Dogs

Found a really beautiful post (not mine) at Chive and wanted to share it here. I like the notion that just as our hearts break at their short lives they could marvel over our ageless lives.

Lord Nibbler • a day ago • edited

In the dog world, humans are elves that routinely live to be 500+ years old.
Imagine all the stories they tell about us.

"For generations, he has guarded over my family. For so long we thought him immortal.
But now I see differently, for just as my fur grows gray and my joints grow stiff, so too do his.
He did not take in my children, but gave them away to his. I will be the last that he cares for.
My only hope is that I am able to last until his final moments. The death of one of his kind is so rare.
The ending of a life so long is such a tragedy. He has seen so much, he knows so much.
I know he takes comfort in my presence, I only wish that I will be able to give him this comfort until the end."

Hey, Phaedrus, that's awesome. Dogs are wiser and more perceptive than we realize.

And it cuts pretty close to home. My 15 year old hound is failing. This is his last summer. Very soon I will have to make a hard choice.

I think of a very fine fellow I knew from another forum. He passed last year at age 95 and was a great lover of dogs. He had two and towards the end he did fret as to what would happen to him when he passed. Hopefully they were rewarded for the years of companionship they provided him, and perhaps they mourned him in their own way. After all, he had seen so much and known so much.

I never got that with my cat, Sunset. I was planning on putting her ashes where she usually sleeps, the window sill of the formal dining room. Instead of dying at home, she disappeared one day, and no one has seen her since.

Jeanette Isabelle

We were lucky enough to adopt a 13 year old Samoyed named Fluffy after her owner Mrs. Sprinkle died (I'm not making this up). Fluffy lived to the ripe old age of 16 and gave us memories we will never ever forget.

Adoption is a wonderful thing!

We also have a tub full of little boxes of dog and cat ashes, along with too many tufts of horse mane. We hope they can be buried with us when we go so they'll remain with us.

If dogs or horses survive us, our daughter (who is now half-way through veterinary school) has assured us that they'll be taken care of.

What a nice thought. One of my favorites:
Not the least hard thing bear when they go from us, these quiet friends, is that they carry away with them so many years of our own lives. Yet, if they find warmth therein, who would grudge them those years that they have so guarded? Nothing else of us can they take to lie upon with outstretched paws and chin pressed to the ground; and, whatever they take, be sure they have deserved. - John Galsworthy, Old Dogs Remembered

i forget the 'joke'....it was of 2 men standing at the pearly gates waiting to be made into angels and of how it 'took so long' for St. Peter to make people angels.....but when a dog arrived it only took seconds. One of the men asked why dogs became angels SO fast and St. Peter replied, "It's easy.... they're most of the way there to begin with."

Beautiful thoughts, everyone!

Please let me be at least HALF the person my dog THINKS I am!