Am I Being Too Hasty?

Last week we had a visit by our daughter and her family. They brought along their two dogs - an old one and a young one. The old dog has had a tough life. Our daughter adopted Jessie from an animal shelter. It appears that prior to coming into our daughter’s life, Jessie had been misused and perhaps abandoned, had been hit by a car which damaged her hip or hind legs or both. The injury never healed properly, probably because of lack of care, causing Jessie to limp. Now that she is old the old injury plus age-related joint problems make it almost impossible for Jessie to navigate stairs. She can manage one step, but usually collapses in the process. If there are any more steps, she has to be lifted. I didn’t say so, but I wondered to myself if it wouldn’t be better to put Jessie to sleep to spare her any more suffering…

That reminded me of the two dogs we had in succession in our family. Both were Boxers, one was a male, the other a female. They were part of the family and I still dream of them even though they have been long gone. Koko, the male, was with us from 1976 to 1986 and Kyra, the female, was with us from 1989 to 1999. I was told that a Boxer’s life expectance was between 7 and 10 years. I felt lucky that both of our Boxers made it to the ripe old age of 10 (70 in human years). But when each of them started to become feeble and it appeared that their quality of life had deteriorated to the point where I thought they were suffering I had them put to sleep. Koko had a heart problem and collapsed several times. The veterinarian could not give a definite prognosis - a shot of some medicine might perk him up for a week or so, but would not make him well. For the last visit to the vet I had to physically drag Koko out from behind some bushes. I had the impression that he went in there to die. Kyra developed a lump in her throat which was variously diagnosed as a tumor and then again as a sore throat. She became weak because she could not eat and the prognosis again was not good for the long term…

A couple of weeks ago I had a tree expert come and examine the trees on our property where we have a summer cottage. The cottage is near the ocean and sometimes the wind blows pretty strongly. I had been concerned about these old trees for some years, especially one that, if blown over, could fall squarely unto the cottage, causing (in my estimation) irreparable damage. The tree expert suggested trimming some of the branches out of most of the trees to let the air pass through more freely - as he put it. He agreed with me that the tree which I had in my sights might damage the cottage some day. It was dying he said, it seemed to be partially hollow near the top where birds had pecked holes into the trunk, it had apparently been damaged at the bottom by a construction vehicle some time ago and ants had settled in the break in the trunk. He never said that the tree had to go, but whatever he said reinforced my desire to eliminate it. The tree was felled. I had a slice of the trunk cut so that I could count the rings and determine how old the tree was. I counted 60 rings - a ripe old age - time to come down, I thought. But the trunk didn’t seem as ant riddled or hollow as I wanted to believe…

My friend and I are approaching age 70! Am I being too hasty?