I use math for work but that doesn’t mean I’m very good at it.  Computers and programs help.  On the other hand, dog math seems much more straightforward (and hurtful).  Dogs age seven days for our one.  They age forty-nine days in one human week.  Two hundred and ten days in a month.  One thousand two hundred sixty (give or take) days every six months.  You get it, math stinks.

The time I notice Melvin’s aging the most is during the morning walk.  He used to run out of the house as if it were on fire.  Plenty a time I’d fall down from a Melvin trajectory through the garage.  Pull, sniff, pull, see someone, pull, pull, pull.  Nowadays, he might bolt out of the door at first (usually due to needing to pee) but unless we see someone on our walk, his pulling days are all but over.  He walks next to me, some mornings he falls behind.  Just this morning as I was noticing him dragging a bit, I asked him what was wrong.  Yes, I know he will not answer, but the answer he’d give if he could would be ‘nothing’.  He, like most of us, is slowing down.  His birthday was March 2nd and he has aged one human year since then. Which means he is now fifty.  Good news is that fifty is apparently the new twenty-nine (would Glamour lie?).

Although I benefit from our walks, those moments are his.  He can set any cadence he’d like and I will always want to join him.  Of course after he’s had breakfast and a quick nap, the teenager in him emerges and I quickly forget about his elderly moments.