Shadow Dog
Friends, this is Timmy. She may look like a dog but she's a dog no longer. She's a Shadow Dog.
Shadow Dogs exhibit few of their former enthusiasms and none of their previous energy. They sleep almost all the time and when they don't, they walk at the speed of paint drying.
They eagerly eat something one day and ignore it the next. They no longer chase - nothing, whether cat, possum, bird - stirs their souls. They won't take food from your hand and often, leave the room when you offer some in a bowl.
Shadow dogs have just enough of their former selves to be recognisable, but they've lost vital parts. If one was an affectionate dog, it will shun affection. If another was reactive to other dogs, it will be tolerant.
Timmy has changed a great deal, most difficult to bear is she doesn't like pats. She turns her head away when I reach out my hands.
It's like she doesn't much like me, now.
But today, at the park, around two dogs and three humans - Timmy solicited pats. She bumped me with her nose, again and again, and I fondled her lovely ears. A rare pleasure.
She's a different dog, but still the same, on one level.
Our Shadow Dogs may confound us but they deserve to be honoured. We need to care for them well - for all the past doggy pleasures, and because they are venerable.
Precisely how we honour them - when they are so changed, so little like the dogs they once were - is what I hope to explore.
Perhaps this last phase of their lives, when they are least the pets they used to be, is the most important of all.
To be continued
Shadow Dogs exhibit few of their former enthusiasms and none of their previous energy. They sleep almost all the time and when they don't, they walk at the speed of paint drying.
They eagerly eat something one day and ignore it the next. They no longer chase - nothing, whether cat, possum, bird - stirs their souls. They won't take food from your hand and often, leave the room when you offer some in a bowl.
Shadow dogs have just enough of their former selves to be recognisable, but they've lost vital parts. If one was an affectionate dog, it will shun affection. If another was reactive to other dogs, it will be tolerant.
Timmy has changed a great deal, most difficult to bear is she doesn't like pats. She turns her head away when I reach out my hands.
It's like she doesn't much like me, now.
But today, at the park, around two dogs and three humans - Timmy solicited pats. She bumped me with her nose, again and again, and I fondled her lovely ears. A rare pleasure.
She's a different dog, but still the same, on one level.
Our Shadow Dogs may confound us but they deserve to be honoured. We need to care for them well - for all the past doggy pleasures, and because they are venerable.
Precisely how we honour them - when they are so changed, so little like the dogs they once were - is what I hope to explore.
Perhaps this last phase of their lives, when they are least the pets they used to be, is the most important of all.
To be continued
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