You can't cheat time. No matter the conditioning, and level of muscularity, once you reach a certain age, you gas out much more quickly than in earlier years. This is why I felt he needed to land early with a decisive blow or it was going to be a serious war of attrition.
On the bright side, my dog bit my wife's ear last night and I spent an hour or so trying to get it to stop bleeding from a couple of small lacerations.
(She wouldn't let me remove him from the home...in any capacity I was considering.)
It was probably a combination of things leading up to it, she leaned across him to check his rear to see if he had a "fishy" smell like when his anal glands are full. I wasn't in the room, but she said he growled, and she thought he was playing with her the way he does with me, but I have a feeling she may have leaned and put weight somewhere sensitive, guessing there, and he reacted the second time.
I was in another room and heard the scream and had a giant WTF? moment as I ran for the room. Ears, like scalps, bleed a lot. She had a nice knot on the noggin too.
It could have been real bad...but fortunately they are small cuts that just bled a lot. I'll remove the one bandage I applied to the two cuts on the inside part of the pinna tonight. Doesn't seem like it's weeping this morning. The other cut is behind the ear in the crease...and the bump all the way on the back of the head, but only an abrasion, (no cut), there.
Of all the things I never expected to happen last night, that was the furthest from my mind.