Failure to Awake

When you get a dog and you’re under, say, 65 you should realize that that animal is going to die before you do. And, honestly, you should start preparing right away. In fact it might be wise to refer to the canine only in the past tense. You could say things like “Poor, poor, dead Chuckles come and get your dinner.” This might help when the dog invariably cricks as my dog did this morning. A picture:

That is, err, was Patton. Also known as Patton Rouge or more recently “Move” (Patton was an in the way dog). At one time Patton was a vicious walking bear trap. Well vicious if another animal annoyed him in the slightest but a pretty nice guy to be around provided you were human and unannoying. He knew plenty of tricks and all that stuff but his favorite trick was “Say your prayers.” This trick basically involved bowing the head at the appropriate moment and waiting for a treat. Except Patton always lingered for a moment with this trick, I suspect he was silently praying for God to visit terrible vengeance upon me for making him debase himself for food. Plus, since I rarely pray except during football games, he may have been puzzled by the relevance.

Patton was a good friend and I’ll miss him. I guess he went out pretty easy, dying in his sleep next to our bed. The odd thing is that Patton usually rolled out of bed about 8:30 and when I checked him at 8 he was definitely alive. I think he woke at his usual time, thought about hauling his arthritic bones outside and said screw it.

I checked on him at 9 and noted that his tongue had turned the odd shade of purple saved for bruises and oxygen deprivation. It was at this point that I was pretty certain he had gone the way of David Duchovney’s career but I wanted to give him every benefit of the doubt. So did my wife. She called the vet and asked the classic question:
“How do you know when your dog is dead?”
Ha ha funny I know, I mean it nearly cracks me up, but when the carcass is still warm and you don’t want the dog to be dead you’ll grasp at anything. The receptionist, who obviously had some experience with this question, gave instructions to find the heartbeat. My wife dutifully got a stethoscope from the closet (doesn’t everyone have one?) and listened for the heartbeat. She thought she could barely hear one, you know faint but present. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that with the way she was holding the thing she was probably hearing the pulse in her thumb. Of course I had stood over Patton minutes before yelling “Who wants dinner?”

At this point I knew Patton was dead, the wife had a pretty good idea, the emergency backup dog was laying plans for complete household domination and my two year old was wondering how anyone could be sad with High 5 on the TV.

So what do you do with a dead dog? Drive him across town to the vet. Which is what we did. It takes thirty minutes to get to the vet from our house (there are closer vets) and by the time we got there Patton had started stiffening up so all doubt was removed. So now it is off to the crematorium for the old boy where he’ll be reduced to ashes. The ashes will be combined with the ashes of various cocker spaniels and border terriers and then returned to us (and yes, your Aunt Mildred’s ashes also have a bunch of Fred in the next county mixed in) which we will solemnly sprinkle about the yard and then plant a tree in memory of the good old boy.

Wow, two overly personal entries in a row. But it doesn’t mean I leave you without links nope the links are coming.

Post-lifes Patton’s Pile of Punctuated Precision
(Hey, I know it doesn’t make sense and The Master will come down on me like a ton of bricks but I’m remembering my dog)

My vet
Andy is a top notch guy, a Mac user and a bit of a skeptic. No guesses at this office they require hard evidence. If there is a better vet clinic in Tennessee I haven’t found it and I’ve tried more than one. Plus they are just nice folks. So you get it all, a nice respectful attitude towards science and compassionate understanding. Plus when your dog cricks they send really nice flowers.

I actually feel bad for Dr. Skelley. He wants a new Mac in the worst way (his main machine is a 266 iMac) and when a Bulldog dies off it doesn’t help. Other vets I’ve seen would have told me the dog wasn’t quite dead yet and went to the back room to attempt full skeletal replacement, but he didn’t charge me for the visit.

From the two nice guys in a row department:
Chris Null is a movie genius. So when I wanted to know the max possible score of the following game:
Movie Trivia
I e-mailed Chris. Now in theory there is no top score because the lightning round provides the possibility of an infinitely high score. Chris got this:

If you can beat it let me know. As it stands now that is the top possible score.

Interesting read:
End of Oil
Sent in by Todd. Why doesn’t he post anymore?

Tangentially related:
War Nerd