We are having some of our abnormal weather again here in Michigan
with heat and humidity more like August.
It’s hard on our older dogs just like the heat is hard on older
people. We don’t have central air, only
a small window air conditioner we use sometimes in the bedroom.
Hazel is our oldest dog and she turns 18 years old sometime
this month. We got her from a box in front of a Walmart when we went shopping
in August 1995 for an area rug. I
remember it well. Two kids with a box of
11 puppies to give away. They were a
border collie- blue heeler cross. I fell
in love with a gray fluffy puppy with one blue and one brown eye. That was Hazel. They were said to be 6 weeks old, so we peg
her birthday as being in June.
We had a few older small dogs at home and an American Eskimo
male named King out back in a kennel that the previous owners of the house
wanted to leave behind. Hazel was a dream
puppy. She was incredibly easy to housebreak
and always well mannered except that she never liked grooming. She grew a long collie like blue merle coat.
Hazel had a litter of 11 pups when she was a year old by the
American Eskimo, King. She was a great
mom and raised all those puppies just fine.
My sister took two of them, one a white fluff ball like dad and one blue
merle like mom.
Unfortunately soon after the litter of puppies was weaned
and gone, Hazel began to have seizures. They
grew worse and soon she was having them several times a week. They were not full out seizures where she
lost consciousness but she would grow stiff, unable to move and shake all
over. The vet couldn’t pin down any
physical cause and said it might be hereditary, blue merle coat color often
carries with it genes for epilepsy and other things. Later when one of my sister dogs began having
seizures we became pretty convinced it was hereditary.
Hazel was spayed and put phenobarb for the seizures. She had an incredible distaste for
medications of any kind and we had to hide the pill in a piece of hot dog to get
her to eat it. Once in a while the vet
would suggest a different medication but
most were liquids and we could never get her to take them without a major
battle and we went back to phenobarb.
Hazel was on the phenobarb until two years ago. There came a time that summer that I noticed
she was rarely awake anymore, she slept 22 hours a day and always seemed dopey
when she was awake. I thought the end
was near and I decided to take her off the meds because I suspected her body
wasn’t metabolizing them well anymore.
In a week we noticed a great improvement in her alertness and here she
is 2 years later.
She does have a seizure from time to time but they are light
and infrequent. She does however suffer
from some degree of dementia now poor thing.
She wanders around at night and often gets “stuck” in places like behind
the chair and cries until someone helps her.
She is quite weak and very arthritic and has difficulty walking around but she
still makes it outside to potty.
She has a dog, Bugsy, who is 16 himself, who has loved her
like a soul mate since he came here as an abused puppy and she mothered
him. He follows her everywhere although
he has as much trouble walking as she does, since he had rickets as a puppy and
never had good legs. Bugsy cries if he can’t locate her, which
sometimes lets us know she may be standing outside trying to decide how to get
back in.
My husband cooks special food for Hazel and another older
dog we have Sarah who has teeth problems.
He makes chicken noodle soup from scratch for them and Hazel gets a bowl
morning and night. Sometimes she gets
canned food, although she doesn’t like it very often. She occasionally eats out of the dry dog food
bowl still.
Bugsy sits by her and cries until she’s done with her soup,
and then he gets to finish her bowl. It’s
a routine. Hazel also adores soft white
bread. Since she stays thin and always
seems hungry we allow her to have some bread when she begs for it.
Hazel still drinks from the toilet most of the time, God
forbid she drinks from the same water container the other dogs do. We know her hearing is pretty well gone but I
think her vision is still pretty good.
She still sleeps a lot but when she is awake she seems alert, although often
she seems confused. I have tried to
help her avoid going in and out of the doggie door which involves going up and
down several small steps but when I take her out the side door she refuses to
relieve herself there, although she likes snooping around a bit.
Barack, our youngest dog, a big black cocker seems to have a
special regard for Hazel too. He wants
to walk beside her and escort her outside.
However if he so much as bumps her she often falls over. When he’s following her and she stops to
think about what she wants to do, Barack often lies down in front of her. It’s like he’s guarding her but then she can’t
move forward and can’t maneuver backward and starts crying and we have to tell
him to move. He also wants to lick her face, which she
doesn’t like and which often causes her to fall over. We hate to be mean when he seems to be
trying to help her but we are always yelling at him to leave her alone.
But Hazel still seems to enjoy life pretty well. On many days she and Bugsy go out in the
backyard and sleep in the sun. Hazel
still knows what time her meals should be served and eats well most days. We have beds in several rooms so she has a
comfortable place to lay by us. We pet
her and tell her what a good dog she is and she does like that. She has always been a dignified and sweet dog
and she still is.
People see her struggling on one of her worse days and ask
why I don’t have her put to sleep. We
do get up at night to help her when she cries or to check to see if she’s
inside in bad weather. We have to lead
her out of corners or help her up a step sometimes. But we will help her as long as we can. I want her to die at home, with the dignity she
has always shown. I don’t think her pain
is great - she probably does have achy joints but so do I. My hope is that she dies quietly in her sleep
one night, right after I have petted her and told her good night.
