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| Name: |
Dover
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Age: |
Eighteen plus years old
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| Gender: |
Male |
Breed: |
Pointer/Border Collie mix
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| Home: |
Illinois, USA |
"Is that old dog of yours still around?" my neighbors often ask me. Indeed he is, and today, with New Year's Day 2017 come and gone, I feel it is time to post a tribute to our noble old friend Dover, who is at least 18 years old but possibly as old as 20.
We adopted Dover nearly 17 years ago from a shelter in Chicago, on my oldest son's tenth birthday. The shelter vet didn't know the dog's exact age then but estimated it at 1.5 to 3.5 years. The adoption almost didn't happen - there was a handwritten sign on Dover's shelter cage that read, "not good with children." Indeed, Dover was horribly frightened and wretched looking and he shivered and glanced away as we approached his cage. He was so thin he resembled a smallish black and white greyhound. We could count his ribs. But my son, who has always been sort of a dog whisperer, spent a few moments alone in front of the dog's cage, coaxing him to lick his fingers and speaking to him in a low voice. A shelter worker, seeing the connection, agreed to let Dover out of his cage into an outdoor exercise area. Together, my son and the dog galloped around together in ever-widening circles. I still recall how the shelter worker grinned at this and quipped, "Oh, boys and dogs and dogs and boys." Despite the warnings about Dover and children, I felt it was a perfect match.
But it wasn't smooth sailing. Dover's life experiences immediately showed up in his extremely anxious behavior at home. It took him just a few days to chew through every single lamp cord in the house, including some that were plugged in. He tore up sections of the kitchen floor with his claws. He chewed on the corners of our kitchen cabinets. He ripped up paper wherever he found it. He refused to eat from his own dog dish but would stand on his hind legs to steal food off the kitchen counters or rip through the garbage for scraps. He ate his own feces in the yard. (Ugh.) He even crept down the rickety steps to our basement to eat from the kitty litter. (Ugh.) He apparently had not been housebroken because he had accidents all over the house. We began confining him to the kitchen, but he knocked over the gates we erected. We soon realized that Dover was so anxious that we could not leave him alone while we were away at work and school. In a panic, I called the Anti-Cruelty Society for advice. I described the dog's behavior and asked, with a gulp of air, what the shelter would do if I brought him back. The lady on the phone said they would probably euthanize the dog, as it was unlikely anyone else would adopt him with this history.
With this grim prospect, we decided it was time to try harder. I took Dover to the vet for advice. The vet agreed to give me a prescription for an anti-anxiety medication, but suggested that I try a few more strategies first. So we bought a couple of rubber "Kong" play toys for the dog and filled them with peanut butter and placed them on his dog bed when we left the house in the morning. We spread newspaper over the kitchen floor to anticipate his accidents. We installed a "dog door" leading from our house to the fenced back yard so Dover could get exercise while we were away during the day. We took him to an obedience class. Miraculously, his behavior improved and he even stopped relieving himself in the house. He improved to the point where we felt we could handle a second dog to keep him company. The two dogs played together all the time, and they still sleep together on a single dog bed in the kitchen.
Despite his rough start, the rest of Dover's life with us has been lovely. He is an extremely sweet dog. I don't think Dover had ever experienced a human baby before we adopted him, but when my daughter (my third child) came into our lives, Dover became very protective of her. He wagged his tail patiently when she pulled on his ears and sat on his hindquarters, and he even looked the other way when she scooped a handful of dog food out of his dish one day to taste it. Dover also took it upon himself to "raise" our second dog, who came to us as a puppy. To this day, he barks in reproach at the younger dog when he misbehaves and takes responsibility for him. One day, our younger dog escaped to the nearby park. A neighbor spotted him there and reported it me, and so I went looking for him. But Dover, who had also slipped out of the yard, was already on the job and met me on the sidewalk, with the younger dog trotting behind him.
Dover is stiff and gray now, and so different from the skinny cowering animal we met at the shelter! He is slow moving and calm, and when he points those big dark eyes and grey muzzle at you, you feel he must be very wise. Due to his advanced age, he has trouble getting up and lying down, so he spends a good part of the day sprawled on his dog bed with the younger dog nestled next to him. When he does get up, his legs sometimes just give out from under him. It's even become a strain for him to bend down to eat on the floor, and so when we feed him, we set his dog dish up higher on a pillow or an overturned coffee can to make it easier for him. Sometimes we have to carry him down the back steps to the yard so he can relieve himself. But Dover lives for the days when my nearly 27-year-old son comes home to visit. My son gets down on the floor with Dover and strokes and holds him and Dover sighs and lays his head in my son's lap, and you can see how perfectly contented and happy this makes the two of them. Boys and dogs and dogs and boys.
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