Wednesday, November 14, 2007

passage of time

I had to help J-Dog up onto the bed tonight.

It seems like yesterday that he was the puppy and Emma was the senior dog who needed a bit of help sometimes.

Now Emma is gone and tonight, for the first time, my puppy is old enough to need help getting on the bed.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

If I think too long about the covenant into which we enter when we bring a dog into our family, and what accompanies the passage of time, I'll never get that new puppy. So, although I value your reportage on helping J up...I'm going to try to forget it.

P.S. I'm going to get a copy of Three Dog Night today or tomorrow; sounds great! I love her writing, but not as much as yours.

B in T

Anonymous said...

My fourteen year old cat Henry is getting shaky old-man legs. When he climbs down off my lap (and I usually sit on the floor, so he doesn't have that far to go), I have to hang on to him until he's firmly on his feet or he just goes face-first into the floor. If it happens anyway, he's pretty cheerful about it, but it breaks my heart.

Anonymous said...

Amazing how our pups are with us through everything and they grow old too..

Anonymous said...

Awww, poor J Dog.

Anonymous said...

Considering the number of pets we have (4 dogs, 6 parrots, and 14 cats...it was 12 after we found two fosters that we'd had for six months a great new home, but they were immediately replaced with two senior fosters that were dumped by their owner at the animal shelter last week), we've had surprisingly little death in our household. We lost our tiny parrotlet, Bubbe, to liver disease. We lost Sweet Pea, Leigh-Ann's 14 year old cat, to a kidney tumor...it was very sudden. She was fine one day, the next day when we woke up, she was in horrible pain, and she died a couple hours later. It was so shocking. And, we lost a three day old foster kitten. Poor sweet little guy.

However, in the near future, we're going to have some awful losses around here and it's painful to think about it. Our German Shepherd is almost 12, and she's already arthritic and is having a smidgen of bladder control problems. Her buddy, our Anatolian Shepherd is 7, and is slowing down, but Anatolians only live 11-13 years. We have a Shih Tzu that is at least 8, but may be older. We adopted her from the pound, so we don't know for sure.

We also have a couple of senior cats. Hopefully, with us changing their food to the raw Wild Kitty food, we've extend their lifespan. The food has made such a difference in their lives - their coats are shinier, there's more spring in their step, and they just seem all-around healthier.

I hate knowing that our days are numbered with some of our precious pets. Since we're home all day with them, they're such an integral part of our lives.

It's funny, until very recently, I had no idea where the band, Three Dog Night, got their name. I didn't know that it was a saying until I was reading about Orvis's Three Dog Night blankets. Orvis has such great dog beds & blankets.

Sorry to ramble on so. It's been such an exhausting couple of weeks, that when I'm writing, I'm tending to ramble even more than usual.

How old is J-Dog? Does he maybe need some Rimadyl? It's done wonders for our German Shepherd.