Making sure our dogs stay as pampered as possible

I think he’s dead, my wife told me over the phone with breaking voice.

It’s not the kind of phone call anyone wants to receive  — even if it is about a dog.

I comforted her and told her I would be right home. She said, “I keep calling him and he won’t get up off the dog bed.” I urged her to stay calm.

I knew full well this senior citizen dog has a habit of ignoring her and he has a habit of really zoning out when he gets serious about sleeping. Often I can walk right up to him sleeping in the yard and startle the heck out of the poor guy when he realizes someone slipped up on him.

Lately, when Ranger’s inside, he’s taken to sleeping on the dog bed behind my chair. He’s not confident in crawling up on the couch anymore apparently. That used to be his favorite spot. He’s also fond of sleeping on the rug in front of the fireplace these days, especially if it’s cold and there’s a fire.

I arrived home and as I stepped into the living room his head immediately popped up off the dog bed and he began getting to his feet to come greet me.

I joked to my wife that he seemed to be doing awful well for a dead dog. Since then I’ve taken to calling him Dead Dog — my wife is not amused.

It is tough losing a pet and I have to be honest and say that I did wonder a little bit as I traveled home if he might have crossed the Rainbow Bridge. Best I can remember he’s 13 years old. I think that works out to 91 in dog years, so he’s an old man.

My concern lately had been with the younger smaller dog. The vet tells us she’s got a heart condition. She was a little grim on first look at her x-rays but after a week on lasiks the inflammation and fluid around the heart had subsided greatly and the cough that had been getting worse and worse got better.

My biggest challenge in treating this cagey little dog has been getting that pill down her hatch. Hiding it in a cheese ball made from sliced cheese worked well for a while. When that faltered I started hiding it in a dab of peanut butter. Now it’s really hard to get her to eat either of these favorite things. Hiding it in a slice of meat is working for now.

We’ve always taken the loss of our dogs hard. We have two urns with the ashes of previous pets and we know it might not be long before there are two more.

We don’t have kids so these are our babies. They’re our family and however long they have we’ll make sure they stay as pampered as possible.

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

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