It's been awhile since Malcolm has been on this page, so there he is. My little guy.

Lately I have realized how old he really is. He is very skittish now, because he can't hear and his vision is fading. As soon as he is touched, he flinches and drops almost flat to the ground. He can't hear you coming. I try very hard to give him advance notice if I am going to pet him, by waving my hand in front of him or just waiting until he looks up and sees me there.

He's also scared of shadows. He was in the yard this morning and I walked towards him, and my shadow fell over him, and he hit the deck as if he were thinking, "What the fuck was THAT?!" Then, when he realized it was only me, he reared back and ran towards me like a happy little rabbit.

The thing that is probably the most telling is the fact that he often seems to forget what he is doing or what is going on. Sometimes I can put his food down right in front of him, in the normal place I always put it, and he will not see it or smell it. If I point my finger and make him follow my finger to his bowl, suddenly he will see the food at that point and get all excited, like, "Oh, yeah! That's what I was looking for!" He also does running leaps into the house, but doesn't always judge the distance well and knocks right into the doorstep rather than making it up and through the doorway. It's sad, but kind of funny too, because he always gets right back up and hops up into the house like nothing happened. He also runs into things when he is excited, but never gets hurt... he just seems surprised that there happens to be furniture there. How dare we put a table right where he needs to run?! The nerve of us humans!

BUT...

He's still got it. He still get hyper and runs around and snorts (it sounds like a sneeze, but it's his "I'm happy" sound) and does his freeze-in-place-until-we-charge-at-him and then skitter away frantically with his tail wagging. He's always patrolling the backyard, sniffing everything and basically playing his role in our little pack.

The other day, Indy decided it was time to play with Malcolm. Malcolm does NOT play with other dogs. Not just because it doesn't seem to be in his nature to do that, but because I am over-protective as hell and stop any kind of roughhousing involving Malcolm before it gets to the point where he could be hurt. Anyway, I was sitting here at my computer, and Malcolm was just curled up on the floor across the room, resting. Indy came into the room with his toy in his mouth, his tail wagging furiously. He spotted Malcolm, and dropped his toy in front of Malcolm. When Malcolm didn't do anything, Indy did the play stance in front of him and barked. Malcolm just froze in place and stared Indy down.

Indy got up and sniffed Malcolm all over, and Malcolm did not look happy. He got up and ran into a corner, Indy right behind him. Indy tried to engage him one more time, but all Malcolm did was lift his upper lip and show his teeth a little. There was no growl, and to be honest the face he was making looked so funny it was hard not to laugh at this whole exchange. Indy was loving it, though, and egging him on even more. I could almost hear Indy going, "Come ON, let's play, old man!" and Malcolm replying back, "I don't THINK so, fool."

Finally, after a few more minutes of this, I asked Indy to leave him alone. Which he did. I could tell Malcolm was getting tired and might get cranky if Indy persisted. It was still a fantastic scene, and I was really happy to see that even with his advanced age and lack of strong interaction with the two big dogs, Indy would still very much like to bring Malcolm into the mix. I like that Indy clearly thinks Malcolm could, in fact, manage to play. I know he and Hailie are good to him, leaving him alone and never pushing him too far when they want to sniff and lick him. I just love the little dynamic the three of them having going on. It's really cool to watch.

Now that we are finally moving towards cooler weather, I am going to fix my bike (flat tire) and get riding again. And that will mean, of course, Malcolm is welcome to ride with me again in his basket if he would like to. He used to run around like a wind-up toy when he saw me pulling my bike out of the shed! He loved to go for a ride. I think he likes the wind in his white, thinning hair. Either way, as long as he seems to enjoy it, he is my co-pilot.

I don't care that he is going senile a little bit, that he is blind, deaf, and has almost no teeth left. He's still awesome. I feel really lucky to have that little freakshow guy. I love ya, Malkie. (AKA Mooka, Blue, Peachhead, Mickey-Malcolm, Milky)