Living with an old Frenchie

You'll see an old Frenchies calendar for sale on this website.  There is a canine muse behind that calendar, my dog Hammer.  He's sitting in his customary dog bed at my feet, contemplatively licking first his back toes and then my leg.  After a while, he slides down into the blankets and drifts off to sleep, although not without a small protesting grunt as his old bones arrange themselves.  Sleep takes up a large portion of my 12 year old French Bulldog's days now.    

He was not always this old.  Not so many years ago, eight?, nine?, he was a young warrior, a force to be reckoned with, the bane of my other dogs' existence.  He could jump the eighteen inch hedges that bordered my walk without ticking the tops, and, most amazing of all, he could actually pull himself up onto the round seat of the high wooden stool in my kitchen, by the sheer strength of his front legs and chin.  From there, the counters were his kingdom.  I only learned of his skill when I caught him in the act.  Imagine an embarrassed French Bulldog sliding hastily off a barstool like a pied lump of Jello. 

Now, I find him at the base of the stairs leading up to our (and it is our) bedroom, looking anxiously up.  His eyes are still all there, thank God.  He cannot go up, and why not?  It is not his infirmities, he can still climb the stairs, he can even clamber up onto the bed, with the wooden dog bed at its foot as his stepping stool, it's a cat.  Cats are agile long into their later years, and they remember well the dogs who irritated them in their callow youth.  My cats are no exception.  Now, they spread themselves casually on the stairs, and challenge the Hammer to manage his way past them.  He does not dare.  He is afraid of falling.  He is afraid of being attacked.  I can carry him, but I prefer to shoo the cat away to save his pride.

There was a time when my other dogs would defer to him, but not any more.  He is the old man in the house, and there is no dignity conferred, no reward from his peers.   I guard his plate at supper.  He eats more slowly now, but not much more slowly.  My little Pug Clovis, who suffered brain stem damage in his early puppyhood, marches unsteadily up to him, twelve inches of wobbly Pug warrior, and challenges him for the right to search the kitchen floor for crumbs.  The Pug wins.

Those twelve years have taken its toll on his body as well.  Thankfully, he can still see and hear, and his legs are sound.  His digestion is good.   It is his strength and beauty that have faded away.  His black mask is faded to white, his hair is thinned out and patchy in places, one ear stands up gamely still, but the other fell victim to a hematoma last year and permanently droops.  The trim body is gone too, he's thicker now through the waist, and the muscles of his hindquarters are gone.  He still runs furiously across the yard along the fence, in pursuit of a passing neighbor's dog, but just once or twice now, no more than that. 

I think I grieve time's passage more than he does.  After all, he is not the only one getting older and facing his mortality.  So am I, although, thankfully, more slowly than he.  We both greet the morning with a groan and a desire to lie in bed later.  We both have the tendency to nap in the afternoon.  However, his aging doesn't seem to trouble him at all.  Like any dog, he lives in the moment, content with all that remains to him, and not dwelling on what he has lost.  The future is of no interest to him.  The thought that he might wake up dead tomorrow morning does not even cross his mind. 

We can only wish that we could walk through our lives with the ease and grace of these old dogs.

Go Back