A first: I out-walk Winston

From 12/6/07

Today Winston and I walked to the park -- and for the first time, I was going faster than he was! (Only on the way back.) Until now, I’ve had to keep ordering him, “No pulling!” as he tried to rush ahead of me. This time I kept pulling HIM to go faster as he trailed along. I had to tell myself to stop pulling in order to avoid injuring my wrist and back.

I’m a lot stronger... and he's gotten weaker.

Winston no longer barks at passing dogs without Ro to get him started. He hardly even barks at the mailman. He has not been the same since she died.

Now he barks alone

From 11/27/07

Today we found out that Winston’s best friend Ro died. She was a pit bull who lived across the street. She was an escape artist, and every time she got loose, she came over to see Winston.

We knew that she had a fatal disease, and she had already beaten the vet’s prediction. It was about a year ago that the vet said she only had weeks left to live. She was obviously failing… deaf, stumbling when she walked. But still it was a shock today when we saw her family cleaning the garage and got the news.

Her humans tried to break it to us gently by offering us a half-empty bag of dog food. “Would Winston eat this?” Wendy asked.

At first I was preoccupied with the type of food, and didn’t think about what it meant. In the past, they had given us rawhide bones that Ro didn’t like.

“How’s Ro?” I asked.

So many times they had replied, “She’s still hanging in there.”

But this time the strained look on their faces told me that things had changed.

“She died two weeks ago,” Wendy answered in a low voice.

In response to my questioning look, she added, “We had to put her down.”

We expressed our sympathy, and Wendy made one more comment: “We have her ashes on the mantle. Maybe we’ll scatter them when we go hiking.”

As soon as we were back inside the house, Dillon suggested that we send a sympathy card for Ro. Then Winston whined, seeming to understand what we were talking about. All afternoon he kept giving me a certain intense, human look that he gets when something important happens. There was a tragic look in his eyes.

Looking back, I think that my dog knew when Ro died, because he has been acting different for about 2 weeks. He mopes around, moves really slowly when he gets up, and sighs a lot. We thought it was just his hip dysplasia flaring up, but none of the usual remedies for that are helping.

Winston used to enjoy barking along with Ro whenever a dog walked by. We didn't really notice when that changed, but I'm sure that he did. Now Winston barks alone.

I still keep thinking that I'll hear Ro pawing at our gate to get in and play with Winston again any day now. Her visits were one of the simple joys of life for me and Winston. It's hard to believe that those days are over!

Dillon burst into tears when we looked at the “pet sympathy cards” online.

Then Winston came running to the rescue.

Christmas Glamor-Puss 2007

I’ve been getting Sapphire used to wearing her glamorous Christmas collar -- red with a glittery stripe and a bell. Two days ago she was wearing it happily around the house -- until Winston heard it and got excited. He chased Sapphire so he could check out her jingly collar and she ended up threatening him with her claws.

Yesterday they were both used to her new look. My cat posed happily near the Christmas tree.

Winston at Christmas 2007

Winston seemed to want his photo taken with the Christmas tree this year. He’s looking handsome in his jingle collar!

Slowing down

I’ll be posting excerpts from my off-line journal for a few days to bring this blog up-to-date on Winston’s recent dramas.

11/11/07
Winston’s favorite dog is Ro, a pit bull who lives across the street. She’s built like a tank and has already proved the vets wrong by living with lung cancer for many months past the date they thought she would die.

Her lung cancer flared up a few weeks ago. Once again we thought she would die, but she’s hanging on, still coming to visit Winston whenever she can escape. But when she gets here, they no longer run around like they did when they were young. They just sniff each other a lot and walk around the yard together happily.

Once we met Ro walking around our neighborhood with her humans... My heart broke when the once-mighty Ro stumbled and almost fell on the street. She’s also deaf, doesn’t respond when I call her name, but happily wags her tail if she seems me. Roi’s age 13.

Winston is also slowing down at age 11. If he’s in a sitting position and tries to stand, he moves ever so s-l-o-w-l-y. Probably hip dysplasia, so I doubled his dose of glucosamine/chondroitin. He used to jump up eagerly whenever we said his name, but not anymore. It takes coaxing -- unless a walk or food is involved. Then he’s as frisky as ever.

Ten years later

Ten years have passed since Winston first galloped into my life. We’ve had lots of adventures, some of which will be recorded in this blog.

Winston is still with me, as loving and joyful as ever. But now he is also a “senior” dog with age-related health problems, especially the hip dysplasia that often plagues big dogs.

My reports and reflections as he slows down will also be recorded here. This blog will mix past and present, as memory itself tends to do.

Stray Dog Brings Unexpected Joy

I rescued a giant stray dog. Or, more accurately, we rescued each other. A Great Dane mix was the last thing that I thought I wanted, but he turned out to be just what I needed.

“He’s the world’s biggest puppy!” smiled one neighbor, while another groaned, “You mean he’s going to get BIGGER?!” He was 89 pounds of black-and-white spotted energy.

I first saw him on Independence Day, when I was walking through my Los Angeles neighborhood to watch the fireworks. My doctors had urged me to take a short daily walk in the cool of evening to help me recover from chronic fatigue syndrome, a disability that suddenly left me unable to work.

On the worst days, my life partner Dillon prepared meals for me and my only activity was eating them. I usually walked at night to avoid people. I feared that they would wear me out and provoke a relapse. I was already two years into my disability on the day I met the dog who was destined to change my life.

We live on a winding, mountaintop road overlooking the city, so I was able to view several different fireworks displays in the distance. As bursts of gold and emerald sparks shimmered against the night sky, a large, dappled dog emerged from the bushes nearby.

He galloped ahead of me, stopped to sniff something, then ran to catch up with me again. I was impressed by his grace and his countless spots. He had short white fur with black spots, much like a Dalmatian, except he had more spots than usual and they ranged in size from big blotches to tiny flecks. This is the look of a Harlequin Great Dane. Since that night, the sight of him has inspired many strangers to stop and exclaim, “What a beautiful dog!”

Still, I didn’t think much about him until the next morning when I found him on our front porch. He greeted me with a joyful grin and a wagging tail. His brown eyes were intelligent and eager to please. Later a vet would estimate his age between six months and one year. He had a dirty piece of rope around his neck -- and quite a few fleas -- but no identity tags.

Dillon and I had been toying with the idea of getting a dog, a small dog. We resisted feeding this giant, reminding ourselves of the many practical reasons against adopting him. Wasn’t I too weak to help train him, or even hold him on a leash? How could I carry the huge amounts of dog food he would eat? For that matter, how could we afford to buy it? Yes, yes, yes and yet -- there was Winston. Before we knew it, Dillon had named him.

In just the first three days, he made our lives better. We found ourselves looking out the window often, happy to see that Winston was still there. Other people fed him, but he chose to hang out in our yard. My walks, once solitary affairs, became family adventures as both Winston and Dillon suddenly wanted to join me.

During these walks we asked everyone we met if they knew where Winston belonged. I discovered that Winston had already made friends with the entire neighborhood. Everyone agreed that Winston had once been well cared for, because he absolutely loved people. But nobody knew who owned him.

The neighbors informed us that lots of unwanted dogs get dumped in a nearby park. Somebody had already called the county animal shelter to catch Winston, but so far the animal control officers had not come. When dogs go to the local shelter, more than half of them end up being euthanized.

I longed to keep Winston, but I could not care for him by myself and I felt it was too much to ask of Dillon after all the extra burdens she had assumed due to my disability. On the fourth morning, we agreed not to adopt him.

Just a few minutes later a young man rang our doorbell. I had never spoken to him before, even though he lived right across the street. He offered to help us with Winston if we wanted to keep him.

Dillon said she would think about it while se was at work, and drove away to his office. I could tell she was excited by this new possibility.

I rested in the backyard by laying flat on a lawn chair as I always did. But it was not the same as always. Winston lay beside me.

Until that moment, I had not realized how lonely I was. Here was a loyal friend who was delighted to stay with me all day, even if all I could do was lay there silently. Winston was an easy playmate, overjoyed with any activity on my part. He also gave me something to think about besides my problems. Suddenly I realized that my heart had been broken by the many losses surrounding my illness. But that was past. Now I was healing and I wept tears of happiness.

Dillon came home that evening with a collar, a leash, a ten-pound bag of dog food and a big smile. Winston was home to stay.