The “memories” function on Facebook never ceases to amaze me. Sometimes it can bring such a smile to one’s face. Other times, it’ll kick you right in the teeth.
Then there are the ones that cut both ways – those bittersweet reminders of life’s better-to-have-loved-and-losts.
Like the photo equivalent of a really good sad song.
For me, that often means a picture of my precious Pops – the first senior dog I ever adopted and the reason I will continue adopting senior pets for the rest of my days.
As the card from the staff at Hillcrest Veterinary Clinic said – the one they sent after seeing us through his last breath – Pops was a legend.
He was painfully sweet, and so patient with Moo; the two played together like puppies. They were best friends from Minute 1, and when Pops got sick, Moo would lay on top of him, in an effort to comfort them both.
Pops also had this amazing checkerboard grin – the canine embodiment of that old “summer teeth,” joke, as in, “some are over here, some are over there.” Some were missing altogether. With a lower incisor that stuck straight out that was perhaps my favorite thing on the planet. I cried when they told me they had to pull it.
He was a true Frankendog, in the very best sense of the word, with a pit bull-like head and a wide Rotty body, perched atop short little bow legs with the stump of a tail at the rear. His face – his glorious, mostly-gray face – was peppered with mystery scars, including one that looked as though his lower lip had been torn straight through to his chin.
And my God, I adored him.
According to the vet, he was probably around 10 years old on the day I brought him home, and, if that age was correct, just shy of 12 when I said goodbye. By then, tumors had obliterated that brilliant checkerboard grin, growing so large in his snout that they overtook one eye.
When I tell people about my passion for rescuing older animals, they almost always say the same thing. “I just couldn’t,” they tell me. “I would hate to lose them so soon.”
And I get it. Adopting a senior pet does potentially mean they have fewer years ahead.
But that’s precisely the point. Their time left here is precious – which makes the gift of spending it together even more so.
I write all this because November is National Adopt a Senior Pet Month, and I can’t think of a more fitting tribute to my Pops – and my silly Manny after him, and now my angelic Tulip, whose arthritis has been acting up more frequently lately – than to urge you to open your home to one, too.
Choosing to adopt, not shop for any animal is an admirable decision. Picking an aging one, well, I applaud it double. I promise the reward will be all yours.
The fact is, yes, you will lose them, and it will hurt like crazy.
And yes, that may come far sooner than you’d like.
But the love. Oh, the limitless love.
That, itself, is endless.
Sad though it may be sometimes, that beautiful old-dog ballad is one you’ll play happily in your heart, on repeat.
Katie McDowell is the managing editor and lifestyles columnist for The Dominion Post. Email
kmcdowell@dominionpost.
