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.