You've all seen pictures of my canine leading man, Mr Moose. He's a handsome man - aristocratic, noble, he's even graying beautifully. When viewed from the top, he's still absolutely gorgeous - sort of like Burt Reynolds or Sean Connery. He has the classic dachshund profile, beautiful red fur with a subtle black racing stripe down the back, he has just a bit of a nipped in waist - perfect. But then... like any leading man, the toupee slips.
I mean, Moose has always had issues with his underview - for one thing, there's the overbite issue. I'm not talking a cute little overbite. I'm talking you can see his teeth when his mouth is closed. That's the reason why even though he's the scion of Peter the Great and Lady Zelda the Third (champions, both), he was a rescue dog, rather than a show dog - and as we've always told him, rescue dogs are so much better than show dogs. (What the heck - he believes us.) But now that he's getting older (he's 11 - 12 in November), when he flops over for his mandatory belly rubs, the truth comes out.
There's scars from the racoon attacks of 2006 - or as he puts it, the time he beat back the invading hordes. There's little fatty lumps of unknown origin. There's liver spots (because every old man needs liver spots.) There's bare spots where the fur never did come in just right. And then there's the zipper from the disc surgery - although to his doctor's credit, that is almost invisible unless you look for it.
Nevertheless... he's still gorgeous. And no matter how liver spotted he gets, he's always going to be my little boy.
