A second wind

Rusty and Geni remind me that it's not physical age that affects us so much as the age of our soul.

Geni has never accepted that she's almost 14 years old, basically the age expectancy for most dogs. She's still as wacky, goofy, not-the-brightest and energetic as when she adopted us back in 1998.

True, she had to have major cancer surgery last year, which left her abdomen sliced up like a piece of meat and took her (and me) months to recover from. And, true, she's now covered in small black moles and has some arthritis on her wrists, which was causing her to trip often until I started giving her glucosamine.

But it's not like she acknowledges any of that. She's not even gray around her muzzle, like most dogs when they age. Definitely unlike Rusty, who gets grayer and grayer and grayer as each year goes by.

Rusty has aged significantly since we first got him in 1995, a year after we'd married. He's not just gray but has to take arthritis medication and allergy medication and anti-anxiety medication and anti-reflux medication and glucosamine. And before he started on the arthritis medication he didn't want to move much and would sit, staring at the walls for no apparent reason.

But, for a while now, he seems to have gotten a second wind. Yesterday, as my husband and I walked him in the early morning of my college on the hill, we saw a buck shoot out of the woods and run away from us as fast as it could.

I was so excited, since I'd never seen a buck before, always does or fawns. But my excitement couldn't match Rusty's or Geni's, for that matter. They were chomping at the bit, so to speak, dying to go chase after the magnificent creature.

Rusty also was pulling at the leash my husband held, trying to keep up with my refurbished, tag sale bike, which my husband brought up from our city home. That way I can use it to go to The Village until the weather gets bad and next year when the weather begins to get better. Rusty was ready to sprint along the bike, something that surprised us, especially after he'd tried to rush after a cat and the buck.

"It's like he's a puppy again," my husband said, amused.

Of course, once we were back in the apartment, the bike put away and Cleaning Day well on its way, Rusty plopped down on his favorite bed and snored the morning and the early afternoon away until it was time to get in the car to come back to the city.

This morning, both dogs were spry and ready to chase after the squirrels as we walked a mile and a quarter through the wide streets of our small city.

Ears cocked, tongues hanging, tails high and stepping with a good pace in their gait, the two elderly dogs pulled on their leashes ahead of me. As October continues to step toward my birthday, the dogs remind me, generously, that it's not the chronological age that matters, but (health permitting) the age you think of yourself as enjoying.