Sitting at the breakfast table this morning, Bunny in hand, Abigail told me she never wanted to get rid her favorite stuffed animal. She informed me that Bunny never gets old. And anytime she did start to look old or dirty we can simply put her in the washer and she would come out looking brand new. She said Bunny was her favorite animal in the whole world. Guinness was sitting right beside her, hoping for a few scraps of her scrambled eggs. She gave him a quick pat on the head and let him know he was her second best animal. She looked back at me and said, "Mom,we're always going to have Guinness too, right?"
Guinness is getting visibly older. His muzzle is all grey, his hearing is going, his hips give out on him from time to time, he's slow to get up and he can't play fetch quite like he used too (though he's just as neurotic about it as he was the day we found him 8 years ago.) Our best guess is that he's around 13. The average life expectancy of a lab is 10-15 years. Realistically we do not have very many more years with him. I wasn't ready to explain that.
I'm not sure when the girls will be able to understand why we won't always have Guinness, but this morning I couldn't bring myself to tell them the truth. That sometime, sooner than any of us are ready to think about, Guinness will be gone. I lied and said yes, we'll have him forever.
2 comments:
Someday at school, she'll say something like "my dog is going to live forever", and then some little smart alec kid will say "dogs don't live forever silly", and then she'll come home crying and asking you questions, and THEN you will probably tell her about death;-)
It won't be easy, that's for sure, but death might be more understandable for her than finding out that Santa isn't real LOL
This story bought tears to my eyes. We all love Guinness, and I like the idea of him living forever, too.
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