Our dog Buddy is 15 years old.  He was found by the river in a basket full of we assume his sibling puppies, and my husband adopted him long before we married.  The vet thinks Buddy has a lot of wolf in him, and he is very big and hugely furry.  In his youth, Buddy liked to escape once in a while (over a ten foot wall, we never discovered just how he did it) and he would always come back two or three days later, wagging his tail and looking like a kid just home from a carnival.  He was so agreeable and excited that we forgave him the frantic worry and endless searching.  He just wasn't meant to be yarded in.
So when we moved to the mountains, you can imagine how excited Buddy was.  It took many incarnations of fences to keep him in his half-acre fence, and each time he got free by squeezing out the door or digging under the fence he would just run and run.  Thank goodness he always came back again.  Much to our horror, he loved to chase the wild rabbits who bounced around our property.  No matter what he did, and even if he caught a rabbit or ran away, that good-natured tail-wagging would always temper our emotions.  It was impossible to stay upset at Buddy.
As he grew older, he became a sort of uncle to our new healer puppies, and he seemed content to run around the fenced area with them.  Then, a year a go Christmas, we were asked to take in Precious, a Rhodesian Ridgeback who desperately needed a home.  We agreed as long as all the dogs got along, and at first they did.  But one day we came home from work to find Buddy extremely injured, and we realized Precious had attacked him.  We rushed him to the vet, and for three months he went through surgeries and cleanings, and the whole time he must have been suffering horribly.   But through it all, his tail kept wagging, he remained placid and loving, and my heart just broke that we had put him through this trauma so late in his life. The people in the veterinary office always commented on his sweet and loving nature.
Now, Buddy has a bald spot but seems completely recovered.  As a result of all the time we spent together going to the vet and working on his wounds, Buddy now follows me wherever I go.  His joints are bothering him, and the stairs are difficult for him, but if I go up, so does he, and when I stay in one room for a while, he settles in.  Every time I go to the bathroom, he is there outside the door, just waiting.  If I go upstairs with laundry and want to come right down again, I try to explain that he should stay where he is, I'll be right back, but he still follows.
My hope is to give him an easy time in the twilight of his life--we just heard that he is the last to survive of the five siblings found in that basket.  He has had several incidents which we think have been strokes, and as a result is a little mixed up compared to how sharp and alert he was in his prime.  We have separated him from the other dogs for this reason, and try to give him lots of love and attention.  Everyone who knows Buddy recognizes how special he is, and I am thankful that he has been able to live such a long and happy life.