Old Dogs - classic or dud

He also likes eating things out of the recycling bin.

Tracy's at the vet today for regular shots, destinkification and a leg checkup. The black mass is already back, below the surgery scar, so the goodbyes will probably happen sometime this year.

However, everytime I take her out somewhere, there's always the one joker who passes along the enlightening information that "big dogs don't live that long." We're more than aware of her mortality which perhaps makes us appreciate her more. If we wanted longevity, we'd adopted a godamn tortoise.

Our family dog (I keep typing god) died three years ago and my parents made the decision then not to get another dog. It would just take too much getting used to.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/ephender/58881.html

Here is Chessie, sometimes known as Cheesy Chessie because of his old dawg aroma.

I feel that this should be followed by "But Caitlin loved him" and then the Bagpuss music, even though Woody is a dog and not a cat.

Mine has this as well. All over her body. Very strange. I freaked thinking it was cancer, but no, just lumps.

I've watered a spot in the back yard to soften up the soil. I'll start digging in the morning. Jude, my landlady, has had him for a long time, but we don't know exactly how old he is. Probably 15 or 16 years.

k/l: Shel Silverstein? Maybe Willie Nelson.

We had great fun with her over the years, and I think my parents and especially my dad is having a hard time adjusting. She really made a big contribution to our family and I hope my parents decide they can take on another dog quite soon.

(13 year old) Puck says, happy trails Chessie Bear. You look like the best kind of dog.

Austin, sorry to hear about Chessie Bear. At least you're there for the hard part and he's not lonely. Pin, you should post a picture of your old dog. Pictures rock.

http://static.flickr.com/22/33193010_ea7ca5ac14.jpg

My doggie Lucy. About 11,5 yrs. :-) She had this weird anal infection last week. A sac near the anus basically burst open after she was rubbing her behind on the carpet. Ick! But it's healed now. I had to give her pills - some painkillers and antibiotics.

But Shel Silverstein wrote the songs.

She told us what we pretty much already knew: he had something that was either a stroke or close enough for government work, and despite the fact that he's gotten a little better since the 'event' Saturday (he's been able to occassionally lift his head and has taken small amounts of especially succulent food - bacon, chicken salad, etc.) any improvement he might have made would be relative to his current condition. His previous condition was a thing of the past. There was a 1 in 20 chance that steroids (prednizone) might help him a bit, but he'd still require round the clock attention, and there's just no way we could keep that up for much longer than the weekend. So, I carried him out to the backyard where, amazingly, he stood up on his own long enough to take a long pee and walk a few steps, then promptly collapsed on his side. The vet gave him the painkiller/sleeping formula shot, then the heart-stopper shot. We wrapped him in a sheet with his collar and favorite toys, and put him in a quicklime lined hole, the one that I spent Sunday and Monday digging. Then we toasted him with a little wine with some friends and neighbors.

Then I logged online and started doing my laundry.

The good is that we spared him any more helplessness and sickness. He's always been very fastidious about peeing outside (for example, that picture I posted upthread of the massive piss trail) and seemed very guilty about messing himself in the house the last two days, so that last outside piss under his own power actually seemed like a restoration of diginity that might've made him very proud and happy. Also, Craig's dog Ben can now have the run of the house and will probably grow a little calmer and more mature now that he isn't kept in a bedroom all day.

I'm okay. Well, as okay as usual, so still pretty fucked up. But all things considered, okay.

Ah, totally get that you’d need a puppy, Calz. Lurcher and whippet puppies grow up into gentle dogs and are not terribly expensive compared to retrievers. I watched the late and much-missed Kenny Whippetlurcher behave with unbelievable patience when accosted by autistic kids (I live a block away from Great Ormond Street hospital so any future dog I have must not be weird around random children).

but it happened very suddenly during the night (he had internal bleeding from a mass on his liver, but he showed no symptoms of illness until the last couple of hours)

Very similar to Dogsby really and other sad stories on this thread. I so wish old dogs could live longer and not die damnit:(

I'm totally set on getting another black lab now before Christmas (just tell the breeder the lad got bored of the last xmas present:p). There will never ever be another Dogbsy cos he was a one off, but I'm putting no unrealistic pressure on his successor.

And six weeks after we lost Milo, our other fourteen-year-old boy, Cody, has followed him. He got sick with a bug that's going around, and went downhill fast. He went into the vets on a drip on Wednesday night, and by Friday morning he was no better at all, so the vet scanned him. Multiple huge liver tumours. She said "this isn't like with Milo. I think it need to be today."

Amusingly, I was up at the recycling centre with a car full of glass and old electricals to get rid of, and I figured, fuck it, I have to get the recycling done. So I walked around just openly weeping, and men just took my bins of glass and my old electricals from me and recycled them for me and handed them back. God knows what they thought was wrong with me.

Anyway, I am utterly flattened by this. Losing Milo was awful, but somehow losing Cody is even worse, because they were our two core dogs and now they're both gone.

That first few days after Dogsby passed was probably the worst grief I've felt in 30 years, locations and pics that trigger memories of him still get me welling up at times. All the best to you trishyb + rip Cody.

sorry trishyb. losing my dog was one of the worst days of my life

2 dogs 2 months. i am very sorry trishyb, that must be so tough.

Thanks. It is crap. Yesterday we went up to the vets and handed in all of Cody's meds. They said they can credit us for the unopened ones, which is good of them. The receptionist hadn't heard, and when we told her, she had to leave the desk for a minute for a little cry.

However, we still have our other two dogs, and our little foster, and they are definitely helping.

When you get used to your four legged sentinel barking at the postie/delivery ppl/any person walking past your house, the silence when he had passed was too sad for me. Glad you have others to help you get through the grief. I got me a puppy to get through mine, he's a handful alright - but I wasn't expecting any less!

Yes, I saw him over on the puppy thread. He looks full of beans.

We can't take a new full-time dog till the summer at the earliest, because of reasons, but we might do a bit of fostering before then. Our circumstances are very different from yours.

Old dog update, obviously the temporary small foster who was not going to stay did stay and has now been with us for four years. He is an awful, awful skinny, tiny, yappy, annoying dog, exactly NOT the kind of dog I would have picked for myself, but my friend begged him off us when we'd had him for a month, then she realized after a month of "owning" him that she just couldn't cope with his energy levels and she gave him back. I didn't want him to have to go through that again, so we just kept him. Then we got an amazing Patterdale/something or other terrier, and he is the apple of our eye. So we are back to four dogs.

Our other old dog, Lulu (14 this year), is now going downhill. She has arthritis in her shoulders and paws, and nerve damage to her hips and back, so she can barely walk. Recently we've started walking her by herself without the other three dogs, and we've realized that she can't really see. Like, we'll open the side gate and she'll hear that it has opened but she won't walk through it. She doesn't really know where she is without the younger dogs around her. So we'll have to figure something out where they can all walk together for Lulu's sake and then the two young boys get a walk on their own for their sake. Like, we're not THERE yet but we are getting there. She still has plenty of things that she enjoys, she just has become a lot of work for us.

I do think this is the end of the four-dog lifestyle for us, though. I recently sprained my knee on stupid Bruno's tennis ball (I love him really) and it is taking me a long time to recover. And it's too busy round where we live now. There are loads of places we used to walk them off the lead that are no longer off-lead friendly, and it's too hard to walk them all on the lead all the time.

Tess, our 11-year-old JRT, remains indestructible and chipper and will probably live to be 25.

Wilf, the beautiful and well-behaved blue whippet who stays with me from time to time, is now 12 and his people have started wondering which of his behaviours are part of the early stages of dementia. My friend G told me that Wilf recently ‘dug into’ the sofa they’ve had for years, and wondered if this was down to that. I thought about it for a second and said, ‘that’s totally out of character, there’s got to be a reason - did a mouse get inside the sofa?’ G took a deep breath and said ‘maaaaybe?’ Wilf is definitely slowing down and occasionally forgets why he wanders into a room, but he’d never wantonly destroy anything because he’s one of those dogs who never even rips his own toys apart.

My sister's stupid, aggressive, smelly and badly behaved dog is now 17 and looks like he might last forever.

I have a young dog (3y.o.) who is simultaneously super sweet and the absolute worst. she is v. dog reactive which makes walking her a nightmare : /

Our Patterdale (or maybe he's a cairn terrier, who knows) is extremely dog-reactive when he's on the lead. He gets all puffed up and barky and shows his teeth and will not walk away, and it's awful, because he actually LOVES other dogs and just wants to be pals with everyone.

I've tried Bob Martin and Frontline spot on and tablet treatments, vacuuming up the mutt's sleeping areas and combing the mutt every morning with metal comb and executing the evil fleas on sight. And I only seem to be thinning out their numbers for a week or so and they keep coming back with a vengeance. I really hate the little bloodsucking bastards. I'm going to look up some nuclear options, that will no doubt be some dodgy poisonous shit that you sprinkle everywhere and make yourself ill in the process.

We once had to fleabomb our house because our cats had infested everything. That was a long time ago. Now we don't usually get fleas at all, even though we rarely treat for them.

I have a young dog (3y.o.) who is simultaneously super sweet and the absolute worst. she is v. dog reactive which makes walking her a nightmare : /

Same! Except male. He is insanely loving and such an embarrassment on the leash. And half German shepherd so his leash reactivity growls are frightening to ppl

xp

I thought you were posting figuratively with "fleabomb" but sheeit, I've only just discovered these are actually a real thing. I've ordered some that you light up and you leave them to fill the room with flea annihilating smoke for 2-3 hours and they don't leave any toxic residue. Them blood-sucking creepers are so fucked!

My boy is 13 today! We got him when he was 9 and he has only improved w age. He has no teeth, weighs 5.5 lbs, just got a sweet fresh haircut, and has more sass than many dogs half his age. Happy birthday to my Bunji!!

wishing Bun the H'iest BD of all time and hopes for many moar!!

I hope Bun had a great birthday.

He did -- thank you!