Our Good Old Boy

My beloved Swirl is losing muscle mass in his head.

This means that there are indentations on both sides of his head where, apparently, the muscle has withered. This is due to age or something else. The vet doesn’t know.

We were at the vet because Swirl has had discharges from his eyes for the past few weeks. Thick, gooey little globs that I clean up with a tissue nearly the minute they form. I can’t stand to see it, the evidence that something is wrong with him. He is that precious.

Everyone thinks that about their dog. I am not special. He is not special. Except we are.

We talked with the vet about Swirl’s weight loss, and she said that if he loses more weight, he could lose muscle mass in his legs. That is hard to imagine, watching him trot through the dog park with his tail up as if he’d just won first prize at Westminster. He is a fine dog. So handsome. We agreed that in addition to his special renal health dog food, we’ll start feeding him little bowls of pasta. He has iffy kidneys, you see, so there’s that.

The vet got down on her knees to examine Swirl’s eyes. She put tiny slips of paper in Swirl’s eyes, one at a time, to measure how well he as producing tears. He stood still as a statue while she did this. He lets people handle him. He was brought up that way. To trust the people.

The vet gave us medicine for his eyes and said we will check the indentations in his head in August when we retest his kidneys.

Meanwhile, tonight, while I sat here in my office, Swirl ripped apart a fifty-year-old baby blanket that somehow had been left within his reach. So, he is not done yet.

That is good to know.