15 months ago my splendid dog for 13 years died. My friends were counting how many weeks it would be before I got another. Then how many months. Now they are asking me why I don’t.
Do you replace a faithful friend or family member with a stranger just because you have the room for him/her? That dog was an individual, and over the 13 years, from his puppyhood to his maturity to his time of impaired health, we learned to trust each other and rely on each other.
I miss HIM, not the company of a dog.
Watching Yoda endure pain reminded me of pain I endured, and I felt real sympathy for the strength it took him to try to do what he felt was his duty as my dog: to bark at anyone at the door; to watch me for signals we were going out; to try to give me the attention and affection he always had.
I have given quite a lot of thought to whether what we ask of pet dogs is fair to them. I think dogs really are meant for lives of jobs. Herding animals, hunting and retrieving animals, minesweeping, some task where they are trusted with a responsibility and they perform it intelligently.
Yoda, my dog, spent much of his life watching me writing at the computer. I wish I had spent more time doing what he would have preferred: walking offleash somewhere, though there were not many places to do that. Playing with dog friends, although because he was a corgi and short, if a young medium to large dog came to play with him at the dog park, the young dog would jump on Yoda, and that was how his back was injured. So that play was ruled out.
He was a great patient with medical procedures, but they can’t have been any more fun for him than they are for us.
