The Shaggy Dog

Have you ever seen the movie "The Shaggy Dog" with Tim Allen in it? The dog is 700 or 800 years old. Well if you have then you will understand why I call my dog "The Shaggy Dog".

When our kids were in school, I think the oldest was 12 and the youngest was 8, I allowed the household (including Hubby) to talk me into getting a puppy. After all we all know that every kid should have a pet. The gerbil had finally died, he lasted 2 years and I think that is long for gerbils to live, and the kids just had to have something that they could love. I wasn't fond of rodents and so when the dog came up for discussion, and after much calculation of how long it would live, I consented.

Here was my thought process: the youngest child was 8 and we all know that dogs live for about 10-12 years so that meant that we would have an empty nest at just the right time for hubby and I to start enjoying life. Seemed like a good idea at the time.

Since I gave my consent, our youngest child is married with two small children and guess what? That's right, the dog is still alive. We are still getting a babysitter when we want to go away and we're aging fast. If we don't start to travel soon we'll be in our rocking chairs reminiscing about what?

We have talked about getting rid of the dog many times but it has never seemed like the right time. However, this year we decided to do major renovations on our house and while all this kerfuffle is happening we thought it would be nice to go on a holiday. The dilemma is "What to do with the dog?". We finally decided that maybe it was time to let him go to dog heaven but when the time came to take him to the vet, neither hubby nor I could do it. After all he is part of the family.

A couple of days ago my hubby came home from work and informed me that he had made an appointment with the vet to have the dog checked to see how his health was fairing. I thought this is a good idea and seeing that the dog was as best as we could figure 14-15 this would confirm that he was on his last legs and that the loving thing for us to do was put him to sleep and save him some pain. That was going to make this decision so much easier.

Well, we have the shaggy dog. Our vet visit was unbelievable. It turns out that we have a 17 year old dog and he is in amazingly good health. He has some plaque on his teeth and a little arthritis in his back hip area. He is going blind and he is quite deaf but other than that he is in amazing health. He does not have the body of a 17 year old dog, he has a much younger one. Our vet said that he could in no good conscience recommend that we put this dog to sleep. As we drove home there were mixed feelings in the truck. Disappointment at the loss of our freedom and relief that the dog was in such good health.

So, there you have it. I live with the shaggy dog. I think he just may live to be 700 years old. All we really accomplished in all of this was to make our decision even harder than before.

Sometimes ignorance is bliss and this is one time where I think that would have been. Sigh!

PS
We really do love our dog.