Our family dog, Charlie, is 13 years old. Pat grew up with it since a little girl. Charlie is a very adorable golden retriever. Now, it is getting old and it can’t even get up on its own due hip problem. We have to help it getting up by giving it support on the stomach. Pat took it to visit a vet yesterday and did its annual lab test. The results come back today and reveal that it has cancer. We will see whether the insurance cover for the surgery fee. If not, we will just let it live its remaining days peaceful. It is simply cheaper to buy a new dog than fixing the old one. I guess 13 years of life is long enough for a dog. It does not do much everyday, spent most of time sleeping and gets up only for food and its daily walk. To Charlie, everyday is just the repeat of the previous day. Life of a dog seems so meaningless, all it does is eat, sleep, walk, pee and shit. The function of a pet is to give joy and pleasure to its owner. When owning a pet brings more trouble than pleasure, maybe it is time send it to SPCA to end its suffering.
I found taking care of Charlie, the golden retriever of Pat, is quite time consuming. I have to remember feed him every morning before I go to work and go home early to feed him dinner. Since he is very bored staying home all day, I try to walk him every night. Walk the dog is more time consuming that I had expected. Just want to the park close to Pat’s place and back takes over 15 minutes, and it would take more time if I let him run around in the park. For time when I’m around, Charlie is very lazy. He usually lays in front of the window or TV doing nothing, and very slow in responding to my commands. It is very easy to recognize dog’s facial expression to tell whether he is happy or sad. After this experience of living with a dog, I’ll definitely think twice before getting my own dog in the future.
Today finally Charlie conquered my home. I was sick last night and slept for 16 hours straight skipping dinner. This morning Pat prepared some chicken rice soup for me and came to visit me with Charlie. It was Charlie’s first time taking an elevator, it was so scared that it refused to get inside. I have to kick its butt to get it moving. Charlie went into my place and sniff around. We put Charlie in the balcony while we were having brunch. After lunch we walked Charlie at the park next to the golf course near my place. Charlie was so happy that it can visit so many new places. Lucky that I wake up early this morning, or Pat was planned to have Charlie to use its licking attack to wake me up.
