Sebastion: The lil Old Man And The Man Cave (Part 4)

The “Little Old Man” Phase.

 As Sebastion got older, I started calling him “The Little ol man”. 

Everything got harder for him. Making it down the stairs to go outside, jumping on the bed, or the couch became impossible.  

He would look longingly up at us on the bed Until we (Mostly Joe) picked him up, or when we were on the couch Joe would pick him up on the couch and he would be content, to sit at our feet. He would sleep under the bench in front of our bed on Joes clothes that he sometimes left there.(I suppose that was comforting to him, He LOVED Joe)

We realized soon enough that the stairs to the downstairs were just too much for him, to go down or up. For years he would conquer the stairs by doing this kind of hop HOP with the top half being the first hop up or down, (Depending on which way he was going) and the second HOP being his back legs. It was all bounce and no play. Getting up or down the stairs was serious business. Until it just became too much for him. His legs just weren’t what they used to be.

So I decided to make it easy on him. Or so I thought.

I put a child gate up in the room where the doggie door is and gave him a nice bed downstairs. So I was thinking that would make his  life SO MUCH easier. But poor Sebastion didn’t see it that way. He would go out the dog door, come back inside and look at the gate. Then go outside, and do it again. To make matters worse, the day I put up the gate it was raining VERY hard. I stayed downstairs for a while with him. When I saw what he was doing I went and got a towel. He would go outside, come back in soaking wet, look at the gate, look at me, I would dry him off, and the cycle would start all over again. Then he would go out, then in, look at the gate, me, I would  dry him off, then he'd be off to do the same thing, over and OVER again. 

It was heartbreaking.

My husband said it was as if he was hoping one of those times that the gate would disappear so he could try, however hard it was…to go back upstairs where he wanted to be.

I was afraid he would make himself deathly ill going out in the rain this way. I went outside to find him  one of the times he was out in the rain. I took a few steps and went FLYING down our very high upper deck stairs. CRAP! I forgot to put down anything in case it got slick! 

Guess I was getting older too. It took me FOREVER to get back up. That left a mark. A BIG one.

I decided to block the dog door for that night , at least for a bit so at least he could stay dry.

I went upstairs and decided to lay down for a while, only to wake up the next morning.

CRAP!!! I left the door blocked!

I ran downstairs and saw the mess. I felt so badly, the poor lil ol man walked up to me, head down like it was an apology. 

I told him that “I knew it wasn’t his fault”.

Little by little he got used to the gate, though I am sure he HATED the thing. He would be looking up at us all the time when we were upstairs.. Joe  was down there sometimes for work from 9 to 5, he went down there a lot…I would go too, but I know there’s no place he would have rather been than upstairs with us.

-Jealousy, thy name is Jez!-

While that downstairs room became the “Boys Room” (Joe worked from home, so Sebastion and he spent a lot of time down there.) I went down there a lot too. (I actually LIKE Joe working from home.) Jezabel, our cat would jump on top of the gate, then  go over it to go outside, but she started to steal Sebastion's bed when she went down there. At first it felt was like she was saying “”How DARE you give him a room and not me”!  Joe would kick her out, and Jez would just sneak back in and do it again, Kicking the dog out of his favorite bed in the process (I had set up two beds, but Jez liked HIS. )I was puzzled. They had ALWAYS slept around each other, on the couch, all over, and were like siblings, CLOSE siblings. Buddies even.

But something was going on here. I told Joe to just let it be. Sebastion would go to sleep in another bed I had put down there for him (Not his favorite) but little by little, as Jez realized she was allowed in there, she would get close to Sebastions bed, get right up to Sebastion, and then lay down right by him in his little bed. It was a tight fit, but she was content. Ahhhhhh…THAT’S what she wanted.

Before this I think she may have thought at least if she wasn’t ALLOWED to SLEEP in the same bed with him, she could at least be near his scent, and that was enough. Endearing, I thought. The two had been buddies after all for SO many years.

I got a BIG pet bed for them after that and she was content. I would walk past them in the hallway and see those two snuggled up together, The cat and the dog , like the little lamb (Sebastion) and the lion (Jezabel) lying down together. I took pictures of it. It is one of my dearest  memories.