![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
One of my favorite dogs, Joey, has cancer and is on hospice care. He's not supposed to be taken out for walks and is on a bunch of pain meds. Palliative care.
He has had a good run and, as I found out last week, is one of the first members of the Dog Ranch including time with a loving woman for 9 years and two and a half years of being loved on by hundreds of people.
I spent a while in his apartment with him today doing a thing he loves to do. It involves putting my fingers in the mouth of a 90 pound pit bull. He acts like he's going to bite them complete with growling. But he does not even come close. He just growls, opens his big mouth, puts my hand in it, and pushes against my hand. And usually pushes against my head as I lower it to head butt him. It is a gentle kind of wrestling. He'd rather have a rope and be playing tug of war with me but we're both too old. So this is what we do. Followed by a lot of face licking (by his tongue.. I refrain).
Not all of the dogs are treated equally. Joey is one of the favorites of everyone from the first day volunteers who learn how safe are most pit bulls to the long time employees who know him as Joey Bear. So he has gotten and will continue to get a lot of love.
He will be the first I've lost, at least the first I've really cared about. But there will be more. It is the nature of the service, maybe the core of the service.
He has had a good run and, as I found out last week, is one of the first members of the Dog Ranch including time with a loving woman for 9 years and two and a half years of being loved on by hundreds of people.
I spent a while in his apartment with him today doing a thing he loves to do. It involves putting my fingers in the mouth of a 90 pound pit bull. He acts like he's going to bite them complete with growling. But he does not even come close. He just growls, opens his big mouth, puts my hand in it, and pushes against my hand. And usually pushes against my head as I lower it to head butt him. It is a gentle kind of wrestling. He'd rather have a rope and be playing tug of war with me but we're both too old. So this is what we do. Followed by a lot of face licking (by his tongue.. I refrain).
Not all of the dogs are treated equally. Joey is one of the favorites of everyone from the first day volunteers who learn how safe are most pit bulls to the long time employees who know him as Joey Bear. So he has gotten and will continue to get a lot of love.
He will be the first I've lost, at least the first I've really cared about. But there will be more. It is the nature of the service, maybe the core of the service.