I’m getting on in years. My mom keeps looking at me and saying, “Gracie, you’re almost six and half. You’ll be seven in October.”<\/p>\n
Yeah, yeah. I can count. Well, actually not, because I’m a dog, but I know I’m not getting younger. I sleep more. I tolerate the cats.<\/p>\n
My mom gets anxious because she thought her First Dog, the sainted Keesha, would live forever. Cathy and Keesha were very close. Keesha had to teach Cathy how to be a dog owner. Thankfully, she’s a quick learner, so my job is easier.<\/p>\n
Then my mom read a news article <\/a>to me. “A ten-year-old dog won the Westminster Dog Show,” she said. “For a dog, ten is the new six.”<\/p>\n True. At six and a half, I’m like a three-year-old. I chew socks. I play hard at the dog park. And I still like to give the cats a little grief. Especially that fuzzy Ophelia, our new housemate. She’s nine and still going strong. And Creampuff still plays like a kitten.<\/p>\n My mom was thrilled to realize I might be around for awhile. And she was even happier with Gail Collins’s column<\/a>, which declared, “Old is in.” Collins pointed to Stump, the 10-year-old dog who won Westminster, as well as new heroes like the\u00a0 US Airways pilot.<\/p>\n I’m still young enough to chew on Cathy’s socks. Who cares about anything else?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m getting on in years. My mom keeps looking at me and saying, “Gracie, you’re almost six and half. You’ll be seven in October.” Yeah, yeah. I can count. Well, actually not, because I’m a dog, but I know I’m not getting younger. I sleep more. I tolerate the cats. My mom gets anxious because … Continue reading Old dogs are the best<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/midlifedog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/midlifedog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/midlifedog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midlifedog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midlifedog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/midlifedog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":285,"href":"https:\/\/midlifedog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282\/revisions\/285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/midlifedog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midlifedog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midlifedog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}