Category — Family Circle

Our dog, Banjo, died today. He will be missed.

Our Sheltie, Banjo, has been a part of our family’s life since our oldest daughter, Ginny, was 5. He was born on October 1, 1995, to a breeder in Alabama. I drove over there alone, “just to look” because I’d been researching Shelties for a while. My husband knew better and only sighed when I called to check how much damage I could do to our bank balance.

I’d seen “our” puppy in a small pen in the breeder’s front yard, the last of his litter. Sunshine backlit his fur and he gave me that warm Sheltie smile. It was like a movie scene; I could almost hear music in the air. Hooked much? I met his parents and other relatives, and they were gentle, beautiful, affectionate animals. I couldn’t leave without him.

I found myself driving home with a small fluffball whimpering in a pet carrier next to me. I strapped his box into the front seat so I could reach over and pet his snout through the bars and comfort him for the long drive home to north Mississippi. That’s how he got his name, because “I came from Alabama, with a Banjo on my knee.” Nearby, anyway.

Ginny used to hide in the back bedroom and we’d say, “Where is she, Banjo? Find Ginny!” And we’d hear her muffled squealing and giggling in the distance as he tore off after her. He slept with her most nights from the very beginning, except when we were crate training him not to pee in the house. Once when I was reaching to pet him, one of his puppy teeth fell out of his mouth and bounced off the back of my hand. I felt like leaving him a biscuit from the tooth fairy. And at Christmas, we hung his stocking on the mantel beside those for the other family members. He’s also in our only formal family portrait.

As we moved around, he adapted to each new house. He liked the one with the screened-in front porch, because he could jump up and down to see out the windows. When we drove home after work, we’d see his head pogoing up and down at the edge of the windowsill, alerting all the passing traffic that his FAMILY was home.

When he was a puppy we tried to shape his ears like the Sheltie books recommended because his were always alert (”prick ears,” as the book said), not gently folded over at the tips as is standard for his breed. Shaping his ears involved folding the ears over a tiny piece of moleskin and gluing the hairs together so the ear stayed folded until the “tipped” ears became permanently set that way. But it annoyed him, and he constantly pawed at his ears and looked like he had curlers in his hair where his ears were neatly folded over. So we stopped trying, because he was always a pet instead of a show dog anyway. It left the tip of one ear just slightly crooked, but he didn’t seem to mind.

He’s registered with the AKA but isn’t quite show quality. A bit small, and his fur is wavy in a few spots where it shouldn’t be. But he has soulful eyes, a beautifully shaped head, and gorgeous long brown fur, probably six inches long in places, with a soft undercoat. The fluffy white fur at his neck and chest has always looked like a tuxedo’s ruffle to me, and it’s all tipped with black fur in places — sort of a smokey accent. A relative often joked that we should have named him Lessie, instead of Lassie, because of his diminutive size and the fact that Shelties are sometimes called miniature Collies, but we wouldn’t want him to be any other way.

He’s got a Sheltie’s smarts. He and I went to puppy obedience school and he learned quickly how to heel, sit and stop. He learned to shake hands in one afternoon after learning that it involved getting a treat, and if he thinks he’s displeased us he still offers up a paw to shake. His vocabulary expanded to include walk, ride, lay down, treat, food, and go outside. He’s happiest when all his family is in one room so that he doesn’t have to trot around from room to room periodically to make sure the herd is safe.

He’s also the gentlest dog I’ve ever known. He doesn’t particularly like being brushed or having his nails clipped, but he meekly lies down when told. Our two cats came into his life as frisky kittens when he was about 11, and he just made room. Soon they were fearlessly strolling up and getting water from his dish — even walking between his legs to get it from beneath his chin while he stood there, looking affronted. He still barks ferociously at squirrels, lawn mowers, and a neighbor’s motorcycle, but he’s shaking while he does it. He trembles when he barks at strangers who come to the door.

The only time he’s ever nipped at someone was when my oldest girl and neighborhood children were careening down the steep hill in our backyard on an improvised slip-and-slide; I think he was trying to “save” the little girl he nipped at.

When we brought Caitlyn home from the hospital almost 11 years ago, he was very interested in our new “puppy.” He sniffed her, inspected her carefully, and promptly adopted her. When she was a toddler, we couldn’t spat the back of her legs for misbehavior without him going into a frenzy of barking. And when she was older and we moved into a house with a pool, nothing caused him more distress than for Caitlyn to dive under the water. He’s actually jumped in a few times to rescue his “drowning” child.

He began getting ailments as he aged. First, he itched a lot from his too-oily skin. We adjusted his diet and increased his baths, and then, on our vet’s advice, had him fixed. It helped a bit, and he eventually stopped obsessively rubbing tufts of fur off his itchy back along the underside of our dining room chairs. He’s had ear infections, rashes, teeth problems, fatty tumors, a sawgrass cut that pierced his foot, and, now, in his extreme old age, his kidneys are failing him.

We tried to put him on the costly kidney diet food about a year ago, then found that our cats were sneaking bites and that one was so wildly allergic to the new food that her fur started falling out. And it’s hard to keep even an itchy baldheaded cone-wearing cat from a tempting food dish. We bought the second-best food for him, a low-allergen food that didn’t hurt the cat. It worked as a compromise for a year.

For a while, Banjo was even a bit fat. With five people in the house sneaking him bites from the table, he got up to 25 pounds, about 20% overweight. The vet urged us to quit all the no-no treats. At the vet’s recommendation, we started keeping a bag of green beans in the freezer instead and tossing those to him for a cool, nutritious treat. He *loves* those freaking green beans.

He trimmed down quickly. And because of his thick coat of fur and the fact it was a battle to get our teen to wash and brush him as often as she should, we didn’t notice at first that his weight had melted off too much. Then she started noticing and worrying. She told me a few times, “Mom, he’s really getting thin,” and I shrugged it off as teen drama; we’d wanted him to lose weight, after all. Then I noticed it too when she made me feel his ribs and backbone. He was fluff, skin, and bones.

We took him to the vet this week. He’s at 14 pounds. He’s lost 11 in a year — most of that in the past few months, we think. He’s suddenly lethargic, dull-eyed, and weak. He just sits there, panting, barely moving, drinking only when we put a fresh bowl of ice water near him.

He has moderate to severe kidney disease, according to the vet. Our job right now is to keep him comfortable. He’s dehydrated and not eating, so we’re treating that. I spent most of yesterday afternoon stroking his face and using a baby medicine dispenser to squirt water in his mouth, and my husband tended to him during the night. Today, we took him back to the vet to get help in hydrating him and controlling his nausea so he’s eating regularly again. We’ve gotten some supplements and stocked up on his special kidney diet food, even if it means hiding his bowl from the clueless and tireless cat who is determined to eat herself bald again. We’ll adapt however we need to.

I don’t expect to use heroic measures to keep an old man like Banjo alive, but I do want his end days not to be a misery. All I want is for him to be at peace, as pain-free as possible, with his family, and in familiar surroundings when he passes away. The vet says we should be able to keep him comfortable at home for a while yet … if we can get past this rough patch right now. We should know by Monday how well he’s going to adapt. I hope he perks up. It’s at least possible.

Right now, I just can’t imagine our home or our family without him.

Hey Internet buddies! I got tagged for the Six Random Things About Me meme a while back. I’ve hesitated about participating because I blurt so damned much about myself that I wonder what I *haven’t* said already. And all the blurty things I usually think of are soooo unflattering (like wondering if I got a boob job whether that would perk The Gals up or just weight them down further in their slide toward my waist).

But I feel silly today, so here goes:

1. I can write backwards. And upside down.
2. I love to get the tweezers and pluck my husband’s stray hairs. Now when I stand next to a man and see the sunlight glinting off his ear sproutage, I just think, “Aw, what’s the matter — doesn’t anyone love you?”
3. I have absolutely zero talent at styling my daughters’ hair and never have. My 18-year-old still remembers when I seared the tip of her tender ear with a curling iron WHEN SHE WAS THREE.
4. I can’t stand for anyone to touch my bellybutton, and I get absolutely weak-kneed squicked out if I see people touch theirs. (Imagine how well I did with ultrasounds when I was pregnant.)
   

   Photo credit: whimsical truth

5. I can’t snap my fingers with my left hand. The right, sure. But the leftie just won’t work that way.
6. UPDATED to add #6, since one of my random things is that I apparently can’t count.

I don’t tag others very often, so I’ll just invite anyone who likes to participate to have at it. Here are the meme rules if you want to play along:

• Link to the person who tagged you.
• Post the rules on your blog.
• Write six random things about yourself.
• Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
• Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.
• Let your tagger know when your blog entry is up.

C’mon — get random with me. :o)