Every now and then a visitor notices the chewed-up chair in my dining room. Tucked under the table, it isn’t obvious, but once spotted it is seemingly out of place. Some have even offered to fix it for me. But I will never fix that chair.

Because not everything is perfect. 

A while ago I had a sweet dog named Olson. He went to the shop with me every day and hid in the back room if anything as threatening as a chihuahua strolled by. Weekday afternoons he waited, happy to see all of the kids streaming out of school, knowing exactly which boy to get excited about. 

Olson sang when he saw one of his favorite people. He loved peanut butter and napping under the piano while it was being played. 

When he was four, he had a seizure. It was unexpected and violent and scary. He was out cold for about a minute afterwards and then back to his old self. We learned to manage his episodes with medication, and he went for a year or more between them. 

Until the day he had seven. Seven seizures. He came out of the first six much like he had the very first one, but after the seventh he was different. 

He got up and started pacing, blindly, knocking into things, bumping into me, through the kitchen, into the dining room, on to the living room, down the hall, back to the kitchen. A giant circle. He paced for hours. Banging into things. No recognition as he paced on by. He paced until he collapsed. And then, after about 15 minutes, he pulled himself off the floor and began again. A constant loop. No recognition. 

I called the vet, as I had after each of the seizures that day, and she said, ‘We need to put him down’. 

No. 

I stayed with him, day and night, for three days.

At the end of the third day we had a family meeting: What were we going to do? We made a list. By the end of the fourth day he needed to stop pacing. And he needed to know who we were. And I needed to sleep. 

That night I went to bed, and my husband stayed up with Olson, still pacing. 

The next morning, I came downstairs, tentative. There he was, tail wagging, eating his breakfast, happy. I was so relieved! We all were. It was joyous. 

After a few hours of peanut butter treats and snuggles I went to my shop, just to check in. I asked my son to keep his eye on Olson, but like many twelve-year-old boys left to their own devices, he ignored this request and dived into his video game. 

When I got home, Olson was pacing. There was a chair knocked over in the dining room, and one side of it was mangled, chewed. I started screaming for my son. 

Headphones on, fingers racing, game streaming, happily oblivious, breaking every house rule, he was fine. He’d missed the whole thing. 

And I’ve never been so relieved. And at the same time completely devastated. Because there was no other option. 

So I have a chewed-up chair in my dining room. That I will never fix. 

Because not everything is perfect. 

© Patricia Zanger