Leading the blind

This is my dog, Chip.  I've probably mentioned at some point that he'll be sixteen years old in a month.  Sixteen.  That's like Okinawan islanders in dog years. 

This dog has always marched to the beat of his own drum.  As a pup he was willful and boisterous.  As a full grown adult he grew territorial and opinionated and he actually bit passersby twice.  He's never been a lap dog and he's not the kind of dog you can take on a day out at the beach, who lies shaggily content in the sun at your feet.

I love him all the same.  In some ways, Chip is a lot like me - anxious, jittery and curious about everything he sees.  As he grew older he mellowed and eventually, cataracts milked the light from his eyes.  He started sleeping a lot and though he was still snuffly and alert, he had become a demure shadow of his former self.  I imagined he was going to be like that the rest of his years.

For some reason, in the recent weeks he's become an absolute handful, as if he's found a second wind.  He still sleeps in large chunks but at night, he sits up as if possessed and proceeds into ungodly caterwauling till the wee hours.  

For fear of waking the neighbours or my (not very even-tempered) father, I jackknife out of bed, thunder down the stairs and entertain him in midnight sessions that sometimes last until 4am.  You may have guessed, my friends, that I'm not getting very much sleep.  

I've tried everything from feeding to timing his resting hours to chasing him up and down the driveway.  I'm at the end of my tether, but dammit, I can't help but love that stinking mutt. 

Yesterday, I decided to try a new tack.  I took him for a walk.

Chip hasn't been on a proper walk for a long time.  First he had a weak back and the vet said that we should abstain from long strolls for a while.  Then the blindness set in.

I wasn't sure if he would be able to negotiate the pavements outside the house, but I figured some exercise would do him good anyway.

I found a good harness and his old leash and we set off to make a couple of loops on our old route, and I couldn't believe how much he had changed.

When we used to take walks, he was so aggressive that would attempt to attack dogs four times his size.  He once got into a bad scrap with a cat and came away growling, blood dripping off his knotted muzzle.

Now, I have the most docile dog in the neighbourhood.  I watched in wonder as he passed huge retrievers and shaggy black mutts, merely turning his head then trotting on.  I let him go right up to a house gate with a yapping brown puppy behind it.  He had a few cursory sniffs and made to leave.  For once, I'm the one smiling and relaxed as other dog owners shout and yank their snarling charges aside.

Walking a dog is as much about communicating through touch as it is about obedience and with homeboy, touch has become that much more important.  I let him make as many mistakes (in relative safety, of course) as possible, and soon he was scaling nose-high sidewalks and avoiding drain grates like he used to.  We kept a good pace up and I saw his legs start to churn in that high-stepping trotting motion I used to love so much. 

Chip naturally floundered and lost his orientation a little but he was still sensitive to the tautness of the leash, he still knew how to step around it when he had entangled his legs and best of all, he now trots to heel.

I don't know if it's helping him release any of that new energy he seems to have found, but it felt good to hear the confident rat-a-tat of his claws on the asphalt and walk in the darkness to the crystal clinking of a neighbour's windchimes.

We both enjoyed ourselves very much.