Our Dog

Our dog is 11 years old sometime soonish.  She was a rescue and we adopted her at somewhere around 3 months old in May.  I have told the kids her birthday is January 1 just because that's easiest but I'd put her birthday somewhere between now and March.  I remember thinking she was probably way younger than they predicted but ... no way of knowing.

She was found in a storm drain with two other sibling pups.  All girls.  They found them because there was a male dog standing near the storm drain barking his head off.  The rescue group was amazed because it was a male dog (they assume the father) that was guarding the pups, and not the mama.

We took "River" as she was then known.  We chose her over a bunch of other dogs.  Lewis liked her because she was chewing on her sisters ears.  We called her Piper for a week (me still liking that name from my Charmed days).  But it didn't suit.  One night discussing how it didn't suit, we were watching the Mav's in a playoff game.  What about Maverick?  For a girl?  Mavvy?

And there you are.

A few days after we got her the rescue group called me.  All of her siblings were dead from Parvo.  She'd need to be looked at immediately.  She was very sick for about a month.  But she made it through.  I remember holding her while she slept on my chest, much as I would later hold my babies, watching TV, wondering if she was going to die.

She didn't.

She survived to become the low man on the totem pole as I brought all of my babies home.  With each new baby she got better with kids.  She would lay down on Julia's legs during floor time.  Lick her face.  She learned quickly that the new way to her mama's heart was through playing with my children.

And in that she has done well.

The kids love her.  She is playmate and play toy.  She is entertainment and merry maker.

And something has changed in her personality that has this seasoned dog owner giving her the side eye.

I was a vet tech my Senior year in college.  I had 3 dogs growing up just about the entire time I was growing up.  I've buried 5 dogs and loved all of them.  And I know the signs of aging when I see it.

Don't get me wrong I don't think she's dying tomorrow.  Or even this year.  But she's slower.  She sleeps constantly.  She has bursts of energy but they are short lived.  She is more solicitous of the kids in recent days and even of me, the alpha, who she steers clears of on most days unless she finds me resting, then she'll join me, but only after asking.

She is the very best of dogs.

She has never been told she's beautiful.  No passerby on the street has ever stopped and said "what a good looking dog" or "oh how pretty!"  In fact, Grandpa taught G to say "she really is an ugly dog, mom."  And his uncle has been heard to say the same.

She has never bit a soul.  She's growled one time at a child in her younger years and never again.  I never worry about her with anyone.  She is so docile and accepting of the kids in her pack that they can sit next to her food bowl, while she's eating, with their hands in it and she won't flinch.

I'm a dog owner, not an idiot, so I do watch in those instances, because she is just an animal after all.

She is the very best of dogs.  And she is beautiful, inside and out.  And while she can't read this someday I will and I'll remember her fondly, my very first baby with the bad health report that beat the odds and lived for a great many years.