Buddy in old age
People like dogs. Well, most people. I like dogs. They give the kind of unconditional love and comforting that is rare to get in this hard world. At the end of the day that’s what we all want, right? Unqualified love and devotion?
I wrote an article many years ago when Buddy was young, entitled “Running with Buddy”. Where I described the joy of running through the eyes and company of my border collie Buddy. From when I picked him up at the breeder in Tennessee as a small timid thing through all the bright and shiny adventures we had together.
I wrote about how he changed my life for the better by reminding me the pure joy of a cool morning in the New England woods on the run.
This is not a eulogy. This is not a retrospective. This is an update.
Buddy is old. This month Buddy will be 14 years old.
The expected lifespan of a border collie is 10-12 years old. In some cases, they can get as old as 17. Buddy is old, and his days are numbered, but so are all of ours.
As I edit this article on a bright, sunny, cold Massachusetts morning he stands on my front porch, alternately expressing his displeasure at the hikers in the woods behind our house and barking at the front door indignantly so I’ll get up and let him in. He doesn’t like the cold so much anymore.
I fill a water bowl on the front porch for him. For some odd reason he prefers outside water to inside water. He’s a fan of puddles and ponds and any accidental accumulation of water. Like a surprising and tasty gift from the universe. He’ll take long drinks in the morning when I let him out. If it is too cold for water, he’ll chew on the ice in the bowl.
Border collies were bred in Wales, Ireland and Scotland to manage sheep. They are an outside dog, a working dog.
They are, as a breed, described as Tenacious, Energetic, Keen, Responsive, Alert, and Intelligent.
Which makes them very good partners for a runner. They love to run. They love to do anything that involves movement. Balls, frisbees, lawnmowers and cars all get their tenacious, keen, and responsive attention.
Beyond their athleticism, they very smart dogs. Very easy, and willing, to train. They love to learn. They take great joy in doing something, anything, that resembles a job. It is said that some border collies have demonstrated a vocabulary of over a hundred words.
In the hands of the wrong owners all these attributes can be trouble. In general, they can make terrible house dogs. They need to be doing something. They need a job. They can make up their own job if you don’t give them enough to do, and you might not like that.
They are so easily trained that you may train them into ‘bad’ behavior without even knowing it.
Buddy’s running days are done. His back hips are arthritic, and this is normal for the breed. The miles we spent together did not cause it. If anything, the miles we spent together gave him years of longevity and healthy, happy life.
He has gone almost totally deaf, which I think, at first, confused him. How would you feel if one day everyone stopped talking to you? We have adjusted. Voice commands no longer work. We communicate with taps on the shoulder and hand signals. The good news is that he no longer goes mental during fireworks and thunder storm season.
I still talk to him. I always talked to him. Even when we were out running I would talk to him.
When he was young, especially as a teenager he was an amazing athlete. That’s how he got the nickname “Buddy the Wonder Dog”. He would perform feats of athleticism and dexterity that would blow my mind. The speed and agility approached an art form. And he did it all with such confidence and joy.
I trained him to heel on a leash the best I could but he was always in too much of a hurry, too curious. Even so, he’d calm down after a few miles and fall into lock-step trot with me. He would drift to the end of the lead and sync his pace with mine over miles of road and trail.
When we ran in the woods, I would let him off leash. Technically he would be running with me, but would range the trail and woods around me as a bit of a running picket.
My favorite memories are when I’m running along a trail lost in thought and I hear the Doppler drum beat of paws coming up fast behind me. With a black and white flash he squeezes by me like I’m a traffic cone on the single path and disappears up the trail, flowing like water. Pure joy.
Then there would be times, especially in the dark, when I’d lose track of him. I’d be standing and calling up the trail for him and he’d appear out of the trail behind me, with a look on his face like ‘what?’ Somehow, with the skill of a magician he’d disappeared in front of me and reappeared behind me.
When we were out with the club, everybody loved Buddy. Buddy and I were a team. Never one without the other. It would give him anxiety to have the groups separate by pace in the woods. He’d stay with the lead pack but circle back to check on the laggards with obvious mental gears turning about how hard we were making it on him to keep the pack together.
To this day he can sense another person or dog within proximity to us in the woods. I don’t know how. He doesn’t see them or hear them but he’ll freeze, take on a defensive ‘alert’ pose and look in the direction of where they are. Then they will appear over the horizon as he assesses threat levels.
I fondly remember taking Buddy out to the Wapack trail for a 20-ish mile adventure in August. We had and have that love of a rough trail in common.
I used to bring him to the track with me when I did speed work. He didn’t get the track or speed work. He would try to pace me on my fast reps for the first couple laps. He would run beside me nipping at my gloves or sleeves as if to save me from the lunacy. Then he would give up and lay in the midfield to watch or to cut across and meet me as I rounded the next corner.
Being so smart and physically active and driven to do something useful, border collies can be a pain in the ass. I have spent countless hours trying to watch TV with Buddy staring at me from a foot away as if to levitate me into some sort of action. This raises to his level two frustration, a low, pleading keening whine. The end point is one loud, motivational bark.
This sequence will be repeated until I either throw something at him or get up.
When he was young, he would repeatedly drop a ball in my lap. I’d throw it at his head. He’d catch it and drop it back into my lap. All of this from a foot away, because his theory was the closer he got to my throwing hand the easier it was the intercept the ball. And so, I learned to watch TV while autonomously throwing a tennis ball. Toss, chomp, drop – Toss, chomp, drop – over and over.
We could do this for an hour. Until the ball went askew, due to his miss, or more probably my throw, and rolled under the furniture. He would then bark at me until I got up and retrieved the ball. He never liked going under the furniture to get a trapped item.
Buddy also hated yard work. He didn’t hate it so much as not really understand it. He wanted to help so badly he made up ways to help with the tools at his disposal that were not at all helpful. When I would shovel snow, he would try to grab the shovel blade just as I was throwing a load. Not only did this make shoveling really hard, he would end up with a bloody mouth.
Same with the snow blower. He would alternatively bite at the wheels or try to catch the cascade of snow as it came out of the chute. Picture him sitting in a snow bank entirely coated with snow, shivering and exhausted. It was the same with wheel barrows, wood chopping, lawn mowing etc. Anything that I was doing outside that involved activity he wanted in on. God help us with the chainsaw.
Yes, border collies are hard wired neurotics.
…
I wrote one of my favorite sentences in that story. It was probably 2006 or 2007. The story was called “Running with Buddy”. It was the second most clicked on article I ever wrote. It was a chapter in my book The MidPacker’s Lament and it was a chapter in another collection of stories to benefit the Boston victims in 2013-2014.
I ended it with “And when you return, you can dream sweat dreams of herding fat, happy sheep in a bucolic land where to live is to run.”
I am blessed to have known this dog. He is my friend. He has been my guide and my spirit animal. He has led me unwavering through the dark woods home many a time. I’ll always have that love in me.
Soon he will be heading home without me. To a bucolic land with fat, happy sheep where to live is to run.