On a Life with Dogs

My dog is aging.

Every week she seems to have a new smattering of white hairs on top of her muzzle. Her mustache and chin are snowy white, and the tips of her ears are starting to lighten.

She’ll be ten years old this month. But at 75 lbs she’s a big dog, which shortens her lifespan considerably relative to a small dog.

Sometimes Silah shows signs of doggie dementia. She’ll ask to go outside then not do anything or just sniff the air. She’ll curl up in her mat with her back to us, facing the wall. She struggles with getting up the stairs, putting one foot out onto the bottom step then pulling it back again. Only committing once we’ve both come upstairs, maybe because she has to keep track of us so is forced to take the stairs. When I go to the pool or to the local mountain, she makes Dave take her out in the yard so she can check to see if I’m out there. Many times I’ve come down the driveway with her running along the fence, letting out a big “wooooo!” in her excitement.

Some days she walks slowly, almost painfully, but then breaks into a trot and looks completely normal. She vacillates between being flaked out in her “chair” (yes, my dog has her own chair in the living room) and asking to go outside. I think that, though she’s less active now, she likes to listen to the birds and see what’s going on in the neighbourhood. On Sunday when I was tidying up one of the gardens in the front yard I had her out with me, and she was happy to stretch out on the slate path, watch me, and sniff the air.

Silah feels like our last dog.

We’ve had four other dogs over the past twenty years, since 2006 when we got our first German Shepherd cross rescue, Tsuga. Two years later we got our first flat-coated retriever, Jasper. He and Tsuga became buddies, but not before Tsuga had a month of stress diarrhea. Tsuga and Jasper came out in the field with us near Prince George, bounding through the forest in the snow, chasing each other on the frozen lake where we stayed in a basic winter cabin. It was my first foray into solo field research and it was nice to be able to do it with family.

Jasper died when he was four. He had a tumour on his hind end that the vets said they could remove but he’d probably have issues with excreting afterwards, and they weren’t sure they would get all the tumour material. It grew and shrank over time, until one day it started weeping blood. Jasper spent a lot of time hiding under my desk, alone in his pain and suffering. One vet said that, once they had one tumour, you’d find they were riddled with cancer.

Five months after we lost Jasper, Tsuga was diagnosed with lymphoma. He died several months later, just past his seventh birthday.

We had been on a list to get another flat-coated retriever whom we’d planned would be Tsuga’s new companion. She would be born in late December and be ready to come home at the end of February. But Tsuga was gone in February, just a few weeks before we picked up Cedar in Vancouver. She was a bundle of sassy energy, who only barked when she was doing something bad like jumping around like a jack-in-the-box and refusing to come in the house.

After we’d had Cedar for 18 months we got another flat-coated retriever, Cosmo. He was a compact bundle of energy, a sparkplug who would gently take your arm in his mouth when he was excited.

Both pairs of dogs—Tsuga/Jasper, and Cedar/Cosmo – went walking in the coulees with a friend of mine and her dogs. They all ran together, sometimes flushing deer which her dogs chased into the distance. Our dogs only went so far before turning back. Both of our pairs of dogs also went to Waterton National Park, swimming in Waterton Lake and in Cameron Creek.

Tsuga and Jasper went to the Rockies several times, while Cedar and Cosmo only spent a few years in Alberta with us before we moved back to Vancouver Island. Cosmo’s only trip to Hilda Glacier, where we’d had many hikes and gotten married, was during a stopover we made in the Rockies on our way west.

Cedar and Cosmo loved the places we lived on Vancouver Island. We started in Black Creek, in between Courtenay and Campbell River, with the lower 5 acres of a 10 acre parcel ours to use. There was also a trail into the woods where we could wander for an hour, the dogs getting muddy in the winter forest.

Then we moved to the south Island, looking for somewhere a bit drier. Wow was it ever drier – to the point of having severe drought warnings every summer of the past five. Our new house was on 2.5 acres, with a huge yard for the dogs to run in. Cedar and Cosmo loved it, and then we added a third dog.

Silah was a rescue from a group we’d known when we lived in Alberta. When her foster parents posted pictures of her and said she looked like “a baby Tsuga,” we had to bring her into our lives. She was scrawny and underfed with huge ears all out of proportion to her body. She tormented Cedar, who was extremely tolerant of the interloper. Cosmo was a bit more aggressive, throwing her down on the ground repeatedly, but she kept running back for more.

So now we had three dogs. Life was all about dogs. Dog hair, vet appointments, dog outings. It was a good life, while we had it, but now we’re just down to Silah. Cosmo died of a ruptured tumour at eight years old. Cedar died of cancer just after her tenth birthday. For all of our dogs, we’ve had to make the decision to put them down—none have died of old age. Lymphoma, cancer, tumours…they were taken from us too soon.

It’s awfully quiet with one dog instead of three. Life is a bit easier, but it’s also sadder. And Silah can’t be left alone because we’ve created a monster who gets anxiety when we’re gone. So there’s always someone home with her, and she comes with us when we run errands or go on road trips.

I wonder how long it will be before her muzzle is fully white. Will her face lighten, too, around her eyes? I think of old golden retrievers, who have white fading to gold around their eyes.

After having to put down four previous dogs, we want Silah to die naturally, in her sleep, having lived a good life and not suffered at the end. Is that too much to ask for? My friend’s dog with whom we went walking in the coulees died in her sleep one night. When Silah has to go, I hope it’s on her own terms.

By September, she’ll be the oldest dog we’ve ever had. Let’s hope she keeps trucking along for a few years to come.