Ned used to be so enthusiastic about everyday life, he was often embarrassing.
At every other dog in the neighborhood, he would bark. Nothing intimidating or menacing, just a social greeting. A flirtacious woof of excitement, loud enough to be heard three, maybe four houses down the block.
Just for kicks, he would vault himself up onto the low stone walls bordering the sidewalk, then leap back down — several feet, no less! — with the grace of a cat.
And nothing would send Ned into a frenzy like the sight of a rabbit or a squirrel. The soft mutt would work himself into a drooling, whining, hot mess. He would jump vertically into the air, like a basketball player, just from the sheer excitement.
Suddenly, he was a furry Incredible Hulk, his 60-or-so pounds strong enough to pull his walker to Bellefonte.
But that was young Ned, fresh from the SPCA in Centre Hall. The vet figured he was about a year old when my family adopted him, loaded him into the back of the Jeep and drove him home to State College in 2002.
Living in town until 2008, I never really noticed he was aging that much. Saw him too frequently to observe his getting older.
Now, though, having returned to town this spring after a couple years away, I see the years on Ned with troubling clarity. Somehow, he has climbed to somewhere around 70 in dog years, and his energy is waning.
The white patch of hair on his chin is growing, and it’s starting to plant little gray strands higher up, above his lips. Sometimes he doesn’t even bark at other dogs on the street. If he notices a squirrel, it’s a crapshoot as to whether he’ll bother to give chase.
All around, Ned, a labrador retriever mix, has become a tame beast. Sure, he’s still prone to try to sneak a loaf of bread from the kitchen if he can manage it; his spirit is intact. He just doesn’t express it in all the ways he once did.
In a sense, it’s a relief when his embarrassing, big-dog barks don’t echo through the neighborhood anymore. In another, it’s a sobering reminder that Ned won’t be here forever.
The last family pet to depart was my aunt’s beautiful beagle, Babe, who passed on when I was still in high school. I vowed to myself that nothing was worth that heartache, that I would try to keep anyone in the family from taking home another dog. Couldn’t handle another eventual, inevitable death.
Several years later, getting Ned was my idea. Babe, I reasoned, had a good life, made possible by her rescue through an SPCA shelter.
Why not commit the same selfless act and adopt another dog? I figured.
Of course, adopting a dog is usually only part selfless — and part selfish. We expect to do well by our canine companions, to give them good lives, but we also expect that the experience will be good for us, that we’ll find some comfort and happiness with them.
And when they start to age faster than anyone in the human world, well, it hurts. Their sped-up life cycles catch us by surprise, even though we know fully what to expect. We ache over their aching, anguished that we cannot do more to help them. They slow down as we’re still warming up.
It is perhaps the only cruel element of these otherwise-sweet relationships.
Ned may be losing some spunk, but I’ve reached a new resolve: no premature mourning, no excessive fretting.
Dogs sense emotion, and there is no use in plaguing his days with all-too-human anxiety. His last years can be his best.
A friend this gentle and warm-hearted deserves nothing less.
