Older Dog Wisdom: Tux 24 - Summer Allergies

When summer came upon us, Tux’s allergies hit him like a ton of bricks. They'd been less severe during the winter and spring. He is allergic to beef, all grains, probably chicken, lamb, pasta, and the list goes on. The only things we’re sure he’s not allergic to are fresh duck breast and yams. 

His constant itching and scratching was finally diagnosed by a vet we were seeing when we lived overseas. His recommendation was to feed him fresh duck breast and boiled yams. Very soon after starting his new diet, his allergies cleared up and he was allergy free while he lived overseas. When he returned to the US, his allergies kicked in again. 

In case you don’t know it, fresh duck breast in the US is expensive, very expensive and very hard to find. Yams, while plentiful, do not make a diet for my carnivore as he was quick to point out. 

I tried a variety of commercially made dog foods and even prepared his food myself, but still the allergies continued. It wasn’t until a friend suggested that perhaps we should add grains to his list of allergies that I found a solution to most of his problems. I found a grain-free dog food that had duck in it, and again his allergies cleared up. 

Tux’s allergies returned with the summer. This time, though, his allergies are not food specific. He may be allergic to grass. Yes, grass. And only in the summer. He is virtually allergy free in the winter as long as he stays grain free.

Tux has tried to convince me on more than one occasion that he’s okay with the scratching and itching so it’s okay to feed him beef - steak preferably. I’m not okay with his scratching and itching. Not when we can do something to alleviate it.

Lesson Learned

Sometimes we have to give up that which we love in order to live a better life.

Older Dog Wisdom - Grace 2: Cancer Surgery

Grace had surgery. While difficult on her, I do believe it was worse for me. 

I first noticed the problem in February when she began licking her front right paw. She didn’t seem to be in pain, she wasn’t limping or crying out when she jumped down from things. There was only her persistent licking of the paw. Then she began limping slightly.

I took her to the Vet when I noticed an odor emanating from the paw. It could have been because she was licking it all the time or it could be that something worse was going on. I hoped it was the former. 

The vet examined her, declared it was only an infection, and sent us home with antibiotics, pills to reduce the swelling, and a medicated shampoo in which to soak the paw. 

We followed the vet’s orders. She took the pills like a trooper (mainly because they were buried in globs of peanut butter, one of her favorite foods since she’d been a puppy). We went back to the vet. He pronounced her cured. I was immensely relieved.

She was not, however, cured. The licking persisted. She began limping even more. Things were getting worse, not better. We returned to the animal hospital (which I had asked around about and got glowing reviews on it so I took Grace and Tux to see a vet there), but saw a different vet. She examined Grace, and said we needed x-rays to determine what was really going on. When asked, she said she thought Grace might have cancer.

No! I cried out silently. Not my Gracie. Not cancer. 

The x-ray did, indeed, show that she had cancer of the toe, and it had already eaten away a goodly portion of her toe. 

The first vet never uttered the word cancer. His misdiagnosis of the cancer allowed the disease to eat away at Grace’s bone, and worse, perhaps spread to other areas of her body.

I took the x-ray to a different practice, and the vet there agreed it was cancer, and Grace needed to have the toe removed. Surgery was scheduled. The toe was removed.

Grace came through like a trooper, even managing to have the staff and doctor fall in love with her along the way. At home, she wasn’t able to jump up on the bed so she was lifted up and down. She quickly adjusted to the huge bandage on her paw. Within a day or two, she was running on three legs while holding the casted leg out in front of her. 

After several days, Tux, her brother, was rolling his eyes, sure that she was faking the effects of the surgery.

The pathology report came back confirming that it had been cancer, but also confirming the doctor had been able to remove all the cancer. She now has to return to the vet every three months for an x-ray to confirm that the cancer hasn’t spread.

Now, six weeks after the surgery, she is back to her old self. Reasserting her alpha dog status and wrestling the title of alpha dog from her brother, Tux, who is resisting her attempted coup since he had taken over while she was recovering. He wasn’t about to give up his hard-won title easily. 

One of the manifestations of Alpha Dogism in our family is who leads who out the back door and into the back yard. For a short few weeks, Tux got to go out the first. Then Grace recovered and now she’s back to leading the charge outside.

I have no idea who’s going to win the Alpha Dog War nor do I care. I’m just thankful that the two of them are healthy again.

Older Dog Wisdom 17: Sweet Compassion

Tux is the kind of guy who’s tough when he’s protecting his family, and a softie when no one is looking.

When my nephew comes to visit, Tux gets all squishy around him. He loves Zack. He’ll follow him around the house and even goes outside with him when Zack goes out on the deck to smoke. Zack loves Tux. Instead of going out front, he goes out back with Tux,

I recently had cancer surgery on my nose. When I came home, I had a humongous bandage on my nose. Tux and his sister were very glad to see me. One of the first things Tux did after I settled down in my favorite chair was to crawl up into my lap and lean toward me. I didn’t move, curious as to what he was up to. He very gently touched his nose to my bandaged one. His gentleness was so very touching and brought tears to my eyes.

I wasn’t surprised by his gentleness and caring. He senses when I don’t feel well. He’ll stay by my side if a cold lays me low, for instance. This, though, tugged at my heart strings because everyone I’d seen since leaving the surgeon’s office merely stared at me. And this remained the case for the next two weeks while I still had the bandage on my nose. Few people asked what had happened, most simply stared. I didn’t think the people asking were rude, and I usually said something like, “You should see the other guy.” They weren’t being rude, they were satisfying their curiosity. The people who were being rude were the people who stared.

Tux is not unique in being able to sense when his human does’t feel well. He’s like many other animals in that regard. He does, however, have a special way of making me feel better because he so obviously loves me. 

Lesson Learned

It’s really too bad that humans have lost the ability to care about others. I’ve been around people who think any kind of illness is a weakness and compassion for the weak has no place in their lives. I can’t help but hope that as they grow older and they become more susceptible to illnesses themselves they’ll find their compassion where they buried it long ago when they let their pride hide their compassion beneath a boulder. Surely, if Tux can do it so easily, so should a human be able to do.

Older Dog Wisdom 4

Walking with Tux

While out for our morning walk, Tux, my 10-year-old male dog, was prancing along when he suddenly stopped dead in his tracks. He brought his left front leg up and stared hard down the sidewalk. I looked where he was looking, but saw nothing that should have put him on alert. He began stalking the object. We moved down the sidewalk one slow step at a time. I kept trying to figure out what had captured his attention, but still didn’t see anything. He was stepping down the sidewalk very carefully, trying hard not to alert his quarry to his presence. I guess it didn’t occur to him that he was with me and surely whatever he was stalking would see me before it saw Tux. Be be that as it may, the two of us were stalking something only Tux could see.

Finally, Tux sped up. Then I saw what he had seen. At first, I thought it was a squirrel, but it wasn’t moving. Then I thought maybe it was Mr. & Mrs. Mallard, but they haven’t returned from their summer vacation yet. Then I was sure it was a bunny. As we got closer, Tux sped up again. He put his nose to the ground and we were moving down the sidewalk at a fast clip.

Then it happened. Tux stepped on his ear and almost went ass over teakettle. It took all my self-control not to laugh out loud. After he recovered his equilibrium, he looked around to see if anyone had seen him stumble. There was no one but us. So we moved along.

The object of his attention turned out to be a twig with its leaves still attached. Once he ascertained that it was a bunch of leaves, he proceeded to a small planted area where he knew bunnies usually hang out as if to convince me that he’d been stalking a bunny and not a bunch of leaves.

Tux’s Lesson

The lesson Tux taught me was to keep my eye on my goal so that I don’t get distracted and careen off track.

That lesson is often a hard one for writers. There are so many stories in our heads clamoring to be told that sticking with one for 75,000 words can be hard. I have several started projects that need to be finished. Someday, I tell myself, I’ll return to them and finish them. I tell myself if I don’t at least start the story, I may forget the idea. While that may be true, writing 5,000 words and then setting them aside means there are 5,000 fewer words in the novel I currently have 45,000 words written.

How Do You Track Story Ideas?

How do you track the story ideas running around in your head? Do you write the idea down somewhere and hope you remember where? Or do you start the story and set it aside until it’s time to spend the time finishing it?

Old Dog, New Lessons #3

A friend joined me in walking my dog, Tux, in our local park the other day. When she noticed me glancing at him often, she asked, “What are you looking for?”

I had to think a moment because, while I knew I checked on him often, I wasn’t really aware of what, exactly, I was looking for.

I told her that I was looking for a hitch in his gait as he walked, I looked to make sure he wasn’t limping, I wanted to see if he was at the end of his lead or was he walking closer to me (which tells me he’s not feeling well), and I wanted to ensure he didn’t pick up something he shouldn’t. It was on one of our walks, as I checked on him, that I first realized that Tux was losing his hearing. He was no longer responding to a dog barking in a nearby neighborhood or a child screaming in delight as his mother pushed him in a swing.

After we got home, I began thinking about our walks. I noted that what I look for in Tux every morning is the same thing that I look for in my first edit of a completed manuscript. Once I finish writing a manuscript, I get it printed out. The things I’m looking for in that first edit are the same things I look for in Tux.

• Is there a hitch in my writing? Does my writing flow or are there hitches in it? I think of a hitch in my writing as something that will stop a writer dead in her tracks or anything that will distract the reader.

• Is my writing limping? If the story isn’t moving along, it is limping. If the reader isn’t turning the pages like her hair is on fire, then the writing is limping.

• Am I moving along at a leisurely pace and not at the end of my lead? I want my story to feel vigorous and eager. I want the reader to want to know what’s going to happen next.

• Finally, I want to make sure there that I hadn’t put something into the manuscript that would stick in a reader’s mind as an irritant throughout the story. I want to make sure there are no loose ends. Did one of my characters promise to do something on page 26 and at the end of the book, that promise was still not kept?

Tux is an old dog who prefers to be called “older” rather than old because the word “old” has such negative connotations in this country. Regardless of whether he is old or older, he is still able to teach me new tricks, and he brings joy to my life because he finds joy in his.

Old Dog, New Lessons

In August, I posted about learning lessons from my ten-year-old Cocker Spaniel, Tux.

I learned another lesson from Tux a couple of weeks ago. We were out walking when a small dog started carrying on from his place of safety behind his chain link fence. Tux was okay with the frenetic activity of the small dog running back and forth trying to provoke Tux. When the other dog stopped and started barking and talking trash, it was more than Tux could stand and he took umbrage.

I was sure Tux would, at the very least, lunge at the other dog. No. What he did was to stop and look hard at the trash-talking mutt. Then Tux turned his head away and approached his sister who had been watching the interaction between the two males.

In the doggie equivalent of a high five, he walked over to his sister and gently touched noses with her. I’ve only seen him do this once before, and under similar circumstances. It was as if he were saying that he was the bigger dog for walking away and his sister was agreeing with him, and, indeed, was proud of him for doing that.

How many times have we allowed ourselves to be provoked into action by someone else’s words only to rue the reaction to those fighting words? I, myself, allowed myself to get provoked the other day when we were walking in a park that posted that all dogs have to be on leashes. When we rounded a bend in the sidewalk, a man was coming toward us and his dog was off leash. Knowing Tux as I do, I called to the man to please leash his dog. He ignored me. So I called to him again to leash his dog. His response was not to leash his dog, but to continue to advance on us. By this time, Tux, too, was being provoked because he knows it is his duty to protect his sister and his Mom and here was an unleashed dog heading toward us. Finally, in my best school teacher voice, I ordered “Leash your dog.”

Finally, the man tried to do just that. Not that his dog went to him when he was called. The man had to chase down his undisciplined dog, which, of course, amused me no end to see an overweight arrogant man chasing a dog around in circles. He did get his dog on a leash and as we passed one another on the path, with his dog growling and snarling, Tux had had enough and lunged at the other dog. He and I both knew that because I had him on a short leash, nothing would happen. But neither the man nor his dog knew that. The dog was totally intimidated. So, too, was the man.

I couldn’t help but mutter as we passed, “Keep your damned dog on a leash in the park.” His response was a snarled juvenile retort, “You don’t own this park.”

I know better than to allow people to provoke me. Nothing is served by it. While there was momentary satisfaction on my part for having spoken up, the interchange did nothing to change the man’s attitude that he didn’t need to obey the leash laws, that he was special, and the laws weren’t meant for him.

So now, I simply do what I have to do to protect Tux and his sister as well as myself from harm. If it’s turning and going in the opposite direction of the unleashed dog, we will do that.

Luckily, though, I’ve not seen that man and his in my park again.