For most of his life, whenever we took Linus and Shwea for walks, people always thought that Shwea was the older of the two—by a long shot—even though Linus was two years her senior. Linus had kept a lot of spring in his step well into his “golden” years, and romped with abandon with dogs a fraction of his age. (Shwea? She moved like Margaret Thatcher when she was a puppy, and has slowed steadily since.)

Sadly, Linus lost his youthful vigor when he fell ill with bloat in early April 2006 and had to have surgery to “right” his stomach and remove his spleen. He became a lot more tentative then, though still quite protective of us where delivery people were concerned. Not too long after he had the bloat, a tooth became terribly infected, and he had surgery to have it removed. That, it is clear in retrospect, was the beginning of the end for our boy, for not too long after that he began to have serious trouble making his back legs work, and after a number of office visits with a number of vets, he was diagnosed with Degenerative Myelopathy (DM), a disease that is to dogs what Multiple Sclerosis is to humans. Typically, it slowly robs its victims of their ability to walk before it robs them of their ability to live. There is no known cure.

Still, we tried a lot of things to help our boy fight DM, but not the traditional approach. After the bloat episode and his dental surgery, we promised each other and him that we would avoid invasive procedures—and especially anything that required anesthesia—at all costs. Vet treatments just took too much out of Linus, and we didn’t think he could or should have to take that anymore. That also included the “pain management” drugs that our traditional vet prescribed—they completed zonked our boy, and what is the benefit of that?

So, we found an alternative vet who came highly recommended and who quickly became a big fan of our boy. He administered a long series of laser treatments, acupuncture and massage therapy that sometimes seemed to help, and sometimes didn’t seem to do much of anything at all (which we understand is the nature of any DM treatment). He also prescribed so many supplements for Linus, we were surprised he didn’t rattle. (Ann spent many an evening filling gelatin capsules with supplement powders, in an attempt at keeping our costs down.) We were trying everything and hoping for a miracle, and Linus gamely went along with it all. Initially.

When Linus had trouble walking on our hardwood floors, we put rubber runners and mats down to keep his paws from slipping. When he stopped being able to jump up on the bed, we bought a small set of stairs to help him up. When he could no longer do stairs, Linda built ramps--at both our house and cottage (Ann helped with that one). When he got too worked up when the mail carrier and paper boy came to the front door, Linda bought a mailbox and installed it at the foot of our driveway.

When he needed a little help keeping his backend up, we bought a harness to help him get up and about. When his back legs began to fail in earnest, we got him the dog equivalent of a wheelchair. Linda even took a leave of absence, largely because she couldn't work and care for Linus at the same time. Since she had to stay home most of the time for his sake, she became addicted to a range of TV shows, and until recently, many of our conversations revolved around "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" and the like. (Happily, this phase has passed.) She also bought a small library of early retirement books, and another recurrent conversation topic is "When Will Linda Retire?" (This phase has not passed.) 

But eventually, and with the help of Linus (who eventually refused to take all but a couple of his supplements), we came to accept the fact that there really was nothing else to be done, so all we could really do was try to make what life he had left as comfortable and enjoyable as possible.

And so we did, right up until the end. Ann made arrangements to work from home three days a week, so between the two of us, Linus was never alone during the day. We often put him up on the chaise lounge in the living room, so he could keep up his “Neighborhood Watch” duties. We left the TV on, so he would have “company” as we went about our daily work and chores.  We took him outside five times a day to "do his business," which involved lifting and locking his now 75 pound frame in and out of his chair (he never complained--not once--when we sometimes struggled to get his legs in their stirrups, the dear boy). When he no longer liked “dog” food, Linda cooked food just for him—a favorite was pork butt, of all things—and we capped every meal with a small jar of baby food (something Ann’s cousin Pat suggested for finicky canines).