When do people become too old to share their homes with a new dog? How do middle-aged dogs and older people find each other?
During his annual vet visit in February 2020, Rocky was found to have a heart murmur. Covid locked down our city before we could take him to a doggie cardiologist. That visit never happened because Rocky continued his happy, boisterous life.
Walk ahead to 2025 when Rocky hit his senior years. Since dogs pack a lot into lives of ten to fifteen years, their aging process is more compact. More dramatic. Medication helped with high blood pressure and easing anxiety due to dementia. A chiropractor supported with home exercises and massage kept his rear legs working. Playing smaller versions of fetch accommodated diminished vision. The adaptation grows.
Over years, not months, so will ours. For Rocky we’re able to be solid caregivers. I am not sure that I will be physically capable of supporting another dog through their final years. But how would we walk away from a beloved future family member because we’re all aging?
Cats and some rodent pets are not options because of allergies. We’ve done fish and snails when kids were young. None of them check any boxes of what I value in a companion creature. Spending the rest of our lives without a furry friend is hard to accept. Foster care is kind of like babysitting a neighbor’s child now and then. Can be physically demanding. Entertaining. Heart-warming. Then the baby or child goes home and there’s no one to talk to at midnight when sleep is elusive.
Maybe there are dog-share programs or lease a pet centers with humane housing for dogs in transition.
Maybe the quiet house will grow on us after Rocky’s life is over.
For thirty years, this has been a constant. Snowmelt pooled on the pool cover before spring fully arrived, and the mallards landing there every season, trusting this small temporary pond the way we trusted the house.
It could be startling, sitting quietly on the deck, reading or meditating. Then the silence would break: quacking, the whuff-whuff-whuff of cupped wings slowing descent, ducks materializing out of the sky in a downward swoop. Sharp orange feet skittering across the wet cover — slap, slap, slap, scrrrch. Splashing and rippling. Finally, the settling sounds: little shakes, bills dipping into water, softer quacks, even a low gurgle from the mother duck.
Most often it was a pair, though this year we’ve seen as many as four drakes in the pool with no hens in sight. Lately it’s been just one drake returning, again and again, during the day and evening.
I wonder if he, too, feels the pull of change.
This year, their return feels especially poignant because it is our last spring here. Our house has sold. All the rooms are empty except Crystel’s. Last in, last out, I tease her. She’ll dawdle with the ducks as long as she can until it’s time for both of them to move on.
With the cover peeled back, open for swimming, the ducks still come. Gliding across the open water, bathing, napping, resting. There will be an ending or a moving forward for us. A final day. A final jump in the pool.
Our house has a heartbeat. It is not just wood, walls, windows, and yard. Its heartbeat has been the four of us. Jody and I brought Juan and Crystel here when they were babies. We built a nest. We raised them. They pulled themselves up. Took their first steps. For twenty-four years, this house held us through changes, noise, laughter, growing up, letting go.
The house has been saying goodbye to us, too. The lilacs bloomed their fragrant light purple. The flowering crabapple tree burst open in dark pink blooms. White blossoms on the back apple tree were in full regale during the open house. Peonies bloomed in time, as if giving us one last gift.
Juan and Aryanna
I am writing this under the shade of the apple tree in the backyard. I hear the schoolchildren next door, the birds singing, the quiet drift of clouds overhead. So much is the same, even as everything is changing.
In a few days, we will close the door on making more memories here. But this is not really goodbye. The house will go on. It was alive when we came, and we have been good stewards. We filled it with love, with children, dogs and cats, hamsters, fish, and an indoor playground. Many projects were completed. Many dreams realized.
What I will miss most is not the house, the landscaped yard, or even the pool. I will miss the four people we were here: Jody, Juan, Crystel, and me. We were the pulse. The collective heartbeat.
The house will look different in thirty years. New voices will fill it. A different timbre will shout, “The ducks are back!” But the ducks will keep returning. The lilacs will bloom. The trees will flower. The house will keep beating.
And so will we.
Like the ducks we will shift to the next stage the season asks of us. We will circle back to each other, returning again and again.
