Jay Jay is my best friend with the exception of my wife Charlie.
I’ve known him for eight years, and, during that time, we’ve had a lot of laughs, gone interesting places together, and been there for each other during good times and bad.
Charlie is quite fond of Mr. JJ, as well. Our son, Tim, absolutely loves the J-Man, as he calls him. Actually, I don’t know of anyone (maybe with the exception of our nutty neighbor, Sharon) who dislikes the guy. He’s just a cool dude.
Jay Jay had a rough childhood. He was abandoned when he was about 2-1/2 years old, was homeless for awhile, having nothing to eat or drink. He almost died. Luckily, some very fine folks found him, restored him to health, and allowed us to adopt him into our family. What a great decision that was!
Of course, Jay Jay is our just-turned 11 year-old Boston Terrier.
What a character he is! He’s a big dude for a Boston, weighing in at a well-muscled 27 pounds. He’s not the quickest or fastest of dogs, but has sneaky speed, particularly if a piece of bacon or hot dog hits the ground. On the other hand, he moves with slow motion when he’s out on a walk, because it is his sword duty, it seems, to sniff and pee on every interesting object that he comes upon. At the same time, he is a gentleman around other dogs, never the one to start a fracas. “Live and let live” is his motto.
Did I mention Jay Jay’s eating habits? He’s never chewed food in his life; he vacuums it up as fast as he can, and then stands there looking at you like, “What happened? Where’s my dinner?”, as his sister, Booger, continues to calmly ingest her meal for another five minutes. Jay’s eating habits have rubbed off on his newest sister, Baby, who can actually…vacuum up her food faster than the J-Man!
Speaking of his siblings, Jay Jay has been a great pal to Booger over all the years and now is being a very patient older brother to the puppy, Baby, as she goes through an awkward stage of being…a pest.
Baby follows JJ all over the house; the guy can get no privacy. But, they’re friends, and like to play tug-of-war games and argue, in a friendly way, over toys. Jay Jay has even been known to attempt to mount little Baby when she is otherwise pre-occupied with Booger. Ain’t gonna happen; the dude is clueless when it comes to romance.
Jay is his own man at bedtime. Our other dogs, Booger and Baby, sleep in the bed with Charlie and I. But, our man dog has his own bed, where he likes to spread out and snore. If he gets cold in the wee hours, he will give us a signal, and we will hoist him up and let him snuggle up against us. Once he has warmed up a bit, maybe in 15 minutes to an hour, he will hop off the bed and resume sleep in his own bed.
Jay Jay loves to ride in the car. This is surprising because he once fell out of the window of my car while we were driving around the community, and he got banged up. For quite awhile, he would run and hide under a bed if I said, “Let’s go for a ride!” But, eventually, he got over his scary episode, and now will jump into virtually any car with doors open. He likes to look out the window at stuff passing by; in fact, he has a special perch in our RV where he sits for hours watching America roll by.
But, alas, the poor boy is going blind.
Jay Jay has intermediate cataracts in both eyes, and his vision, particularly at dusk and at night, is failing fast. Whereas he used to be able to catch a thrown treat in his mouth 100 percent of the time, now it is more like a 1 out of 10 proposition. He’s bumping into things, actually tripping himself at times, and is very leery of jumping up onto the bed at night, for fear of misjudging his leap. Jay has begun to growl at Baby when she is playing, because she moves around so quickly and is probably is very disconcerting to him.
We’ve had Jay Jay on a regime of eye drops and food supplements for many months now as the situation has worsened, trying to stave off the inevitable. Jay’s veterinary eye doctor said that “we would know” when the time had come for medical intercession.
It’s time.
Jay Jay is scheduled for double cataract surgery next Wednesday. It’s going to cost us a lot of money to do this, but Charlie and I want to do it because Jay is an otherwise very healthy dog who could live another four or five years. And, he has been a great family member for many years who has always given us 100 percent unconditional love. So, we’re going to bite the fiscal bullet and try to make the final years of Jay Jay’s life as wonderful as they can be.
Let there be light.