My name is Champagne, but this isn't about me, it is about my dog, Buster aka EmoPup.

My little family is just me and my deteriorating body, my elderly mom and her deteriorating mind, and the dog who helps us and loves us and is the center of my mom's world, and really, mine too.

And now he has deteriorating kidneys.

Buster turned 10 years old a week ago. I had tried to get a party together but my own health issues interfered. We did take him to get some tests done for elderly dogs, and that's when we discovered there's an issue with his kidney function.

We seem to have caught whatever it is early (or at least the kidney symptoms, there are some very scary things that could cause this). We won't know without more diagnostic testing. A lot more.

We have pet insurance, but it is not a great policy and it has a large deductible. We've been super lucky with our EmoPup through most of his life-other than allergies and anxiety, he's been pretty healthy.

I cannot overemphasize how crucial Buster is to my mom's mental health. They spend most of the day side-by-side. He isn't a service dog or an emotional support animal, but he is absolutely her emotional support. She talks to him all day. I talk *as* him often, to cheer her up. Over the years I've developed a distinctive personality that I think does fit him. Silly games like that have been getting us through the isolation of the pandemic, as we both continue to be cautious. When he isn't in the room with her, he's with me while I do chores or work in the garden. She misses him terribly if he is at the vet or getting a bath, and sometimes even if he's just in the other room. I know losing him would send her spiraling into her vascular dementia even faster, and aside from the fact that I want my dog with me as long as possible, I am trying to keep that from happening right now. It will 100% cause her to decompensate to the point of needing to go into care, I just do not doubt it at all.

He loves to feel like he is helping, and if someone is crying he is right there to snuggle them, and I don't just mean me and my mom. One friend once whispered that she felt like no one cared about her, and in a millisecond there was my sweet EmoPup, nudging her nose. The sob turned into a smile and a laugh and a hug for my sweet boy. Mom had some falls last year and there were several times where he stood stock still while she used him to help push herself up a little. And once, I seemed to have had some sort of nervous system overload and could not stop my hands and legs from violently shaking. It went on and on until Buster came in the room and jumped into my lap, pinning me down and allowing my nervous system to do whatever it needed. I stopped shaking immediately.

He doesn't have to do things like that to be special, he just is.

I don't know of anyone who has met him who doesn't love him. He has an underused Facebook page, but everyone who comes in the door is charmed by his gentle and sweet nature, and his gorgeous amber eyes. Over two hundred people petting him and took photos with him when we went to Crater Lake a few years back-I think he thought he was on tour.

I met him when I went to visit my mom ten years ago, a visit that is ongoing. A nephew who could not care for him left him at my mom's house for her to take care of. But he was at that velociraptor stage between puppy and dog, and she couldn't really care for him. She was considering surrendering him to a shelter. It was my then-boyfriend Rob who first started playing with him more, and I joined in. Within days I told her "well he's my dog now we will figure it out." Her dog at the time was 16 and on her way to peace, and my mom didn't want to give her heart another dog. But I had to leave town for a work gig for a few weeks over the summer, and when I came home, they were inseparable. From working in the yard to watching Murder She Wrote in bed, they were two peas in a pod.

If it is possible for a dog to be the heart-dog of more than one person, he is. He helps me in ways that don't even show. He always calms me down, just being near him, and he often cheers me up. He is one of the reasons I am still here on this earth. I have fewer home invasion CPTSD night terrors with him just in the house. I love him so much that I will beg on the internet for help to keep him alive and healthy.

Every night at ten pm he gets a Greenie (well, now a generic one from Costco.) I yell "Tooth Brushy Bone" and he comes running flat out as fast as he can from wherever he is in the house. Or some nights I get busy and look up and he is standing right next to my chair, and when I look at the clock, it'll be like 10:06. Sometimes he starts campaigning for TBB Time, as we call it, around 8:30. Always the optimist. The funniest nights, the ones I wish I could catch on camera, are the nights where he is watching me so intently that if a wiggle a toe he crouches into running position. Waving my arms might make him do a small circle zoomie. Did my finger twitch? He's run several steps and stopped.

I have 800 million stories about him, and I just want to keep him as healthy as possible because I need at least 400 million more.

I've set the GFM amount right now to the cost of the tests and the rest of the deductible, and if we are unlucky and he needs more costly care, I will update it then. Please enjoy the photos and please please if you can give or even just share the link it would mean the world to my little family.