sigh
Malish (doby-husky mutt) is 17, but runs like an old car — awful to start, lots of electrical problems, and fluid leaks everywhere. He’s been slowwwly breaking down over the past several years, getting less and less steady on his feet, more and more neurotic/crazy/cooky, and now goes in his diapers two to three times a day. He can make it up and down the stairs fine about half the time, the other half he panics and falls down them. He has mild to severe arthritis (who can really tell with a dog?), but seems to manage. There are other crazy-old-man habits—for a couple years now he’s been spitting up water up like crazy. No health connection (lots of bloodwork done), he’s just a bit batshit insane. After a particularly bad week of falls we decided the right thing to do was to (man, it’s hard to even type it) do something before he ends up breaking his leg and trauma ensues. He’s awful in the car and worse at the vets, so putting him (and us) through that seems the wrong course.
It’s been in the air for a while, but since there isn’t anything particularly wrong with him—no illness—timing consideration has been awful. It’s kind of surreal: We go to bed at night hoping he’ll pass quietly in his sleep, but in the morning pray he’ll wake up. We’ve had a few bad incidents recently, and realized that we need to act.
Then there’s the little guy, Worf (miniature pinscher). He’s the reason we were ready and able to diaper Malish. He’s an unfortunate puppy-mill product, displaying all the willfulness of a typical min-pin and all of the sociopathy of a halfway-house bound managed individual. He is, well, “off” in a very subtle way – he’s almost a pack animal, but there are a few significant signs that he’s just not right. He broke two different personal trainers, and would probably make the Dog Whisperer cry. Never truly house-trained (he knows, but doesn’t give a shit. Or rather, he does which is the problem), after a lot of frustration and trying every conceivable store-bought diaper out there, Mrs. Dvl got out the sewing machine and perfected the doggie diaper. Has worked wonders for the past several years and probably gave Malish a few extra years on his life.
But he’s our little shit (and proof you can get used to anything). Jokes about selling him to the coal mine aside, he’s part of the family. We figure most other people would have given up on him or had him put down long ago (it took a lot of ruined things to get to this level of doggie-management), but we made it to some level of stability (though not quite sanity).
So here we’ve been under the cloud of what-to-do-about-Malish, and we noticed Worf looked a bit thin. A fifteen pound pooch, over the past month or so, is down to eleven pounds. Not good. Given his age and the horrorshow he is, we had decided long ago not to take any significant medical steps. He has impeccable timing.
I found a vet that will make house calls for this sort of thing. It was fairly traumatic making just those calls and asking about it a few weeks ago when we started thinking about Malish’s deteriorating condition. Now I have to make The Call — for both of them.
sigh
Rhythm
