Tag: Benson

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A Dapper Dude

We went to a local brewery this weekend, where they had a “Dogoween” costume party / contest. We took Benson and he wore his finest threads.

…he may have only placed 15th out of 16 dogs, but he will always be first place in our hearts.

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Dealing with the inevitable mortality of our furry friends

A few years ago, I made the “mistake” of reading The Art of Racing in the Rain. Before that point, I lived my life in blissful ignorance that our dog would die someday. (To be fair, that’s not entirely true — years ago, I posted a tribute to our old family dog, Axl.)

For the last decade or so, I’ve been randomly posting about The Best Dog in the Universe: Benson. (Every dog is The Best Dog in the Universe, but especially Benson.) We’re fast approaching our 11th anniversary of adopting him. He’ll be 12 in March.

These days, he’s looking pretty grey in the snout, but he still exudes puppy energy in the mornings. When the whole family wakes up, he gives us (VERY LOUD) good morning barks. He prances around the house. His tail sticks straight up and excitedly wags back and forth. And he looooooooves our girls. And they love him. Honestly, it’s one of the best ways to start the day.

A few days ago, I was loading him into the car and noticed that he could no longer fit between the car seats as he makes his way in the back. That’s strange. Couple that with some weird eating habits and I figured it was high time to pay the vet a visit.

Oh, boy.

What started as a simple visit quickly turned into a horror show. The vet was concerned about a potential tumor or some sort of heart disease that was causing fluid build up in his abdomen. She gave me a referral to an emergency pet center where they could do a more thorough examination and any necessary procedures.

I take the old boy down there and it is just not good news.

Ultimately, he has congestive heart failure. It’s caused by a tumor growing around his heart (which is nearly as big as the heart itself). They also did a procedure to “drain” him — removing 5 liters of fluid from his body.

The prognosis isn’t… great. They gave me some meds, specifically Lasix, to help make him feel better (and potentially prevent fluid buildup again — we won’t know if it works for another few weeks).

Loading him back into the car was significantly easier — he was much lighter. No joke — he was 20 pounds lighter (confirmed on a scale after we got home)!

Anyway, he’s back home now. After a few days of resting, he’s back to his happy self. Some replies to a post of mine of Threads mentioned that their dogs lived an additional 2 to 3 years, but with Benson’s tumor, we realize we’re on borrowed time with this dude and it just breaks me.

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Fun with GPT-3

Earlier this evening, I was playing around with OpenAI’s GPT-3 language model for generating “human-like text.”

I gave it the following prompt:

Write a plot about a movie that involves rogue unicorns who want to
conquer Earth and the planet’s only hope is an Australian Cattle dog named Benson who sleeps a lot.

The response?

The unicorns, led by their king, Uni, have been planning their conquest of Earth for years. They have been observing the humans and have concluded that they are weak and vulnerable. The unicorns have developed a powerful magic that will allow them to take over the planet.

Benson, an Australian Cattle dog, is the only one who can stop them. Benson is a lazy dog who loves to sleep. He is content to spend his days lounging around and eating food. However, when the unicorns begin their attack, Benson is the only one who can stop them. He rallies the other dogs and leads them in a fight against the unicorns.

The unicorns are powerful, but they are no match for Benson and the other dogs. Benson is able to defeat Uni and the other unicorns, and the Earth is saved.

Summer blockbuster coming soon to a theater near you!