Fountain of Youth in a Vittles Vault

My wild child Dugan will soon be 9 or 10 or 11 years old...the beauty of rescue is never knowing the truth. In as much as I want to avoid the truth...he is getting old. It hits me in sneaky little pangs...I watch him stand up a little slower on cold mornings. His movements more deliberate and sometimes a little limp from his bad shoulder, my heart aches upon the sight of it. I pass him on the living room couch and go about my tasks of the day and pass him again 4 hours later and realize he has not moved in that time. The dog that was literally a twirling dervish when we rescued him, a dog that paced the house and yard non-stop, a dog that would announce to the world a squirrel was three doors down the street. Now he slumbers unstirred by the world around him, uninterested in the movement he once thrived upon. He has earned this rest. But I hate it.
I foolishly challenge this ageing in the only ways I can...I increase his joint supplements, I change his food, I order more blood work and radiographs at the vet. I kid myself that we are taking the shorter walking route because I am tired, not because he is showing signs of having enough for the day.
Dugan in his early years was the dog that defined the term "behaviorally challenged". Our introduction was the day we got him home and found he had scaled the washing machine to reach a shelf with the cat food dish above it. He is the reason we had to install a new pantry door after he learned how to open it himself and one day had a smorgasbord of 17 Power Bars and a bag of wheat flour. For years we prepared dinner with him gated in the laundry room as he had previously learned to silently steal things off the stove as they were cooking. To this day we are quite sure we are the only dog guardians we know who have to leave their crockpot in the garage to cook an all day.(bonus the garage never smelled so good as you arrive home from work) We've considered publishing a coffee table book of his abdominal x-rays to offset the cost of his vet bills for "ingested foreign objects". Lastly his quest to invade the litter box has resulted in several engineering marvels on how to secure the litter box area involving diagrams, wood, metal, children's play tents and carefully arranged bungee cords. Dugan, our wild and mischievous Dugan was the reason we started to get nervous any time the house seems a little "too" quiet.
So now to see him legitimately quiet is well...troubling. He's getting old and as much as I prayed for these days in his wild youth, I now scorn them.
The other afternoon I sat next to him during one of his marathon naps and heard him give a contented sigh as I sat down beside him. I traced the contours of his face with my fingers and found more white than red fur, no matter how many times I tried to find the opposite. His deep amber eyes had that haze of wisdom that older dogs get, his nose a bit dry - the pigment starting to fade. I stroked his coat and my hand found calluses where his skin had toughened with age, he flinched a bit when repositioning his bad shoulder to move closer to me. I put my face in his neck and begged him not to get old and he responded by falling back to sleep in my arms.
I think he may have been listening to me though. Last night I was working in my studio when I heard my husband yelling from downstairs and the familiar cry of "Dugan! No! Bad dog!" I ran downstairs to investigate and my husband reported that he was walking to the powder room and stumbled upon Dugan with his head in the food container having a late night snack. He had knocked a 30 pound Vittles Vault on it's side and then using his Irish Setter skills had unscrewed the vacuum locked lid and helped himself. While my husband uttered some expletives as he got a broom and pan to clean up the sea of kibble on the floor I just stood back and smiled. Perhaps my old boy isn't so ready to retire from mischief just yet...and that is fine by me.