Up and down

Some good days, some not so good.

In the midst of one of the good, Gilgamesh was up to the glen with a nice batch of dogs, including an old lab and a new lab, both sweet:

And there was much laughter.

Tonight, after one of the not-so-good days of low energy, proprioceptive difficulties, and general vagueness, he perked up with dusk cool rolling in, and asked for some fun.

So: an evening stroll in the glen, steam rolling off the pond and the last remaining light hoarded by the mountain.

Blueberry strudel, shared.

Minute by minute, we’re seeing what’s the next right thing.

Slain, by oldmancake cuteness

It’s the not-so-little things

Summer sweets:

Tiger boogie

Purely gratuitous & random overlord cuteness.

Fireworks with the Gilgarino

It’s hard to believe just two years ago Gilly & I hiked five miles, swam, then walked two more miles to go to the fireworks, and he was still raring to go: today we swam for an hour, carefully and with rests, then he napped, then we parked as close as possible, and really only walked around the field a few times. But we went, and he loved it, and he got to have tastes of fried dough, and the accolades of many small children (especially after he had on three glow-necklaces: LOOK! The doggy’s GLOWING!), and he did decide slide-rolling down a hill would be fun:

I’m glad we went. He is too. Who knows how many more we’ll have, but we had this one.

The finale looked like Hubble space photographs.

Balancing

Gilly and I have a lot of sweet moments related to his aging, but there’s no joke or art to make from some of the others.

As today when he fell twice on our walk, misjudging both his capacities and the footing in this terrible, nonsensical new reality of unreliable bone and vision and sinew and nerve, so misaligned with his sense of self, which remains invincible.

And.

But.

As we find our footing in this increasingly treacherous landscape of his twelfth year, this:

And this:

And me saying, for another day:

Hey, Gilly. Don’t leave, okay?

A candy of a canid

Fennec fox, in Morocco

via

Heart-exploding moments with a dog going blind

So, sometimes the dehydrated sweet potato in the Kong just won’t come out, and after working at it for a long time, the only solution is to bring it to the thumbed biped for assistance, right?

 

Which just happened. So I fished the sweet potato slice to the halfway-out position as I always do if it’s really stuck in there, and Gilly, as he always does, very sweetly, gingerly, delicately extended his muzzle out to take hold of it with his little grooming-teeth, silvered eyes half-closed with anticipated chewy delight, and sweetly, gingerly, delicately took hold of my ring and pulled–and pulled–and pulled–

 

AAAHHH, I shouted. YOU JUST EXPLODED MY HEART.

 

BARK. He said. THAT IS NOT A SWEET POTATO. PUT THOSE THUMBS TO WORK, BIPED, AND MANIFEST MY SWEET POTATO.

 

Which I did, because: love.

 

Good thing my fingers were bent. I don’t think platinum’s good for dogs.

 

You may find this to be of regular use.

Our overlord says: NO NO NO NO NO NO