I cannot help but feel that much has changed from just a short time ago. I took a walk today in my town along long walking route I have mapped out for myself. It includes several hills, after all my town is built on the “side” of a mountain. Yet, it has no resemblance to the great walks of the past I enjoyed with the Blyss borzoi. Then, with Bob, and even for some time after his death, I hiked – not walked – on challenging trails in the Watchung Reservation with the borzoi. My Blog entries of even a year ago are full of those reminisces: walking beneath the lacy canopy if interlocking leaves throughout the dimension of ancient places. Not only do these words not describe my current neighborhood, there are no Blyss borzoi present to accompany me on such a hike. That all stopped as the borzoi aged, and that time came quite pronouncedly during the summer of 2013.
I moved here to the smaller Blyss House I found for us in December 2012, located in the center of my town and at the bottom of the mountain.
Here, I found many wonderful places to walk in the new neighborhood and I stopped taking them to the hiking trails in Watchung Reservation. Besides, they were quite old by then and could no longer withstand the rigors of walking long distances or hiking on steep trails on the mountain. Age claimed them with ruthless rapidity. Blinded, I did not expect to lose two of them in the summer of 2013.
Our sole, remaining borzoi, Paris, is so frail now that only the most abbreviated of walks in the neighborhood are all he can muster. The contrast is devastating to see. And he was my fiercest hunter! How we change, and how time changes everything, changes us, changes love. It can be terrible to witness.