I just walked into my family room to find Chessie sleeping on my couch. I immediately thought of that scene in Alien when the crew of the space ship watched – stunned – as something moved through John Hurt’s torso before it ate its way out.

Not that I actually think anything alien is going to eat out of Chessie’s torso, although I have to admit, her black and white speckled belly skin punctuated with elongated moles and warts is creepy enough. It’s my thinking “who is this dog and what have you done with my sweet Chessie?”

She also reminds of me that Jim Larsen cartoon, “The Far Side” where cows are standing around on their hind legs chatting like Harvard academics until the lookout yells “CAR” and they drop down on all fours and start mooing.

Chessie, unfortunately, doesn’t have a lookout, so there she was, drooling in deep sleep,  probably thinking I was still snuggled in my electric blanket trying to unthaw my frozen feet while watching a taped episode of Nip/Tuck.

I look at this dog and am constantly stunned as to why I actually paid  money for her – $250, discounted down from $350 – the Blue Light special for the Golden Retriever rescue group.

First of all, this chameleon with fur only partially looks like a Golden retriever if you look at her directly from the front. She sports the typical whitened face of an aging Golden. A side look, though, revealed loose jowls that hang to her chest, more similar to a Basset hound, bloodhound or even the Shar Pei. Her ears are like a cocker spaniels, yet shorter. She has the bushy tail of a Golden, but no feathering or “skirts” as I like to call them, on her rear legs that would help hide her saggy lady parts.

I recalled when I was first introduced to her. I already knew her story, how she had been found on the streets of Hampton, her back-end hairless, raw and oozing an infection, a large tumor on her chest nearly dragging the ground. Eye and ear infections, 25 pounds underweight, and teeth that had been ground down to her gums, probably chewing her wild-hog looking skin. And the smell … oh my goodness, the dog’s smell would hit you long before you actually saw her.

And she was old. The shelter planned to put her down, realizing no one in their right mind would adopt her. But despite her terrible condition and the untold horrors she had gone through, probably at the hands of humans, Chessie still wagged her tail and was happy to be with people. They couldn’t give her the injection that would put her out of her misery. So they called the Southeastern Virginia Golden Retriever Rescue Group. They took her and also fell in love with her sweet and loving and even hopeful nature. The tumor turned out to be a mammary gland infection. She was treated for the worst of her conditions and once she became stable, was ready to find her “forever” home. I agreed to meet her.

Yet as I sat in that chair, Chessie tottered over to me, sat down, her whippet, hairless tail beating the carpet. She placed a paw on my knee, gripping  a little with long curved toenails and looked at me with with weepy brown eyes. She twitched her eyebrows slightly, leaned forward and kissed my hand with the most gentle of licks. Once, with a slight nose nudge, and then no more.

As her foster mom and I talked, I glanced over at the dejected-looking dog. She was sitting, hunched over, staring at nothing, making no movement, simply existing.

Then it struck me. She reminded me of my father.

It was February 2008 when Dad, after 20 years of using methadone for pain relief, decided to quit because the drug was possibly causing an even more terrible condition – chronic bowel obstruction. Multiple surgeries (quintuple bypass, triple abdominal aortic artery surgery, and perhaps the beginning of it all, gall bladder surgery). It was not a good year.

Dad’s attempts of kicking one of the most powerful drugs required the use of other drugs that had side effects that left him “ruminating” or making chewing and sucking noises for no reason or staring into space. And most didn’t relieve him of the pain or the leg twitches for which doctors prescribed methadone in the first place.

The sleepless nights, pain and drugs caused Dad to lose weight, his skin to turn ashen, his droopy bloodshot eyes sunken in dark circles. His white hair thinned, turning brittle and dry. “Dead man walking,” he quipped about himself.

Once I found him sitting on my couch, arms on his legs, head hanging down dejectedly, to his knees. I asked him what he was doing. He looked up with hopeless eyes and said: “Enduring,  love; simply enduring.”

So as I watched this wretch of a dog, a yeast infection eating her from the inside out, a dog whose teeth had been ground down by chewing her own infected skin, or chewing rocks because she had nothing else to eat, whose pus-encrusted eyes could barely see and with ears that reeked of death. With her head hanging down, her nose nearly to the carpet, I saw the posture of one who was “simply enduring.” She was the canine manifestation of my father. I knew then I would bring this dog home.

(Dad, I am happy to say, has recovered greatly from that terrible year of withdrawal only to find out that didn’t solve the bowel obstruction problem … <sigh>)

I called the next morning and officially adopted Chessie, to the delight of her foster mom and the vet who had been previously deeply discounting her services to treat Chessie. I figured, hey, the dog’s ancient. It’s the least I could do to give the old girl her last good year, right? I insisted on taking the little doggie hoodie she had to keep her hairless body warm and mostly hidden. I didn’t want the neighbors to think I had done this to her.

When I brought Chessie home that weekend, I purchased dog beds for the garage, my office and bedroom. I noticed Chessie was good about finding that extra bit of padding, no doubt from years of sleeping on dirt or cement. If we were in the family room, she would carry my sock and lay on it after she did her 10 minute happy dance. The preparation she would give a wash cloth before laying on it was entertaining.

When she went into REM sleep, little would wake her. I once opened the garage door, drove my car in, closed the garage door and walked past the sleeping Chessie to go into the house. Absolutely unbelievable. But if she was asleep in my bedroom, and heard me quietly pour a few bits of kibble into her metal dog food bowl, she’d appear in seconds, her hind-end often arriving first, a River Dance of toenail clattering as she did her happy dance on being fed.

At first I fed her two cups of food twice a day. She quickly gained weight and I had to knock that down to one cup, twice a day. She would gobble up her food in 10-15 seconds and look up expectantly. A couple of tablespoons of plain yogurt mixed with fish oil and other supplements help slow that down to 20 seconds. She needed special food to fight the yeast infection,  special supplements, baths twice a week with special medicated shampoo and special ear drops to clean the black gunk out of her ears and drops to clear her murky eyes.

Chessie had learned to survive by being a scavenger, so when the gravy train of four cups of food a day ended, she went out to search for more. I found her in my bathroom, having climbed into my garden tub and then up on the ledge where I keep the self-feeding cat container. She had drained the container of every bit of kibble. Not a big deal unless you just spent $300 on getting special dog food and supplements to fight the allergies in the five pounds of food she had just consumed. So I had to put a gate up in my bathroom to block her.

Chessie required trips to the vet every two weeks at the cost of a minimum of $200 each time. I have to say, she has responded to the treatment. She’s not cured, but the black skin on her back is now mostly pink and hair has come in. She sports a full, think blonde coat, which hides the speckled skin on her belly and a multitude of warts and benign tumors and whatever else you get as you age. Her tail is thick and full, the fur on her ears curly. The alligator skin under her jowls remain mostly black, although pink is coming through, as is a regrowth of hair. Even the worst spot on the base of her tail, where she did most of her chewing, has healed, although will probably never grow hair. Her eye infections are gone, and we are keeping the indefatigable ear infection at bay. The black skin on the inside of her ears are now almost all pink. She gets baths every other week now, mostly when she starts to smell a little stronger.

But with her improved health, along came spunkier behavior. She doesn’t tolerate Charlee’s passive/aggressive “stink eye” she gives Chessie when Charlee wants to “will” Chessie from a chew. Chessie will mount the much taller Charlee, bark and growl at her shoulders. It’s dog-speak for “You lookin’ at me? You wanna piece of me? Don’t you be eye-ballin’ me!” Charlee has tolerated these attacks because she always gets Chessie’s chew when she drops it to attack Charlee. The attacks are becoming more frequent and last longer. One day Charlee may not be so tolerant.

She still has her moments of sitting hunched over, staring at nothing, her “simply” existing look. At her age, I can relate a little. She chases flashlight balls and is as happy picking up a piece of paper as she is a squeaky toy that Charlee hasn’t disemboweled yet.

Chessie has elevated her position from sleeping on the dog mat by the side of my bed to take Charlee’s dog bed at the foot of my bed. That’s because Charlee usually sleeps at the foot ON my bed. The dog bed is more plush, and frankly, I’m OK with it, since I’m not in such close proximity of  Chessie’s snoring and farting during the night.

Once satisfied with just sleeping on the carpet, to then curling up on a throw rug, to moving from a dog mat to the dog bed, Chessie has now set her sights higher — the furniture. This was a dog who was supposed to live a year, at the most. She’s ancient. She’s been to hell and back and brought some of it with her.  And yet here she is,  more than a year after that fateful day when she sat enduring and wondering what life would hand to her next, sleeping and drooling on my couch.

You go, girl.