Lots of birthdays this past 3 months…
In other, good, news…Kadan turned a year old on January 7th, Pepper turned 15 years old on January 19th, and Bindi turned 2 years old sometime in February. Tidus will be 7 years old on March 20th.
It’s very interesting having two “toddlers” as I call it, and an “old lady” in the house. Pepper’s old enough to be thKadan and Bindi’s great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, [insert more "great"s] grandmother, which is pretty amazing when you think about it. Pepper’s really starting to slow down lately, and the arthritis is really starting to bother her back legs, but on good days she’s still up and about trying to chase and play with the two rambunctious kiddos. Then it’s like after the good day is over, and she got in all her exercise, that back right leg gets to bothering her again, and she’ll limp on it a bit for a couple days before it’s good to go again, only to be overexerted yet again and start the cycle all over again.
Sigh.
It’s hard watching your dog try to do the things she loved to do when young, but struggle to do it as a senior. She used to love chewing on rawhides, and the occasional recreational raw cow femur bone (did I ever mention I was a fan of Raw Feeding?) but it bothers her teeth anymore to chew things like that, so even the tastiest looking offering gets refused. She used to love playing tug of war with a rope toy, too, but again the teeth bother her so she doesn’t try to tug anymore. One thing she does still enjoy is fetching a tennis ball. Guess that’s one thing a Labrador Retriever (mix in her case) loves well into their senior years.
She still has quite a bit of life left in her, but her hearing has gradually been going, her eye sight isn’t the best anymore with cataracts, and when the other two dogs bump into her and knock her over on the tile floor in the kitchen, she needs help getting back up because she has no traction on her foot pads anymore to get a grip on the tile and pull herself back up. Because of that, she gets really agitated when the other dogs get near her in the kitchen. She’ll bark or growl to get them to back away…likely because she knows what’ll happen if she gets knocked down in there! She’s telling them to back off so they don’t hurt her or cause her to fall and hurt herself. I had to help her up earlier this evening after they tripped her and couldn’t get up.
My stepdad keeps saying he wants to have her put down because she’s “getting old”, and tries to justify it saying that she’s lived 3 years past the average life expectancy of a labrador and is becoming too much of a bother to deal with.
Old age isn’t a disease. I can’t wait ’til he’s old and arthritic so I can ask him if he thinks it’s time to have HIM put to sleep, too!
I can understand having your senior dog put down if they are in considerable amounts of pain, have poor quality of life, or just seem to have lost the light in their eyes that was once there in those happy eyes.
I read somewhere once that you should write down a list of 3 things that your dog has enjoyed the most in their life. Once your dog no longer cares about those things, it’s time to consider letting them go.
For Pepper, my list would be 1) Going for walks and car rides. She’s ALWAYS loved it, and still does. She’s great on a leash, and even if she’s at a slower pace now and can’t go as far, you can still see that she loves going. 2) Playing fetch or chase. She’s great at playing hide and seek with you, and loves to chase you after she’s found you. And the aforementioned tennis ball fetching is still very much there. And lastly 3) FOOD! Many dogs will reluctantly eat or even refuse to eat if they aren’t feeling well, don’t feel well enough to get up and eat, or so on. Not Pepper. She’s still a foodie and eagerly awaits each meal. She still even has it timed. She’ll start bother Mom or me around 9:30am/ 6:30pm if she hasn’t had breakfast or dinner yet. The all-too famous Pepper “Eat Dance” comes into play where she’ll dance around in circles excitedly, back leg limp or not.
So in my mind, she’s got plenty of life left in her. She’s lived this long already and been the healthiest dog ever. My first dog, Murphy, had to be put down at age 11 from cancerous tumors that had started in his mouth and proceded into his nasal cavity. With him, he had started losing weight from the cancer, didn’t want to play anymore, and had too much difficulty eating and occasional sneezing fits from discomfort. We didn’t feel chemo was an option, it would just prolong the inevitable and he’d be miserable. While he was very happy to go with mom on that final car ride to the Vet, his quality of life was just not great anymore so we knew it was time to let him go. With Pepper, I do not feel that it’s her time yet, and of course I don’t want to see her go. But again, she’ll let us know when it’s time, and I’ll keep defending her until she tells us that it’s time, even if it means quarelling with my not-so animal friendly step parent in the process.
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