Last Legs?

Christmas Day, 2009.

It's been a wonderful Christmas Day, with six family members in the house, a fire in the fireplace, a bit of a nip in the air outside, bright sunshine to celebrate the joy of the day, and many gifts and other things for which to be thankful.

But a small cloud hovers in the corner of the room.

Our dog, Bert, who has been with us for nearly sixteen years, seems to be on his last legs.

Granted, sixteen years is a long life for a dog, but it's also a long time for the beastie to grow roots in the family.

Bert absolutely LOVES Christmas. Whenever there are packages around, he is intensely curious as to what's inside. He loves to look in packages, and in the bags we keep around on Christmas morning to collect bows and discarded wrapping paper
Blessedly, he doesn't seem to be in any pain. If he were, we'd know about it, because he's the biggest sissy I've ever encountered among the canine species.

If he gets even a minor hurt, or even THINKS he might be going to get hurt some time in the future, he yelps like you'd trod on his foot.

Sometimes, it's just a precautionary scream, like, "If I might experience a bit of pain sometime soon, maybe I better scream now, just in case."

Sometimes, it's a guilty conscience scream. This dog can usually remain continent inside the house for many hours. But as soon as he gets outside, headed for the curb, suddenly he can't wait another ten yards, and will proceed to try to do his business in the driveway, or in the street. Needless to day, we are not in favor of him doing this, and we encourage him to wait for the proper place, with leash tugs and sometimes, nudges.

I can always tell when he's considering stopping too soon because he ignores my leg bumping his ribs when he's NOT considering it, but when he is, if I bump his ribs with my leg, he will yipe as though he's been kicked.

This is particularly frustrating, because I know it seems to the neighbors as though I'm abusing the beast. Is it possible to charge a dog with false accusations?

Anyway, that simply shows what a sissy he is, which is a good thing, because it also tells me that with all these afflictions of old age he's enduring right now, at least he's not in any pain.

Over the last few months, both his ears and his eyes have begun to fail. He can hear it if we clap our hands really loudly, which is good, because that's our signal to him that it's time to go outside.

I can tell his eyes are failing more and more, because in the last few walks, he's run into things - like my legs, or a tree - that he's never run into before.

The fortunate thing about this is that he's not really aware of his loss.

Dogs live in the moment.

They don't wonder why things are different today than yesterday, they don't wonder what will happen tomorrow. They just take things as they happen, live with them, and react to them.

So he really doesn't miss his sight or his hearing, although we do feel badly for him because of this.

One sad aspect of this shadow hovering in the corner of the room - our aging canine, perhaps on his last legs - is that when we got him, we got two dogs. One for our son, and one for our daughter. The other dog was a border collie, and had some sort of brain defect; she died on Christmas day more than a dozen years ago.

This puts a bit of apprehension about Bert being so old and feeble right at this time of year.

Our daughter expressed this fear yesterday, saying, "I don't think I could stand it if we had another pet die on Christmas." Jan reassured her that Bert has been like this for several months now, and it was very unlikely that it would happen today.

Of course, it's in God's hands.

He's had a long and mostly happy life.

He's been an idiot dog most of that time (said with a fond smile), because of such things as not being able to wait another five feet to avoid makin a puddle in the street. But he's also been very smart in ways, and a good companion and pet.

Let me share with you one way he demonstrated how smart he is. When we got our two dogs, we got Bert - a 3/4-sized lab, from the animal shelter, and we got Jessie, the border collie, from a breeder. By the time Jessie was six months old, it was evident she was mostly deaf. If I would whistle loudly and shrilly, she could hear it. She would lift her head and look around, like "What was that?"

We would frequently let them out into the fenced back yard to play, but mostly they would live inside. Jessie's deafness became a problem when it was time for us to call them inside.

Bert, of course, could hear us call, and would come right away. But Jessie wouldn't hear us, and would simpy keep on, sniffing at whatever clump of grass had caught her attention. Evidently, Bert somehow knew Jessie couldn't hear, because one day, when we wanted to leave for some sort of event and were having trouble getting Jessie to come in, I said, "Bert! Go get Jessie!"

And we were amazed to see him run out directly to where she was, run in a loop on the far side of her, brushing her as he went by to get her attention, then coming back into the house with Jessie following!

I think he understood all of this - her deafness, what we wanted the dogs to do, what he needed to do to convey our wishes to Jessie, and exactly how to do it.

He became quite accomplished at this, and continued to "Go get Jessie!" as long as she was with us.

Even though we are coming up on a sad season, when we know Bert is going to have to go chase rabbits in the sky, we can be happy for him, and for us for what he has been while he's been here with us.