I love old dogs. Most people melt at the sight of tiny puppies, and granted their adorableness is incontestable, but give me an old fella with some gray in his beard or a pooch whose face has gone white and I'll scoop up their old creaky bones and love them til their dying day. Ruger here is 10, Elsie is 14, and my absolute favorite dog in the whole world, my old lady beagle Moppy, is 15. Old dogs simply understand several truths about the world that we both appreciate:
1) even if you have to get up in the early morning to go to the bathroom, there is good merit in sleeping in
2) once you've found a perfectly comfortable spot, things important enough to require you to get up and go peer out the front window are few and far between (we can see the events well enough from the couch anyhow)
3) when you are forced to move, a lot of stretching and groaning is an essential part of the movement process (and it often takes more than one attempt to get up)
4) food is always a good excuse for starting one of these movement processes
5) drama is never worth the effort
6) running sucks, but slow walks and road trips on a pretty day are magnificent
7) nothing compares to a good head rub, and
8) late afternoon naps are completely underrated
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Just to let you know, your old lady went for her yearly and was a champ. Everything checked out great! Got her nails trimmed, which seemed to be the most traumatic part of the whole process as having her paws messed with is on the top of her "Things I Barely Tolerate" list. I backed off her Synovi G3 supplement trying to save a few bucks. She is financially breaking me with the meds--Allergy meds, Selegiline (for her Alzheimer's), Deramaxx and Synovi (both for her arthritis). Doc says I can replace the Synovi with my Glucosime Chondritin. It is almost eerie how parallel our lives are to our canine companions. She is taking Scott's allergy tabs and my arthritis supplements. I must let you know your old lady holds true to all of your points on elderly canines save one. This wonderfully faithful companion makes the effort, which often takes a great deal of time and some noise, to get up and move every time I do, which, as you would guess, can be quite often. She always is keeping her eye one me. Now, that is probably motivated by love and concern. But I also believe it is slightly due to another one of your points...food. She now has me trained to where she gets numerous small portions of food a day. I call it her Oprah Winfrey diet. She weighed in at 34.5 pounds. So, whatever we are doing is working well for her. She has become a bit more of a nuisance since we eased up some and let her have a bite of human food when we thought she was near her end here. That "dumb" dog is so very smart! She remembers every event and uses it as much as possible to her advantage. She has adapted a routine of standing and barking at me whenever one of my clients enters our home. That, of course, requires me to give her an extra tidbit to pacify her. She really has me well trained. She also uses the fact that I am preoccupied with my clients and asks to go in and out much more than she needs to. Each time, of course, she receives the usual treat for her efforts. It reminds me a great deal of how my children would use to their advantage my preoccupation when I was talking on the phone. Man, Mop really has me pegged! I love her tremendously and am so glad she is here with me! Scotty loves her also and treats her very well. Emma had to write a little piece about one of her superheroes for school. She wrote about Moppy and how she "saved" Em from the falcon in her backyard. We really do have a large number of falcons around here. I have spotted some in our yard. I do not believe Em was under any real threat of being harmed. But it sure made for a touching tale. I kept that story of Em's. It was very brief, but worth a lot to me. Love you, Sweetie! Keep writing. Your mom reads every word with “oohs” and “ahs” and tears of joy. You amaze me!
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