Claire
Master Chef
As someone with a 14-year old, kidney diseased, Jack Russell-mutt, I sympathise. She gets me up every morning somewhere between 3-5 a.m. (don't ask me why her whining wakes me, but not husband. I think he's playing possum), so my already insomniac life has gotten insane. She is my husband's very first dog, and when she goes (we were told she had a few months to live 8 months ago ... and she's like the energizer bunny or a timex watch) it is going to break our hearts. Not to mention that we also have her 11 year old daughter, who will be devestated. So far though, she's showed few symptoms of being in pain. She's always been moody, and just gets a little more grumpy. She's totally deaf now. Poor hubby. When I told him she was deaf, he didn't believe me. I told him to engage her attention, then went behind her and clapped, blew a whistle, etc. House is quite quiet now that we don't yell at her any more! This dog has travelled more places than almost any human I know, and been a wonderful companion through everything. She has so many cysts and swolen organs that she looks, as hubby says, like a bag of doorknobs. But she still wants to climb up in your lap and cuddle, still is brave enough to take on any other animal in the neighborhood, still has a good life. Her daughter is her "hearing ear" dog (how we missed the fact that she'd gone deaf: she was following cues from her daughter, and can feel people coming up to her through our old wooden floors). She's a good girl, and from the day I saw her little face in a pet shop in Hawaii (a whole other story), from the day hubby came to help me unload groceries and saw her sitting in a cardboard box on the floorboards, she's pleased everyone, even those pseudo-macho-men who hate small dogs.
