The Dog Blog: August 2016

Thursday, August 25, 2016

Lady's sad struggles

LADY WHEN SHE WAS YOUNGER AND SLIMMER...

Lady and I made a surprise appearance at the dog park this morning; we hadn't gone in several weeks for various reasons.

There were a couple of men and one or two dogs in the big-dog side when we got there, but they left before we got into the little-dog side. A black dog bellowed at us a few times as they drove away.

We only saw a couple of people — a woman I didn't know and a man (John) I do know. John had his dogs Daisy and Gracie with him, and they sniffed Lady all over. And John and I talked a few minutes.

We stayed about 45 minutes and got out of there.

The worst part came at the end. Lady had no trouble getting into the car when we went to the park; she climbed right into the floorboard, then popped up onto the seat. Coming home, she struggled and couldn't get into the floorboard. I tried to help, with no avail.

Finally, she went back down to the ground and stood there. I grabbed her harness and lifted enough so she could get into the car.

It's happened before, and it's always sad when it happens. Once, she fell over on her right side in the floorboard, but she was able to get up herself.

It'll get worse as she gets older (she'll unofficially be 16 on Oct. 1). Sigh.

NOTE: Lady passed on Sept. 17, 2016; that was just two weeks short of her unofficial 16th birthday. We got her Oct. 1, 2002.

CONTACT: I can be reached at tgilli52@gmail.com or nc3022@yahoo.com. Also, my Twitter handle is EDITORatWORK.

More entries from The Dog Blog

• Katie cried

• Growl and pull

• ... said the spider to ...

• The Dog Diary (2015)

• The Dog Diary (2014)

• 13-plus years with my dog Lady

• OOH! OOH! The stereophonic huskies

• What Lady and Michael Jackson had in common

Blog entries by Tom Gillispie

• Resume for a writer and editor

• An editor's views on powerful writing

• Advice for be and would-be novelists

• Links to TG's stories online

• Favorite quotes

• What I do when I'm editing

Anecdotes by Tom Gillispie

• Good Samaritan

• The PRESS cap and my friend Mike

• Watching TV

• No luck with Billy Sims

• Wipeout at Death Valley

• Days with rainbows

• A desperate writer working in the dark

• Yer outta there!

EDITOR@WORK blog entries

• You really DO need an editor

• Reminders for would-be novelists

• What I do when I'm editing

• What I charge (it's a deal) and what I edit

• Slogging through the Internet

• J-school: More eyes on your stories

• J-school: Go out and learn

• Rookie mistakes for magazine writers

Blog entries from The Auto Racing Journal

• Angel in Black: Remembering Dale Earnhardt Sr.

(a book of great stories about the Intimidator)

• Then Junior Said to Jeff...

(the book of great NASCAR stories)

• My best day as a sports writer

• Jeff Gordon's milk toast to Dale Earnhardt

• Wayne Auton: A life in racing

Friday, August 19, 2016

Worrying about my old dog

OUR FUZZY LADY LIKED COLD WEATHER.

I had a real scare last winter, although some people might say I was being silly.

First, our dog Lady drank a ton of water, lapping it over and over and over and... It seemed like her drinking lasted for several minutes.

Then she ignored the food I'd given her and laid down on the floor in the living room. Finally, she got up and went downstairs to the basement. Presumably, I figured, she'd go outside through the dog door and do her business.

But for more than two hours, she didn't come back upstairs, and I got worried. What was wrong with her?

When my wife got up in the middle of the night, I told her about Lady, and we both went downstairs to look for her. I was afraid of what we'd find, since Lady IS a 15-year-old pooch.

I opened the basement door, and Lady looked up at us innocently. It was like, "What's up? What's going on? Why are you both up?" She had just been enjoying the cool night air.

No, I didn't feel like a fool. I felt major relief.

She's lying beside my foot now and breathing heavily in sleep.

And I'm just happy she's still with us.

NOTE: Lady passed on Sept. 17, 2016; that was just two weeks short of her unofficial 16th birthday. We got her Oct. 1, 2002.