Do you celebrate dog birthdays?
We don’t. Generally speaking, we don’t even remember them. It’s only when they pop up on our phone calendars that we even know they’ve arrived. And the only reason they come up on our calendars is because we have contacts set up in our phones with all our dogs’ pertinent information. Because we need their stats when we’re filling out entries for the events that show off our dog training; Obedience, Rally, and Agility trials.
Dog birthdays scare us
Why don’t we celebrate? Our dogs are pretty central to our lives every day. What they need, they have, regardless of the date. But, to be honest, dog birthdays are frightening.
It’s an unfortunate fact that through our lives we’ve loved and lost many dogs. And our current crew are almost all at ages that were the last ages for gone dogs.
Tango, Fran’s 13-year-old Brussels Griffon is the same age we lost other Griffs – both Golly and Roc. Tango’s birthday is in April, so we’re about half way through his scary year.
Fingers crossed
We’re actually looking forward to Boston Terrier Booker’s next birthday. He’ll be 10 next week. Getting past nine, when we lost our Boston Ceilidh, will let us breathe a sigh of relief. The Boston before Ceilidh was Daemon – he was the oldest dog we’ve ever had. He lived to 16, and we were blessed to have him.
On the other hand, Torque just turned eight this week. Logically, we know he’s in good shape and eight isn’t old for a French Bulldog. But our very beloved Teddy died suddenly and prematurely at eight. Even almost four years later, we’re still grieving. Especially when the social media memories crop up, which they do almost daily. He was extremely photogenic and we took and posted tons of pictures of him.
Bittersweet dog birthdays
And that’s why dog birthdays are noted and semi-dreaded around here. Torque got a special, long sniffy-walk for his day. It was beautiful out and he had a great time.
Dogs don’t know what birthdays are. They’ll celebrate any time we do. Any excuse to party and the dogs are on board. So we’ll celebrate something else with a puppy party. Maybe we’ll celebrate Thursdays. And let our dogs know we love them every day.
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