I love my dogs, I love my dogs, I love my dogs…

I have a really, really old dog.  An Old, Old, Old black lab dog who looked like a grizzly bear when she was born.  She is 13 human years old. That calculates out roughly to 65 dog years.  (The formula is: 10.5 dog years per human year for the first 2 years, then 4 dog years per human year for each year after, depending on who you ask.)

She is old enough to collect social security.  I have had her since she was eight weeks old.  That is a long damn time.  Human years or dog years, doesn’t matter.  This dog has had one hell of a good life.  She has been loved, pampered, spoiled, and has never slept outside a night in her life. Except if you count the camping and boating trips in the days before we had human children.  She has swam in lakes, waded in rivers, been on the boat and dragged along on the tube. She has sledded down snowy mountains and been to every corner of Utah in the car.  I dare say, she has had a very full life.  She has been taken care of better than most humans.  In doing so, I have also spent more on her vet bills than I have paid for my non furry, human children.  In her long life she has had the following medical procedures:

• Three days worth of antibiotics, and other homemade cures to help her overcome Parvo as a puppy.  They said she wouldn’t live long, and she wouldn’t get bigger. HA!  She is old and weighs 146 lbs.


• Stitches to reattach three pads on her foot after stepping on a broken bottle while playing in the snow with The Man.


• Stitches to close a broken vein in her ear that bled up and down my walls each time she shook her head after wrestling with her doggy sister.  The vet had to wrap her whole head with gauze.  She looked like a mummy and for the whole week she went to work with The Man in his tow truck because we couldn’t leave her alone.  Every police officer in Utah who met her on a call, loved her and offered to doggysit.


• Surgery to get spayed to avoid little grizlets running around.


• A stomach pump and then three months worth of Vitamin K after she found some Decon (rat killer) and possibly ate it, or potentially licked her doggy sister’s ass (who we know DID eat it).


• Infected anal glads (this was not pleasant for her or me) and the antibiotics and draining that comes with it.


• Testing for cancer of the thyroid and lymphomas only to find a big, fat, five pound fatty tumor in her neck.


• A metal plate and 13 screws in what would be her elbow (the joint between her foot and shoulder) after taking out the front bumper of a Dodge Neon during a rain storm.


• She has a disease that causes her to gain weight. She has to be on diet food the rest of her life.
 

• She has old age induced arthritis in her hips but moving to the scorching desert has helped this in a big way.


• Finally, she is on two different hormones, twice a day, because she is old and pees the bed and they don’t make doggy depends.

Don’t read this list and send me hate mail that I need to put her down.  She is not miserable.  She is very healthy other than her age issues. She still gets around and will totally put the other dogs in their place if they try sniffing her ass. But, as she gets older, I get more worried about the day she does pass.  I’ve had to put down two dogs and it was hell both times.  I don’t know that her passing on her own will be easier for me to deal with. 

Tonight, we couldn’t find her.  It was time for her pills.  The other dogs came in the house and got their treat and she wasn’t there. I went outside, no dog. I checked all her favorite sleeping places, and she wasn’t there. The Man went outside and checked to see if she was sleeping in the yard. Nope.  On our second trip through the house, I whispered to The Man “what if she is dead?  OMG!  Where are the dramas?  Make them go in the other room.”  We checked every room starting at the front of the house.  We were calling out “treat” and “cookie” and the other dogs were going ape shit by now because treats AND cookies!!!!  Holy Shit!  It totally must be Christmas or something! 

By the time we got to our bedroom, I was starting to get that sick feeling in my tummy.  WTF was she?  I said again “have you even seen her today?  Are you sure she was okay?” and just then, The Man turned to me and he had that look on his face, that look that says “holy fuck what if you’re right.”  As we entered the last room in the house, our master bathroom, she wasn’t there.  My heart sank.  I cannot describe the pain that swelled up in my heart.  Tears began to well and I had that painful lump in my throat. 

Suddenly, The Man darted around me and I heard him yell “GODDAMN DOG.  GET OUT!!!!!”

She pulled all the toilet paper off the roll and was happily, merrily, rooting about in the bathroom garbage.  The garbage full of snotty tissue and the little mail in postcards that fall out of magazines and empty toilet paper rolls and the eyeliner pencil shavings from this very morning.  She must have rolled around in it because it looked like some high school punks had totally toilet papered my dog.  I just stood there staring at the mess while she looked up at me like “what?  This isn’t my room?”