; I work from the couch so he can curl up next to me) he gets frantic for contact if I betray him by sitting on a stool at the kitchen island. He’s always hated those stools, and even at age four, he still tries to dive up into my lap like a disorderly puppy when he gets sick of curling up pathetically at my feet, positioning himself for maximum ankle contact and lolling about with ears back to show me what a jerk I am for choosing to sit alone while I eat lunch. Yes, his needs are unreasonable and, often, ridiculous. But for someone with a history of losing consciousness, his need for closeness is as reassuring as it is annoying. He always knows what’s going on with me, and he’s always happy to help.
I laugh when people come over and say, “oh good, you have this nice big yard for Nosie to run in!” Vizslas have very little use for a yard. They are happiest running in a field—a very, very big field, where they can explore for miles, use their noses, and point at wildlife—or physically attached to your person. The yard is a weak stand-in for when we can’t go hiking. Sure, I can toss a ball for a few minutes until we both get bored. He can have the odd zoomies in nice weather. But if I’m gardening, he is rarely content to just chill and walk around or lie in the grass. Annoyed that I’m busy doing something he can’t participate in, he resorts to ingesting sticks—a good way to get my attention, since I don’t tend to enjoy the aftermath a few hours later. The compromise is that I can place him in a “stay” in the screen porch, or his “bird-watching station,” as I call it, where he can watch both the birds and gardener closely.
Vizlsas are made to roam, to travel long distances, but staying within sight and maintaining interaction and mutual attention with their handler. When I forget him for more than 2 minutes in the backyard, he reminds me to let him in by jumping like a jack-in-the-box, adding to the collection of muddy paw marks on the back door, glaring in at me through the window as if to say, “excuse me, lady, you forgot your barnacle!”
For the past year, Nosie’s life shrunk alongside mine. “Daddy dog” Chris has been nice enough to drive us to a wild, outdoor space once a week so that Nosie can stretch those long legs and collect a few ticks for me to pull off his sleek red coat (one of the best things about a vizsla is that they wipe clean after almost any adventure, and insect-vampires are easy to spot!) There were many times, especially early on after cardiac arrest, when I could barely walk a mile due to lack of oxygen from heart failure. But we took Nosie’s pheasant dummy with us to the fields and did some practice. Watching him run about seven miles in huge laps through tall grasses along the Shenandoah was a balm, for sure. But I miss the days when I could get up early before work and drive us over to Mary’s Rock. We could hike a few miles before breakfast, then that weekend, hike ten more into the backwoods of George Washington National Forest. I knew, when I adopted him, that I had a responsibility to keep Nosie moving and exploring. No amount of training can make him other than a hunting dog at heart. So when I stopped being able to walk for hours, our relationship took a hit.
For several months last year, I redoubled my service training efforts. I took Nosie to volunteer meetings, to church, and to cardiac rehab at the local hospital. He needed treats to be persuaded not to jump-kiss anyone who looked him in the eye, but otherwise was a perfect gentleman. For a while, he put up with wearing his vest all over town, and I got within a breath of being ready to go for full public access. Then, I went to NIH in September and my medication was adjusted. I stopped having daily seizure-like episodes. I started to wonder if I even have epilepsy. Technically, I do still have my epilepsy diagnosis and he’s trained in seizure response, so he’s a legitimate service dog by ADA definition. But that seed of doubt had been planted, and I wondered what it meant for the future of our relationship if I stopped having seizures. I wondered if we would be able to return to our bird hunting training one day, which he definitely prefers anyway. Unsure how to proceed, I just gradually stopped making him wear his vest. We rested and we waited.
After I went a few months without convulsions, Nosie returned mostly to pet mode. I believe he knows how I’m feeling and whether or not he has to be on high alert, probably better than I do. When he started seeming annoyed by his service vest and got more rambunctious and distractible during public access practice, I took his resistance as a sign that my need for a service dog had decreased, at least for now. If that changes, I suspect he’ll be ready to refocus—just like he was last time. There’s this assumption among many people that service dogs are always on duty. But just like people, they need breaks, and they go through different phases in life. Gradually, I decided we could both take a break from seeing me as a ticking seizure time bomb, and savor a season of relaxation and play. Recently, when I started to think about trying to drive again someday, it was Nosie’s exercise needs even more than my own love of nature that motivated me to talk to my neurologist and send forms to the DMV. Reason Number One that I moved to the valley was to meander with my vizsla. I want that experience back.
As I finish drafting this post, Nosie gets up, spins, and plops down again so he presses even more tightly into my thigh, one ear tossed over the laptop. I take a break to stroke it, twirl it, and kiss him on the head. Then, I take one of his paws in my hand. My little valentine. My canine sidekick. The source of my simplest, most frequent bursts of gratitude every day.
My left cheek quivers. This migraine shall pass, I remind myself. And then I cling to that soft, strong little paw for a moment before getting up to get some ice.
You can follow Nosie on Instagram. His handle is @zoom_eat_snuggle.