perdy and maude....i am starting to wonder about both of them. and while i care deeply for perdy..she is not my maude so i am looking at perdy a little more clearly.
perdy is becoming frustrated by her disability....the effort her weakeness costs her is starting to wear her down...she is starting to lose weight, it is hard for her to settle and her quality of life just isn't that good...at best we are maintaining her at a slow down hill slide....she isn't having any fun any time anymore. for some dogs this is ok...they just quietly seek out a bed to comfortably rest as the days go by...but perdy is not that kind of dog...she wants to run and run...she is a not a passive living kind of dog.
maude is twisting me.....while she still runs around the fields each day and she still shoves her head between all of our knees and she still can find every single canned cat food bowl to steal...these things only happen when she is alert and concentrating...the rest of the time she staggers, she circles, she can't even decide how to make herself move.
it is like maude has a switch inside her that turns on and off the 18 year old dog...it is like she gives herself a battery surge and then it sputters out and once again she is frail and lost. i don't know what to make of it....this ability she has to jump start herself for a few minutes several times a day. but the jump starts only last for a very brief period and then she is ancient, frail and demented again.
and it is those hours of truly ancient dementia that saddens me as i watch this dog i don't know...unsure and vulnerable in her shadow world.....it is the shining bright maudie, the master of her universe that i used to know.
there is something so sad in seeing a fighting dog fading away in the shadows of really extreme old age...especially one that you love with all of you heart.
i have lost most of my old friends now.....wilbur, bill, tally, cleo, mugsy, lexi, copper, daffy duck dog, tyra...i just have maudie left of the old ones that i fully gave away my heart to...and of course little daphne..the new younger generation of dog to break my heart one day.
so when the time comes...maude will be harder than perdy for me. for perdy i will be able to decide what is best for her...maudie will get tied up in what is best for her and how much is it going to hurt me.
i think perdy will get the better deal from me.
as much as i am not fond of the name bambi...she is used to it now...she was in the shelter for a few weeks and she knows bambi means her because she was a staff favorite there. no point in confusing her again with another name when she is just learning the new one she already has....not much is too familiar to her right now...at least she kind of knows who she is.
i just have decided she actually looks more like a dumpling then a mushroom....whatever...renee says she dances for food!