max factor

there is no end of mystery about max. this year he'll be turning 80. his speckled sidekick guthrie will be 40, which is where i landed this year, so it's all very something. none of us feels as old as we are, although max has his moments of drama. some days he practices ancientness. now, it's likely real ancientness isn't a shroud that falls over a body like everyone fears, but a fog a body wanders in and out of. and max does quite a bit of this wandering. some days he's jumping around, chasing toys, battling with guthrie. other days i have to poke him a few times a day to be sure he isn't dead. this can be espeically unsettling because he is a very heavy sleeper and because he spends more of his time than you'd think asleep with his feet in the air. maybe he's not so much practicing ancientness. it's possible he is ancientness. in that case, he's quite impressive.

three or four years ago, max had problems with arthritis. his bony self would curl into a creepy comma and he'd be unable to lie down or sit. he'd stand in the middle of the room, all arched, and wait for someone to rescue him. we'd have to pick him up and hold him, slowly relaxing his short legs and rubbing his back until he'd be able to rest. this was when we got the doggy arthritis medicine and the dog steps so he could get up and down from the bed on his own. and of course, then max and guthrie found out what happens if you eat a several month supply of doggy arthritis medication all at once (see entry max pants). they are still paying off the vet bills from their chew toy allowances (which is why they're playing with a sock in the photo below, heh), so no more arthritis medicine. actually, we were worried about permanent damage to his filter organs and had to take him off the meds for a while. the strange thing is max seemed to shake off his arthritis after his overdose. sure, he needs the dog steps to get up on the bed and when he does his little dog stretches, downward dog, upward dog, he has to stretch his back legs one at a time, but there have been no more dog commas or awful frozen hot dogs.

so we've been complacent. we know he's going deaf. he rarely initiates any barking on his own, but waits for guthrie to start and then barks his support. it is no longer possible to call him from another room. this allows us to do all sorts of sneaking up on him, but he doesn't respond the way people do when you do that, so it hasn't been as exciting as you'd think.

mostly, at this age, max has convinced himself that he can will things to happen simply by thinking about them really, really hard. he's found support for this in his method of waking me up in the morning. he sits up, a foot or two from my face, and just stares at me. who knows how long he sits there, but most mornings when i wake up, he's all sphinx-like and the first thing i see, staring not really at me so much as through me. generally around five or five thirty am. because it is summer and i am on vacation, we generally go back to bed after our little early morning bathroom stroll and a little bit of dog food for max and guthrie. the sweetie is never aware of this. neither dog ever attempts to wake him. it is difficult enough for me to do. they know their limits.

so they eat and i fall back into bed. max always finishes first. his mostly toothlessness allows him to take in considerably more food per slurp than guthrie, and i can hear his claws clacking as he roams around the bedroom, thinking. eventually, he takes the stairs up to the bed and sits near my feet. he does this every day. he sits and waits for guthrie to finish. this takes about half of forever because guthrie is a piddler and he's easily distracted. breakfast sometimes takes him as much as ten minutes, during which time max will sit on the edge of the bed at my feet, staring at nothing with his foggy eyes. then i hear the clatter of smaller claws and the more aggressive trip up the stairs. guthrie passes max and curls up next to me on the bed, nudging himself under my arm and curling his butt up under my chin. the sweetie is asleep, guthrie is immediately asleep and i am drifting back for another hour or so. but not max. never max. generally, it takes him twenty minutes or so, but at some point i wake up because he is there again, sitting on the bed near my hip, staring. accusing. only for this second wake up of the morning, he's vocal. he makes a sound like a sick horse. it's a cross between a howl and a moan and it's low and scary. for the first few weeks, i'd lift the sheet over himi, thinking he just wanted to be under the covers. both dogs sleep under whatever covering is on the bed, even in summer. i'd cover him without opening my eyes but the awful sound would continue. when i'd finally open my eyes, max would be there, terrible chestnuts of eyes in his skeletal head, moaning a sound no human being could sleep through. this, by the way, is how i found out the sweetie certainly can't be human. the howling moaning awfulness continued, not matter what i tried. finally, exhausted, i picked up the small dog sleeping under my neck and plopped him on the sweetie's chest. the small dog is very pliable in sleep. he never even opened an eye. the sound stopped and max stomped his way up the bed and curled himself up on the warm place the small dog had been sleeping, scrunching his butt up under my chin, tucking his nose under his tail.

and he does this every morning. gets on the bed first. waits. watches guthrie go to sleep where he wants to be. waits. gets frustrated. yells. yells some more. gets guthrie relocated. goes to sleep in guthrie's vacated spot. i know what you're thinking and i've tried. i've grabbed max when he first hops on the bed and put him in the spot i know he'll sleep in eventually. he gets up and goes to the end of the bed to wait for guthrie.