Winston makes me sad. →[More:]Winston is the best dawg ever. He's 10 now, and starting to slow down a bit. It makes me sad that he can't live forever. He's got arthritis in one of his paws so he walks with a limp.... a bad one when he first gets up, just a little hitch in his step if he's excited.

He's my favorite of all the dogs we've had (about 8 if I'm counting right). He's smart and loyal and protective and goofy. He still acts like a puppy sometimes. But he's clearly slowing down. It's horrifying watching it because he seems to know he's not as capable as he once was and he's sad about it.

My view of the relationship between dogs and their people is that to them we are akin to a god: An eternal presence that was there when they were babies, and when they grow old we are relatively unchanged. But as a god I feel like I'm failing him. I can't make his arthritis go away, I can't make him young again.

I've put enough dogs down to know that if we have to do that with Winston it will affect me deeply. And maybe in considering his mortality, the prospect of my own mortality isn't that far away.

But he just had his physical and according to the vet he's doing fine for a dog his age aside from the arthritis. So I will enjoy day he can spend with us, even if the knowledge that his best days are behind him makes me a little melancholy.