Eat, Play, Love

The sudden death of my dog, Jake, on October 9, 2010, was quite a blow. I had only known him for a little more than 2 years. He had been “mine” full time for merely a year and a half, and I am grateful for every minute of that. My employment from home enabled me to spend more time with Jake than most people get to with their pets. I got to take him for frequent walks. The first time I put a leash on him, he basically dragged me down the street. With time and this year’s protracted summer weather, the walks became less frequent. The heat wore him out more easily, and he simply couldn’t walk as far as he could a year ago. On the final stretch of our last few walks, I nearly had to drag him home.

He was the first dog I was allowed to call mine since the 8^th grade. Between Jake and the three cats in our household, Julia and I had our hands full. The dog, however, was my chief responsibility. I fed him every morning. When opportunity allowed, I took him for a ride in the car. (Jake loved to ride in the car.) I sprayed him down with the garden hose to make sure he stayed cool during the summer. I petted him and rubbed his belly often enough to discover a lump in his chest at the start of 2009. It turned out to be a benign tumor, but—in hindsight—cancer might actually be what sapped the life out of him.

A month after his operation, he managed to accidentally open the gate and get into a fight with two other dogs of equal size. Thanks to the intervention of a neighbor, the fight was ended before Jake was seriously injured. He did suffer a couple of bad bites, and it cost us a trip to the emergency vet. I bathed him to keep his wounds clean and gave him his medicine to ease any pain and ward off infection. Sadly, there was nothing I could do to fight old age, but because of the time I spent with him, his final day on earth was as filled with as much love as every other day since he was born.

The death of a friend or relative always causes you to reevaluate your priorities. The death of an animal, however, is especially eye-opening, for it reveals just how little we need in order to live decent and happy lives in this world. Take a close look at your dog or cat, and you’ll see they live life to its fullest by doing just three things: eat, play, and love.

We all need to eat. Jake, like most dogs, would eat just about anything. His meal schedule, however, had something of a routine. He had a bowl of food for grazing throughout the day, but his day started with a packet of soft food. He relished his “brekkie”. At first, he would nearly push me aside to get at it as I poured it into his bowl. That forced me to teach him to sit and stay, which he learned quite well at the age of 10. So, you can teach an old dog new tricks.

Jake also had something of a sweet tooth. He loved his snacks, which he got in moderation and in a variety of forms. As we all know, variety is the spice of life. We always kept a supply of Milk Bones on hand. We gave him the large ones. Whenever Julia’s sister came over, she would normally bring him a handful of small ones. Jake also got Denta Stix, which were a lot easier to chew. We gave him jerky treats, too. When more or less forced to house train him (he had been an outside dog all his life), we started giving him a snack before bedtime. We used the jerky treats to teach him to take food without snapping and even to leave things alone when he needed to ignore an object. During his walks, I took along bite-size treats to train him not to wander off. He always got one or two before we headed out the gate. He knew that, and he would always sit nicely and look up at me in expectation. A couple of weeks ago, we started giving him aspirin each morning to help with what we thought was joint pain. I kid you not: an aspirin wrapped in bologna brought a spark of life back to him that I had not seen for a long time.

His all-time favorite treat, however, had to be genuine bones from the convenience store. He only got them on special occasions, but it was always a joyous experience. You could seem him bursting with anticipation once he caught smell of his “surprise”, which he tended to smell right through the packaging and any sack it was in. The key to getting the most out of a treat is not to use it up all at once. Jake never just gobbled down his bone. He licked on it for a while, chewed off some of the meat, and then he buried it until another day. We never did find exactly where he was hiding those things.

An old saying goes, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” Every animal understands that. Jake was advanced in years, so his playtime was rather limited. Asking him to chase a frisbee 50 yards would have been too much, but he had nothing against fetching a ball thrown 10 or 15 feet on occasion. His favorite toy was a plastic dumbbell he had had for years. Having been torn into two pieces, it no longer squeaked, but he got happy anytime you picked it up to play with him, even if he agreed to fetch it only once or twice. We eventually got him a new toy, a blue ball that did squeak. The first time he heard that high pitched sound, he knew what was up and could barely contain himself. His expression said it all: playtime is a good thing.

Two of our three cats, however, are masters at frivolity. They have numerous toys scattered about the living room. By far their favorite is a piece of colored string. Cairo (pronounced KYE-row), at the proud age of 15, will play with that string at the drop of a hat and continue until YOU are worn out. His kitten-like nature has given him a youthful vigor rarely seen in mature cats. Stanley, Cario’s son, is little different. The two of them even follow a schedule that you can set your watch by. Around 8 PM every evening, it is playtime. Stanley will sometimes sit in front of the string and meow. Other times he will pick up the string in his mouth and meow. He is also known to just start playing with it by himself, which is not nearly as much fun as when someone dangles it in front of his face.

By far the greatest need we have is love. Do you tell your spouse or partner you love them? Do you tell your children you love them? How about your pets? Sure, we feed our animals and play with them because we love them, but believe it or not, they like to hear you say it, too. Not a day goes by on which Julia doesn’t tell the animals how much she loves them. Expressing love takes more than just words. It requires action. The cats all love to cuddle with “Mommy”. Cairo usually has his cuddle time just after evening playtime. Since Jake’s death, Pus-Pus, our female cat, has become more affectionate. Cats pick up on our emotions, and she knows her owner needs some comforting.

Jake, too, started getting regular cuddle time last year. As the weather turned colder, we started bringing him inside every evening. To ensure he would remain still, I would lie down on the floor with him. It worked like a charm. He eventually learned where his spot was. Jake was always something of a clingy dog, wanting to be petted constantly whenever he came inside. He got just that when he came inside. Sometimes you could see a big smile on his face.

Our animals don’t watch much TV. They don’t spend countless hours on Facebook. I have never heard our animals begging for an iPhone. Despite their simple lives, they are happy. They have a roof over their heads, food in their bellies, interactive entertainment, and the love of the people who provide that for them. I can tell you that they give back as much as they get. “The Jungle Book” taught us to focus on the bare necessities of life. That could be the key to true living. What more do we really need besides to eat, exercise, and be loved?