How does he do it? Living with Mackenzie our 13 year old pug is a lesson of contentment. I don’t know if it is something that happens when you reach the twilight years of your life but ‘Big Mac’ as I refer to him seems to take pleasure in everything he does, be it eating, sleeping, walking, and what I believe is his favourite…pooping. Don’t get me wrong, I think it can be argued that most dogs regardless of age seem to have fun in doing all of these things. However, I firmly believe that as Mackenzie has gotten older he has come to really savour every moment of each of these activities. He is a breed that naturally has character but when you watch him eat he takes time outs after each bite to lick his chops for half a minute and then continue. When you watch him sleep, he has waking moments where it seems as though he is reflecting on the best times of his life. He really does make living look, not just easy, but truly tasteful. Like every minute is another serving of his favourite meal. I love it and am thankful I get to enjoy it every day. It is a great reminder of how enjoyable life is when we slow it down to a manageable pace.

Wow, when you hear stories like this it really changes your perspective of professional athletes. Maybe they really are human with real emotions and genuine interests. Whom might I be referring to you ask? Well, let me start by saying, I am not a baseball fan and most certainly not a fan of the overly paid athletes who play the game but when I read the story about Ken Griffey Junior and his three dogs I had to lighten up a bit. According to an article by Seattlepi.com columnist Jim Moore, Ken Griffey Junior is a big dog fan and considers them apart of the family even going as far as researching what hotels accepts pets before embarking on the family vacation.

Particularly touching, is his love and devotion to his aging 12 year old Rottweiler. Akiba’s been through a lot — she had E. coli as a pup and almost died, and more recently, she had a basketball-size tumor removed from her chest. Moore explains that Griffey and his wife, Melissa, were at a loss with what to do but weren’t ready to give up, It’s no different than one of your kids, you want to try everything you can. With the help of an experimental drug administered through shots given once every two weeks followed by a cycle of once every four weeks the tumor disappeared.

Ken Griffey Junior lovingly talks about the rest of his dogs in the article and shows an honesty of emotions rarely shown by athletes, unless of course, they are found guilty of using muscle enhancements…sorry, but I had too. Haha. Anyway, aging dogs always find a way of tugging on my heart strings and this story reminded me that we really must find ways of keeping them in our lives happy and active for as long as possible. They are great companions and when they give you 12 plus years (as in Griffey’s case) of unconditional love we owe it to them to do what we can.

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I read a great post by Best Bully Sticks (@bestbullysticks on Twitter) talking about caring for your senior dog. In this post they mention the importance of taking your dog to the vet, not only when your dog is sick but at a time when they are healthy so your vet has a baseline to use to compare results to down the road should your dog become sick. I have been through this exact same thing and trust me it does help. Before I was able to put my 13 year old Pug on Medicam, he needed blood work to make sure his body could tolerate this prescription. When the blood work came back they compared it to a test he had a couple years back and discovered that he had some issues with his liver that weren’t there in his last test. We were able to address the liver problem and Mackenzie is now safely on Medicam and happier than ever.

Another important point mentioned was the need to keep your older dog active. I have spoken about this before and I think it is worth mentioning again. What tends to happen, and I know this because I went through this myself, is that as your dog gets older and starts stiffening up, you stop walking them. In my case I even stopped taking Mackenzie to dog parks. Then I realized that by doing this I am actually accelerating the aging process. Old dogs still need exercise for physical reasons, but also for mental stimulation. What I often recommend is using some of the wonderful products out there to become creative in how we manage this side of our older dogs life. For me I use a dog jogger and Mackenzie comes on long walks and visits dog parks and all along the way he goes in and out of the jogger. So he gets the right amount of exercise and an abundance of mental stimulation. He is still an adventurer and loves to explore, I just needed to find the right way to let allow him to do this in a healthy way.

Our senior dogs still enjoy all the same things they used to love when they were younger and it is up to us as dog owners to find ways to let them continue to enjoy life.

Ann-Marie Fleming is the Founder of www.DogQuality.com, a site focused on products that help older dogs enjoy life.