Sissi, the lady dog empress

Everyone knows that the trouble with dogs is that they live short lives compared to us.  Sissi (her portrait is shown) became an antique 16 year old before she passed away due to kidney failure in August 2009, surrounded by her loving adoptive family and three other dogs who depended on her.  She was a Berger de Pyrenees, with a bit of Briard thrown in for good measure, and the miracle is that she made it past her middle years living on cold cement in unclean, filthy surroundings, rarely allowed inside, and often out in the cold mountain rain and snow without shelter. An old woman, not quite right in the head, used to own her, and her adult son hated her, a very strange reaction to one of the gentlest, wisest, and people-friendly dogs that I have met.  When a rescue organization finally convinced this, ahem, family to give her over, her fur was almost gone, and she could barely walk from arthritis, and she was incontinent — the only good news was that she had "only" lived with these folks for 8 years, and perhaps her first 5 years had been better, for now she was thirteen.  Who was going to adopt her in that condtion?  Right, so I became her long-term foster mom and with a bit of estogen, good food, comfy pillows, anti-inflammatories, and lots of other dog company (I ran a deluxe dog hotel in France), she not only thrived, but bossed the other dogs around with the most subtle dog language imaginable -- a subte lifting of an eye brow, the calm placement of herself relative to food or toys — or calming down the excitable types by merely sitting amongst them — she had everyone snookered.  When I had to go to California, and Sissi was 14.5 yrs old, my dear friends took her to their home to live with three dogs.  Luc, their Shepherd/husky mix promptly fell in love and esquired her around — at this point, she only needed her little estogen pill every second day to keep her "dry", so it cannot all have been hormones, and she certainly had been spayed and did not act like she was in heat.  He became her protector (not that she needed it at this point) and she became his empress.  This young giant of a dog respected her every wish (Luc is pictured with me on my profile photo) and always made sure she was along, whenever the family went for small walks or took turns into the garden.  We loved her dearly, this wonder dog.

So go out there and adopt an elderly dog.   It maybe the best dog that you will ever meet...