Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for October 19, 2022

The dog doesn’t want to spend time with you.

Shih tsu.

Toy Fox Terrier thank you! (please see avatar)

Old football players get a wide retriever.

I’m 65 and I have no dog. Am I doomed?

I’ll enjoy my goats for as long as I can.

Aging isn’t all that much fun, but I can’t work up a lot of enthusiasm for the alternative, either.

I have a nice pit mix.

My neighbour, who raises goldens, has a warning sign: WARNING: My dog can lick anybody!

Ageing, the natural and inevitable process of wear and tear on the body.

Ageing makes wine and cheese better, why can’t humans be like wine and cheese!

Clever Rat, clever!

…or you find it’s just you and the people who dress you, feed you, and take you to the bathroom.

Be the person your dog thinks you are.

I was just thinking how my 2 dogs and 2 cats are the best company.

For a real dog a Siberian Husky. Only two places needed then, either home or the nut house. Like Jack Nicholson said in the movie, “You can’t handle the Husky.”

Or your cat

In my case, the Covid shut downs have amplified the effect.

As I age, my fuse, much like my telomeres, keeps getting shorter.

not so bad after all

Death helps you whittle that list down, too. I have lost my whole family and my best friend. At least I still have my wife and cats.

And when I die, the dog gets one last meal…

Rats only have four or five years to live, so Rat’s already entered his golden years.

I lost my first and only best friend to suicide. We were both 17 at the time. I haven’t reached out to make a friend since then. I like folks and folks seem to enjoy my company, but I don’t let anyone get too close. I don’t want to go through that grief where I can help it. Now at 73, I look back and it still bothers me that our yearbook committee put his senior photo on the very last page. Uggg!

I lived with a pit bull for almost 13 years. The first 11 were fine, but his last year was…unforgettable, in all the wrong ways.

I can’t get any better than your last friend being your dog.

Tempus edax rerum.

Golden years is a pretty decent David Bowie song.

We don’t “whittle them down,” they die.

My God, I just got more depressing than Rat.

Labradoodle Days!

The Silver Tabby Years. (In my original attempt to reference a certain large, lovable Cat that is named after the state of Maine, I discovered that a part of its moniker is on GoComics’ banned list. But tabbies are just as preferable over humans.)

My two Circus fleas, Mick and Vick. But that includes the dog they live on. They are musical and love to sing “Home, home on the mange” every night.

This almost true , Rat! Only you have to include kitties

Boston terrier and a Chihuahua.

Or the Flat-Coated Retriever years.

You never hear anyone say Dog in a way that rhymes with Log/Fog/Bog/Nog. I usually hear it pronounced as Dowg or Dawg

Dogs for men,cats for women.And hamsters for rats

And then there was one….

*Cat

The co-pay years … and the rest is not a pretty sight.

just me, myself and I, actually

Lately I’ve found I’m less interested in socializing regularly, and it does make me feel older. Or at least it coincides with feeling that way.

We have had 2 golden retrievers, and they certainly gave us many golden years. In our old age, we have a much smaller shih tzu. Much easier for us to handle.

I’m a cat guy but I get the idea. Our younger cat, whom we got as the successor to the 17 year old who has dementia, is a golden. Well technically she’s a golden ticked British Shorthair.

Dogs.

Beagle days here! I think in equalized ages, she is probably older than I am now.

Rat makes getting older sound unpleasant.

If only! Unfortunately, dogs don’t live long enough (in most cases). I’ll go with aging rather than being whittled down….

Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read. — Groucho Marx

Our current dogs are three dachshunds (one short-hair, two long-hair), a chihuahua mix, and a chiweenie (chihuahua/dachshund mix). I won’t go into our past (passed) dogs.