Old Dog Blues

Kodiak is 14 years old and I watch him, aging at first in small increments but now it seems as if the old age anvil has struck hard. Can a dog fall into his late senior years suddenly? I don't think he's having fun anymore. His eyes are distant; he doesn't connect with me the way he used to. Lately he hasn't been able to climb up onto his favorite armchair. His eight-year-old "brother" Sully argues with him a lot; they don't play like they used to. There appears to be a gulf between them that can't be mended.

I wonder what's going through Kodiak's mind. I know he's partially deaf, his hip dysplasia is crippling, the arthritis in his front legs painful. I give him glucosamine and a multi-vitamin every day. I give him doggie aspirin when I think the hurting may be too much. I used to believe that he's still enjoying life, but I don't know anymore. (Of course, the current temperature is in the 90s and our house doesn't have central heat and air, so there's no real relief from the unrelenting heat except for a couple of hours in the evening when I turn on the three expensive-to-run window a/c units. Kodiak may be suffering from heat exhaustion more than anything else right now. I know the heat is affecting me that way.)  

Kodiak is my first dog. I adopted him at eight-weeks-old from the Humane Society of Tampa Bay. I still remember the Humane Society associate placing him on the counter - a fat little tan/black puppy with floppy ears, part German Shepherd, part Chow Chow. The tiny black collar I bought for him was way too big. I still have it. I look at it sometimes and wonder how that collar could have been too big because Kodiak grew to be almost 80 pounds. He was house-broken, trained to leash, and accustomed to riding in a car, all at eight weeks old. Amazing. He came to live with me in a house full of cats and kittens where he developed a fun relationship with a little white tabby mix kitten named Mitten. Kodiak would drag Mitten around the house with her head in his mouth. I tried to stop this strange activity, but they both loved it and continued it until Mitten became too big for Kodiak to drag. As he grew older, he became like a surrogate mother to many of the cats and kittens. He would clean their faces and their rear ends. He would swat at them if they were being obnoxious. He let the ones with mother issues "nurse" and knead on him. He thoughtfully chewed off their whiskers, in an attempt, I assume, to make them look pretty. He slept with those who wanted to cuddle.

Even though he was surrounded by cats, young Kodiak still understood that he was a dog, the protector of the household, and he took that duty very seriously. He was also quite the iconoclast -- plowing through overgrown grass taller than he was, digging out the foundation corner of the house as well as the gas pipe protruding from the ground, standing in the rain beside his doghouse, looking a cow right in the eye without flinching (until it moved too close), hanging out by the fountain in Old Hyde Park Village, going to parties where he gently let toddlers place cookies in his mouth, becoming aggressive with any dog in fight mode, becoming friends with any amenable neighborhood dog, chasing kitties that weren't part of his household, riding shotgun in the car and loving it, exploring new places and parks without fear, declining water adventures (the shoreline was fine with him), taking his owner for walks, accepting into his house a 3-month-old puppy found wandering the streets of the hood, teaching this puppy how to do male dog things, understanding bath time as inevitable-why-fight-it, finding the perfect spot by the fence to dig a nice comfortable hole for relaxing, and welcoming human guests into his house with a hearty bark (while trying to push Sully out of the way).

Now, we're in the old dog years where sleeping, eating, and eliminating are the adventures of the day. This morning I took Sully for a walk and Kodiak could have cared less. He didn't whine for his turn, not even a whimper, not even a glance at his leash. Maybe it's just a bad day. Maybe tomorrow will be different. Maybe tomorrow Kodiak will throw off some of those creeping years and take a walk with me, even if we just get as far as the end of my neighbor's property. That's something if you're 14 years old and all your neighborhood pals in the Old Dogs' Club are dead but you're still managing to get up and down the three backdoor steps by yourself most of the time. Yep, that's something indeed.