We’re Running a Doggy Assisted Living Center!

Gayle and I have rescued a bunch–a bunch–of dogs over the years. We live in the country, and people have a nasty habit of dumping their dogs out here like old tires thrown in the ditch beside the road. It’s absolutely heartbreaking to see a helpless, confused dog wandering around and trying to figure out what just happened and what it’s going to do, so we’ve ended up taking in just about every one we’ve run across. We had to do it quickly, too, because animal control out here in the country involves a rifle, and my neighbors are all-too-ready to “control” strays. We’ve given away a bunch, but we’ve still got a bunch, as I said. In fact, we’ve got 11 critters ranging from an itsy-bitsy Chihuahua all the way up to a Newfoundland Landseer. Several of them are reaching old age at the same time: Honey, a Yellow-Lab mix, Stretch, the Newfie, Valley Girl, our Alaskan Husky, and BB, the Black Lab featured in this post. They’ve always been a handful, but now they’re an armload!

Each of them requires special attention now, over and above what we’ve always considered normal. Of the four “oldies,” 14-year-old Honey is the least decrepit. We don’t even have to give her any medication right now. We do, however, have to keep a close eye on her because she’s not as nimble as she once was, but she’s every bit as mischievous as she ever was. By “mischievous” I mean she has always enjoyed pestering the other dogs. She’s like the sister who has to torment her siblings. She’ll nip at ’em. She’ll bump into ’em. She’ll stand there and bark at ’em, all just for the fun of pestering someone. For the most part, they all put up with it. In times past when they didn’t, she was nimble enough to get the heck out of Dodge before anything got serious. No more. So, we watch her. When we see her starting to get another dog’s goat (we let our dogs have goats), we go over there and gently lead her away before any anticipated escalation. She’s got the want-to but not the jump-to.

Honey in her younger days in 2003. Just look at the mischief in her face!

Next in the order of needing special care is 11-year-old Stretch. Stretch is a problem sometimes. He has trouble getting up now and again and should be taking some sort of hip medication or herbs or something. He won’t take anything, though, at least no voluntarily. I suppose I could force the issue, and probably should. He’s getting to the point that he’s hard to feed at all. He’s almost stopped eating dry food and all but wants us to hand him a menu come dinner time. He’s a 90-lb. dog. I can’t feed him canned food at one can per every  10 pounds. I wouldn’t have the money feed myself then. I make sure there’s plenty of Purina Dog Chow out for him. I’m hoping he’ll start eating right again. He’s losing a little weight now, though. I give him other things to eat, too, to try and keep a few calories in him, but he’s going to have to go back to the dry stuff. I’ve tried wetting it, too, but that doesn’t work either. We even put some gravy on some tonight.  No dice. Poor Stretch. I used to like to take him for long walks, but he can only make it a couple of hundred yards, and we have to come back. He looks so pathetic and forlorn when I take another dog out.

Stretch snoozing way back in 2010.

Then there’s 15-year-old Valley Girl. She has acquired some sort of malady that makes her head perpetually cocked a bit. Dogs often cock their heads at folks when they’re curious about something or examining something or another, but hers stays cocked. The vet told me what it was, but I’ve since forgotten. There’s nothing we could do for it anyway except give it time. She still gets around pretty well, but not with her former grace because of arthritis, for which we give her pain killers. In fact, we’re giving her three different pills right now: one for pain, one for a possible urinary bladder infection, and another to tighten up the ol’ sphincter muscle so her plumbing doesn’t leak so much. We think the plumbing issue is getting better. The old age and arthritis are only going to get worse, I suppose.

Valley Girl enjoying a dip in the pool in 2012.

Finally, there’s poor 13-year-old BB, who can only get around with assistance most of the time, and even then only when she’s on pain killers. Of course, we see to it that she has her pain medication for her arthritis. The doc says there’s not much we can do about her kidneys, though, which are steadily getting worse. As I pointed out above, I wrote a post about BB with a lot more details.

BB in better days in 2014.

The upshot of having all these geriatric canines is that coming home from work means a lot of work! There are pills to hand out, messes to clean up, old guys and gals to take outside, special diets to provide, and you name it. In my more selfish moments, I start getting kind of tired and wishing I didn’t have all these chores, but when I sit down and start thinking about things and realize all the happiness these members of the family–and that’s what they are–still give me, I feel a little ashamed of myself and have to go around collecting hugs. It’s all worth the effort to keep them around and as comfortable as possible. They ‘d do it for me if they could.

 

Fighting from the Pill Box

Ah, a new month is upon us, and after ripping off another page of my calendar, I take my battle station at my pill box in the kitchen to rapid fire heartworm medication at the canine crowd residing in my house. Instead of shouting, “Take that hill!” like an Army officer screaming above the din of battle, however, I’ll be urging, “Take that pill!” during my own desperate fight. After having served 20 years in the military myself, I’m thinking this latter-day combat is just about as tough, and a hand-to-hand struggle–or hand-to-mouth in this case–is a real possibility.

The problem is that I have a number of doggies, mostly rescues, and I’m trying to save a buck by buying less expensive, generic heartworm tablets, round, hard, tasteless-looking affairs, rather than their more costly, brand name counterparts, shaped like a tasty meatloaf. My vet assures me that both do the job just fine, but the more expensive brand name version costs about $10 per box more. Ten bucks buys a heap of hamburger for the old man’s weekend barbecue, so I thought my dogs and I would just do some adapting. Three of my barking buddies–Stretch, the Newfoundland Landseer, Valley Girl, the Alaskan Husky, and Miss Trudy, the Clay Avenue Post Office Pit Bull mix–had another idea: “Let’s take him down this time!” Those three threw themselves into their canine conspiracy with a vengeance.

When I brought the generic stuff home last month, my other guys gamely swallowed my new plan without a fight. Heck, ol’ Marley, the household’s over-exuberant Yellow Lab, scarfed down that new heartworm pill so fast he couldn’t have known if it were a ping-pong ball or the next cure for cancer. He just stood there afterward with his tongue hanging out in that big doggie grin of his hoping for another one. Then the three amigos shouldered Marley out of the way, moving up to the head of the crowd, and desperation moved up with them.

At first, the battlefield appeared quiet. I handed each one–Stretch, Valley Girl, and Trudy–their pills and waited for them to swallow them before I moved on to the next patient. They were each moving their jaws up and down and back and forth like they were tasting the pills and getting set to chew ’em up, when, apparently, one of them gave the signal, and the dogs of war made their move! I was dodging heartworm pills shot from the mouths of determined dogs like bullets shot from the bores of M-16’s.

Undaunted, like a soldier picking up hostile grenades to throw back at the enemy, I picked up those pills, stuffed them into all-beef wieners, and tossed them back at my furry foes. At first my strategy seemed to be a success. Once again, their jaws were pumping, but their tongues seemed a little too active, searching for something. Sure enough, within seconds came the rat-a-tat-tat of pills ricocheting off of cabinet doors, and once again, I was dancing around the kitchen avoiding their fire. They, of course, retained the all-beef wieners.

Retreating to the relative safety of my pill-box to ruminate, I decided on the doomsday option: wheat bread and unsalted butter. Yes, I was going to make toast of my adversaries this time. Well, maybe for my adversaries. At this point, the battle really heated up as if someone had turned on an oven. Actually someone had. After I had cooked up my new plan sufficiently and completed my new warhead delivery system, I pounded those pills into powder, sprinkled them onto the buttered toast, and tossed them over the pill-box to the waiting, as yet unmedicated, canines. Oh, yeah! It worked. Without a lumpy pill to find and spit out and with butter masking the taste, my battling beasts were pacified.

Trudy relaxing after the struggle

I can hardly wait for the next round. Maybe I’ll buy a helmet first.