On April 1, my beagle Susie, who is pictured above (when she was young), celebrated her unofficial 13th birthday.
The truth is that Susie might be significantly older than 13. She was given to me in 2004, and I was told that she was three to five years old. I asked a previous owner for her medical records, but he never provided them.
When Susie ran away in 2004, the boarding kennel where she stayed for a few days before I found out she was there wrote that she was five years old. However, the first veterinarian I brought Susie to wrote in 2004 that she was born April 1, 2001, after I told her that she was between three to five years old. Thus, I have considered April 1, 2001, her birthdate for the past 10 years.
In 2011, an incompetent veterinarian (not my regular vet) recommended that I put Susie to sleep after I rushed her to a hospital because she hadn’t eaten in two days, was urinating all over the house that morning, was refusing to walk, and was staring into space. The vet told me that Susie had an enlarged heart, might have cancer, and was so old that it would be stupid to pay a large amount of money just to keep her alive for a few weeks.
I ignored the vet’s advice and asked the hospital to perform a life-saving operation. At 12:15 a.m. the next morning, the vet phoned me to tell me that Susie was in a coma and I had to decide what to do with the soon-to-be-dead body. At about 11 a.m., I phoned the hospital and spoke to a different vet. Susie was recovering, she said, and I could pick her up in two days. I never spoke to the first vet again.
Susie might have been sick because she ate mouse poison. I had moved the day before I took her to the hospital (which is why I didn’t have the time to take her to vet when she stopped eating). As I moved, I left previously closed closet doors in the basement open and noticed right before I moved that there was a box of mouse poison in one of the closets. I definitely did not buy the poison so it never occurred to me to leave the doors closed.
Unfortunately, Susie eats EVERYTHING. I am constantly pulling her away from junk on the sidewalk that she tries to eat. At some point, I should probably adopt the philosophy of an employee of a home for senior citizens who told me that he let a 100-year-old resident I was writing a story on eat anything she wants because “Who am I tell to her that some food is bad for her? She’s 100 years old. If she wants pizza for breakfast, I give her pizza for breakfast.”
For now, though, I am assuming that Susie is 13, not 15, and I should do everything I can to make sure she lives a longer life. Thus, I was very interested in the following story -- “Worst 18 Human Foods For Your Dog.” The worst foods are:
1. Chocolate. 2. Grapes. 3. Garlic and onions. 4. Macadamia nuts. 5. Avocados. 6. Alcohol. 7. Bread dough. 8. Moldy food. 9. Food with caffeine such as soda. 10. Bones and leftovers. 11. Ice cream. 12. Raw meat and salmon. 13. Plums. 14. Raw eggs. 15. Salt. 16. Candy. 17. Hops. 18. Chicken jerky.
Surprisingly, I have kept most of this food away from Susie. I did on a couple of occasions toss grapes on the floor after she begged for them. However, she didn’t eat them. She pushed them around with her nose as if they were toys.
There was also that horrible day when I rushed out of my house leaving chicken on the table and came back a few hours later to find that everything was gone. She had somehow knocked the chicken off the table and eaten it -- bones and all. I can’t describe the look she had in her face. It was a cross between unbridled satisfaction and guilt.
Susie has had some health problems lately, including cysts and seizures, but I am hoping that she lives a very long life and readers of this article will heed the advice of the Dogshow.com article so their dogs will also live a very long life.
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