Totie passed away this afternoon. He was 13. He was named indirectly after Dodie, the man Princess Diana died with, and who were both in the news at the time. My sister thought the name Dodie was just so cute and begged to name the puppy with it but I said no, so we settled on Totie. 13 years is a long time especially for dogs. I read somewhere that 1 human year equals 7 for a dog so that would mean Totie was 91. While he did have filmy eyes, decaying teeth, incontinence, and not too sharp hearing, our 5 year Koorie kept him lively, dragging him to play when he would have probably preferred to sleep quietly. Totie sometimes snapped back impatiently but most times, he let Koorie tease him around, which inadvertently helped him get some good exercise.
As my sister and I have been leafing through old photographs of our many dogs, we're having problems remembering who was born when, whose mother was who, whose sibling was who and so on. We're also realising that 13 years is also a long, long time for human beings.
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