Tribute to an Old Dog

When I first started this blog ten years ago, the HyperHund was two years old, and by herding breed standards, this was the pinnacle of his hyperness.

Now, he is almost 13 years old.

Time has taken its toll on his old bones, and he has gone progressively deaf, to the point where he can pretty much no longer hear anything.

This is both a sad and a good thing.  

On the sad side, the highlight of his life was pretty much hearing me tell him he was a good dog and running to greet me when he heard the door open when I got home from work.  

Now, the only way he can hear that he's a good dog is if I put my hands on his head and holler very loudly, "WHAT A GOOD BOY!!! WHO'S A GOOD DOG NOW!?!? YOU ARE!" so loudly that the neighbors can hear me and that sound waves travel directly down my arms and into his skull.

Then, he wags his whole body and he tells me life is good.

Most times now, when I open the front door, there is no one running to greet me.  Dear Sweet Son will shout at the top of his lungs, "HH!!  WE'RE HOME!" and we both stomp our feet loudly, and there's still nothing.  More often than not, HH is sleeping soundly on the cool tile of the back bathroom.

On a more positive note, we have never had as easy of a 4th of July.  

Actually, I take that back.  I think it might still be Cinco de Mayo even though it's the end of July.  Or maybe Cinco de Mayo and the Fourth of July had a hybrid love child called Cinco de Julio or Fourth of May or something, because people are taking all their quarantine frustration out via fireworks, and we've now had nearly 80 straight days of fireworks.

HyperHund used to be terrified of fireworks.  He'd lie in a 4'-wide puddle of his own drool, panting and shaking, till I was truly worried for his safety.  "But," you say, "The Rescue Remedy, and the cannabis oil, and the Thundershirt!"  Blah blah blah.  Would your DoTerra oils help if you thought a bomb was going off in your back yard, Linda?  I don't think so.

This year, he just sleeps through the fireworks.  Notice I used the present tense.  This is because both fireworks and dog-sleep are occurring as I type.  Cinco de 4th of Almost August.

Holiday festivities aside, HyperHund sometimes seems to miss hearing stuff, so he will create his own joyous noise, because I think he can still hear it in his own head when he barks.

So, in the past few months, he's taken to suddenly running around the house, joyously barking and prancing for no reason other than to hear something... anything.  It usually happens when Dear Sweet Son is getting ready for bed or for the bathtub.

He's REALLY loud and he'll do this for 15 minutes or so each night, but he looks so dang happy doing it that I don't have the heart to stop him.

I feel for my neighbors, though.  In fact, I now take HH out at night on a leash because he is convinced that there is a whole pack of coyotes that he can barely hear, located right in the neighbors' back yard. Unless I leash him, he will run up and down their fenceline, bouncing straight up and down ferociously, his shaggy neck hair sticking straight up on end, while he barks aggressively (but with slightly confused overtones) at these imagined enemies.

You know who also hates being barked at in the middle of the night by deaf dogs?  Skunks.   Just saying.

HH will now also pull this trick in the middle of the day, which is unexpected, and this causes me to have to run after him to get him to stop barking.  Occasionally, I try to demand respect by calling him back, which is actually kind of dumb because then, in essence, not only is my dog shouting, but now so am I.  

"HH!  COME HERE!  SHHH!  YOU STOP IT!  STOP IT RIGHT NOW!"  

My neighbors are probably more annoyed with my hollering at HH than they are at the actual HH.

Sometimes, at night, when I take him out on the leash to pee, HH becomes engrossed in smelling rabbit poop or whatnot, and he forgets why he is out there.  I have to remind him, but this is hard, especially since homes are close together in my neighborhood and I usually go to bed after midnight.

"HH!! GO PEEEPEEE!!!!! DO!! YOU!! HAVE TO GO PEE!?  GO PEEEEEEE!!!!" 

(Nothing.  Bucolic sniffing of air - him, not me - Neighbors are like, "Seriously?  WTF?  It's one o'clock in the morning!")

In the end, the hardest thing to get used to, and the part I never thought I'd see, if you recall my first posts, is the fact that HyperHund is no longer hyper.  He spends much of his time sleeping.

He sleeps so hard, and so deafly, that sometimes, he doesn't even wake up when I shake him, and it's terrifying because I'm not even sure he's going to wake up.

He now sleeps with just the tip of his tongue hanging out between his front teeth.  I'm not sure when it became a thing... sometime in the last six months... but it's constant.  Dear Sweet Son and I call it his "dippy tongue," because it looks so silly-cute. 

Sometimes, I try to push the end of his tongue gently back in his mouth so it doesn't get too dehydrated during his extra-long napping sprees.

And just like that, ten years has passed in the blink of an eye, and the HyperHund is hyper no more.