Dogs doing well, but human could stand to lose weight

The two pups and I are still adjusting to life without my sweet doggie-loving wife who died in May.

Lots of people asked me if either of the two dogs was mourning for her and as much as she would have hated to hear it, I really haven’t noticed any behavior from them that looked like they were mourning. That’s not to say that we haven’t been on a bit of a rollercoaster since she left this earth.

We’ve had the older dog, a shepherd possibly pit bull mix, for 15 years this fall and he was at least a year old when we got him. We named him Ranger after the type of pickup I was driving and still am driving. The truck is 23 years old and I’ve had it for 22 years.

Ranger (the dog) was lanky, pup-like and a little nervous when we first got him. He had a fixation with cats and birds. He liked to chase them and bark at them and his previous owner, a cat person, didn’t like those tendencies.

We took him to the vet within the first few months of him coming to live with us and had an operation we hoped would curb his male dog tendencies and keep him in the yard. We had our struggles there even after he was neutered but the dogcatcher only caught him once. The operation and getting a little older did cause him to fill out. His back got broad and his coat got sleek.

For the last couple of years he’s really lost that body mass and it began to get bad while my wife was declining this spring. He got to the point where there was no meat at all on that once broad back. The arthritis he had struggled with had gotten worse and worse in his hind legs.

My mother came by and fed him while my wife was in the hospital in Amarillo and then again this summer when I took a vacation. She said he looked so bad she was sure he would probably die while I was gone.

As I turned my care-giving attention onto this dog I began to wonder if he was eating enough. I’ve always free-fed my dogs with dry dog food and never had a problem. So I decided I would invest in the best canned dog food available and give him one can in the morning along with one can in the evening, along with his regular kibble.

He is a big fan of that wet dog food and puts his face in it and eats it up quickly. After a little more than a month it looks like it’s making a difference with more muscle and more activity level.

Things went the opposite way with the little dog, our table beggar. She has a heart condition and after working her mommy for table scraps she looked like a little melon before my wife died, because she was getting most of mommy’s plate. A couple of months after my wife died, the little dog has slimmed down greatly and is much more active.

Both of them are just about off of dog treats in the morning but the little one gets half a piece of bologna each morning with her heart medicine inside. The old dog gets the other half because he’s an old dog and likes bologna too.

So we have two out of three individuals in the household with their weight trending the right way. Now we just need to work on the dumb human.

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

[email protected]