Just Hanging With The Pets...

The other day I found myself in the company of our pets. This is not unusual, but on this particular day, it was like the animals wanted their pictures taken. To be honest, I have no idea if pets ever want their pictures taken. That didn't stop me from doing it, though.

First, the poodle. He's just a joy to be around. Yes, he's also a handful, but that's what makes him so much fun. It's his personality and we are lucky to have him. He had his favorite squishy ball in his mouth and we ended up on the couch. I took out my phone and snapped a selfie. I don't take a lot of selfies and we don't take many pictures of the dog--he does tend to move around a lot.

A few hours later, I was sitting in my room when our cat came climbing up on the bed. He nestled into his favorite spot and I thought it would be a good time to snap another picture. The cat is our newest addition. He's actually my daughter and youngest son's pet, but he likes hanging around people, and since he's settled down (he no longer wants to rip us to shreds, or if he does, he refrains...), it's nice to have him close.

Last week we had four pets, two cats and two dogs. Now, we're down to three. There's a lot of joy and happy times when we welcome a new member into the family, and there's a lot of pain and tears when one leaves. I'm glad we have the ones we have. They add a lot to the craziness that is our lives. And as long as they want to hang out with us--and I have my phone--I'll probably keep taking pictures.

Our Lazarus Dog...At Least, For The Time Being

When you accept pets into your life, they come with a deal. You get all the love and joy they bring, but since there's opposition in all things, you also get the pain and helplessness of sometimes not being able to help them when they're sick, not being able to have them tell you how they feel.

But it's a deal we make every day.

And in our family, it's a deal we keep making, even after some of those pets have left us.

Years ago, we got a call from our neighbor friends. They said they had a Shih Tzu puppy at their house and wondered if we were interested in taking her home. I went and took a few of the kids with me to check things out.

I saw the puppy.

I called my wife.

"What do you think? my wife asked. "Should I come up and see her?"

I thought about it, then I responded. I said, "If you come up here and see this puppy, you'd better be prepared to take her home with you, because once you see this dog, you'll not be able to say no."

I was right. She came over. We brought the dog home with us.

That was almost fifteen years ago.

We named her Patch. She's seen many days. Lately, she sleeps a lot. She's blind, deaf, and we believe she's got dementia. There's been a few times when she seems like she's on her last legs. One of those times was this past weekend. She didn't get up. She didn't eat. She didn't sleep. It's happened before, but she'd never been that bad for that long.

Then, she got up and started eating and drinking, not a lot, but some.

Lazarus dog.

We're still pretty sure her days are few. She's not eating enough on a daily basis to keep up, and she's sleeping more than before. When she leaves us, we'll be sad--it's part of the deal we made when we decided to bring her home and make her part of the family. She just keeps tricking us as to when that time will be.

When Your Doggie Goes Missing...

She barked as I left the house, lunch in hand, and made my way to work. She stood, like she usually does when we let her out at lunchtime, alone on the front lawn, barking at nothing, staring straight ahead, but seeing nothing.

Her name is Patch and she's fourteen years old.

She's also blind, as well as deaf.

I thought about picking her up and taking her inside, but I decided against it. After all, when she's ready, she'll find her way up the stairs and scratch at the door to be let in. Only today, she didn't go up the stairs...

And she stopped barking.

It was an hour or so later we discovered no one had brought her in. We began our search. We looked in the neighbor's yards--nothing. We looked where she has been ending up when she gets lost or confused. No sign of the fluffy puffball. Of course, calling out for her would do no good. That's when we got worried.

She's been known to wander into the next neighborhood, but the last time she did that was winter. Now, there's tall weeds blocking paths she would normally take. Because she's blind, tall weeds and other plants cause her to turn back. As I checked places a small dog might find herself, I began to think of all the possibilities of where she could be. The fact we could hear no barking caused me the most concern.

I came up with three options.

1. She could have been picked up by an animal control vehicle.

2. She could be resting in a shady area somewhere, tired from trying to find her way home.

3. Or, she could have graduated from this existence, her old and tired body having experienced too much.

Months ago, when we decided it was getting close to us having to put down our precious cat Gracie, we discussed Patch. Some days she's prancing about like a puppy. Other days, she'd sleep all day and not eat anything. It's actually a miracle she's still with us. That third option returned some of those thoughts to my mind.

A few hours later, my wife decided to drive to the neighborhood below ours. We heard someone saw a dog in a yard, but it was before lunch. We thought we ought to check there. As my wife walked between a couple of houses, she heard panting.

She knew.

Patch had been found.

She brought her home, sticker weeds throughout Patch's hair. She was exhausted. We set her before her water dish. She lay there lapping up water--it was all she could do. Patch isn't out of danger yet. She picked up a nasty cough that we hope will subside soon.

We have four animals in our house. The oldest is a farm cat that's around twelve years old. We then have a large dog that just turned one, a kitten that's a few months old, and Patch...the matriarch. It's like having a newborn, a teenager, a middle-ager, and a senior citizen, and we're dealing with the joys and the not-so-joys of each. Today, we had a scare. We're glad it turned out well.