Two Old Dogs

My dog has no empathy. I have been home for three days—suffering in heroic silence—with a wretched bronchial infection. Even after permission was given to do his business in a quiet corner of the kitchen, he stood firm in his decision to drag me out in the cold.

My future looks bleak. My dog displays no Lassie-like traits. There will be no grampy got drunk and fell in the well heroics. No comforting wail of an oncoming ambulance. No photo journalist snapping shots of me embracing the beast from the comfort of a warm hospital bed. No, sir. With anxious eyes bulging he stares me down, saying, Take me out for my morning crap you phlegm spewing wreck. So out I go, wheezing all the way.

Outside I man-up—as man-up as one can be in pajama bottoms and slippers—ranting and raving about what a miserable disappointment he has become to me in my elder years. Keep walking, old man. Keep walking.

After I get home I read a study by the Animal Health Foundation that says my particular twelve year old dog is equal to that of a seventy-seven year-old human. He’s eight years older? This shines a brighter light on things. I go to Google and search nursing homes for aging canines. I come up empty.

Hey! I didn’t adopt you. You adopted me. Remember that day at the Animal Rescue Foundation? You were there as a family and you said to your son that whichever pup comes to him first is the one you should choose. And here I am. Still the chosen one. You made your doggie bed . . . blah, blah, blah.

“You were barely a pound back then. Now, you’re more heifer than dog.”

Hey! You’re the one that feeds me. Over compensating for your miserable indifference to my needs.

“Your needs? I feed and bathe you. I shower you with doggie treats.”

I haven’t had a bath in months. Getting so I can’t stand the smell of my own butt. And doggie treats? Pigs ears? Beef jerky? Dead animal parts. Have you ever said to yourself, I think I’ll treat myself to a pig’s ear? Of course not. That’s because you got your face stuffed in a gallon jug of ice cream. And you’re calling me the heifer?

That was a low blow. I thought this dog had better sense than to bite the hand that overfeeds him. But such is my life. They’ll be no fetching the pipe and slippers with this one. I’m lucky to still have a spot in my own bed, because Baxter loves sleeping at me feet. That’s if and when he can get his fat ass to make the leap.

I heard that!

Picture courtesy of Wiki pics:https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Antonio_Rotta_A_man_and_his_dog,...