Crowe was 14.5 years old. He had a great life here. Before I got him he was an open class sprint dog but he didn’t particularly like that job. I had already had his sister, Irish, so his owner called me up asking if I wanted Crowe too. He was probably around 4years old when he came into my life. He was a sweet dog that followed me everywhere. He was afraid to venture anywhere on his own. I called him my “velcro” dog for anywhere I went with him he insisted on being glued to my knee. His sister learned to be a bit more adventuresome and loved loose walks and would venture off to smell new smells, but never far away. Crowe on the other hand always seemed uncomfortable on long walks. He seemed to say “when are we going back? it is scary out here.”
He was in my 4 dog team at the peak of my sprint racing years. Borax, Jazz, Crowe and Zorba were nearly unbeatable for many years in the 4 dogs class. The other 3 have outlived him.
Over the last year he became gimpy and thinner. But that dog loved to eat. So he ate great quantities of food but was just lean and bony. I figure that he probably had cancer but at his age I certainly wasn’t going to give him chemo! I had bloodwork done a year ago and it came back absolutely perfect. He looked as if he had a 2 year old dogs blood coursing through his 13 year old body.
So, we just continued to feed him, play with him, and had him stay in the warm dog barn on cold days and nights. He became incontinent and we would clean out his barn kennel or his dog house on a daily basis. But still…..he kept eating, woofing and generally enjoying life.
But I came home from work Monday night and he could barely get up. I gave him a bunch of doggie pain killers (he had been on medicam for 6 months) and the next morning he was pretty mobile again. But I knew that it “was time” so drove him into town and had him euthanized. He had a large bowl of prime rib for breakfast that day and even as the initial sedation shot was working he was eating massive quantities of biscuits out of my hand.
He is now young again and has joined his sister and many of his friends running free through forests and across streams. We miss him.