Borrowed Time

Here is our little old lady, resting after a long night.  It has been a rough week with several sleepless nights.  Penny is a miniature pincer, a little overweight, deaf, 13 years old, and in the sunset of her life.

Min pins are known to be high-strung animals.  If you have never owned a min pin, you may not know what I mean my high-strung.  Penny has lived up to the high strung reputation of her breed.  Intensely curious and clever there is hardly a place safe from a min pin.

Penny could levitate from the floor to the back of the sofa without a perceptible exertion.  In her younger years, she was found on kitchen counters or even the table.  The sight of a treat or a leash is completely overwhelming, as she runs in circles, her tail waging her entire body, jumping and crying with delight.

Finally Penny realizes there will be no treat (or walk) until she sits.  Responding to the request, she bounces up and down to run in a little circle until expending enough energy that she can, with great effort of will, hold herself to one spot on the floor, showing she can behave in a ladylike manner, as long as we insist.

Her days of jumping onto the back of the sofa, and being found in the middle of a table or up on the counter are long gone.  Penny can’t even get up on the bed or the sofa for her favorite activity, cuddling under a blanket, which earned her the moniker of “blanket ho.”  The moniker was given to her by my son-in-law, with ho being short for hound.

On her best nights, Penny will go out once or twice.  On a bad night, Penny pants, paces, cries, barks, and scratches incessantly at the door.  She doesn’t seem to want or need anything in particular, except for Mom or Dad to do something to make her feel better.  Just as we have done with fussy babies, we hold her, rock her, and pat her to try to calm her down.

Sometimes, we even pull her into the bed with us as we did when she was a tiny pup.