We’re All Better

I think Pugs was always frosted. When he came to live with us he was 7 years old and grizzled. This is an older photograph of him. He has more gray now, but he has always looked older than he is. Well. He’s eleven. The point I’m trying to make is at least some of his grizzling is just the the dog was painted at the factory. In my last post my friend Jane commented on his face, so I thought I would provide a better view of him.

He is a hard dog to photograph. (There is an older post that describes this at some length.) He’s either moving or dead asleep. Now that he is recovering from his recent digestive issues, he has resumed guarding both Nancy and me, and I am in the Conservatory, on my computer, and Nancy is in the kitchen making hot dog buns, which means he must, must, must oversee her activities because whenever Nancy is cooking, she drops tasty morsels on the floor. He is our roomba.

Five (six if we remember Murphy) dogs later I am still a cat person. I love dogs, but my habits–and my appreciation of theirs–were taught to me by cats. It confuses me when a dog, and an older dog at that, decides to abruptly change their routine. Cats do not like changes in their routines. Anyway. As long as Daisy and Pugs lived here together they went out at the same time each evening (Daisy was down on the floor, bouncing, ruffing and practicing her Outside Walk each evening like a walking alarm clock) and then they went to bed. Nancy retires early, I tried, for a long time, but I am more of a midnight oil person, so I go to bed late.

About four days after we went to the vet with Daisy and came home without her, her bonded companion (who did, to his credit, go check the space where she usually rested at least twice before he carried on) added a new step to our nightly routine. I would get up from my chair to go to bed at midnight, and he would race to the back door. Now Pugsy is…more or less…housebroken, but he is housebroken because any time, night or day, he runs to the back door, one of us lumbers along behind him to open it. We have learned the hard way. So we added the Final Final Out to our routine.

Earlier this week he was deathly ill and we stopped lumbering and RAN to the back door whenever he did, which apparently gave him an idea. So now he goes out at nine, goes to bed with Nancy, and when I begin to stir he gets her up to take him out. This does not insure peace and tranquility in our happy home. And last night, he did a little dog math in his head, and he thought to himself, ‘they used to feed me at 6am and 4 pm, but when I got sick they started feeding me smaller meals at 6am, noon, and 6pm, and now it is midnight…

AND I AM OWNED AN ENTIRE FOURTH MEAL!”

Rise, Nancy, rise.

Nancy to Cheryl: “What do you think this dog wants now?”

Nancy to Cheryl: “I have no idea–he just went outside, in the rain, got all wet and was out for a good ten minutes.”

Nancy to Cheryl: “Well, I hate to just ignore him… Do you think he’s hungry?”

Cheryl to Nancy: “It’s that, or step outside and wring him out like an old wet towel, I guess…” (Note that Cheryl, who has finally gone to bed, is not getting up again because, unlike Nancy who has been asleep and awakened twice by a 22 lbs dog, is up and looking for answers to the problem. Good, good Nancy.)

So he conned a fourth meal out of her at about 1:30 this morning.

He seems much more chipper this morning. He got her up at 5am to go out. He got her up at 6:10 (because normally, you know, he eats breakfast at 6:09.)

Nancy is doing something with the mixer (it seems unlikely this is related to the hot dog buns, but what do I know?) so Pugs wandered in to make sure I’m where I’m supposed to be.

Tomorrow he will be out of most of his meds and we will be transitioning him from his diet of rice, boiled chicken and bone broth to his regular diet of dog food (and probably scrambled eggs, since we have a lot of eggs right now. All 6 hens are laying again. Nancy has run out of egg boxes.)

He seems happy with us. If he misses Daisy, it’s not obvious to me.

I miss her. If Daisy had an lesson to teach in this life, it was to remind me of how hard I looked for the perfect dog (and found him: his name was Riley) when we decided to get a dog, and how amazingly far from ‘perfect’ the little girl who danced each night when I took her outside was, and how easy it was to love her. Twelve pounds of snarling, ‘leave me alone’, ‘this is not an adaptation I choose to make’ Pomeranian princess, and she got my heart with that tentative, speed-building run across the slippery kitchen floor.

Nancy was innocently scanning the Three Rivers paper yesterday and stumbled onto a notice of a dog available at the county animal pound. A small dog that seemed oddly suited to us. I hesitated, and someone swept in and adopted the dog. I don’t know if I want another one. I’m older. I’m stiffer. The ground is a little hard to reach when the reward is a handful of used dog food. I worry that if anything were to happen to me or Nancy (and we had an ugly winter, this year) we would leave a homeless dog in our wake.

I do enjoy their company.