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.
After a lifetime of owning pets, it is hard to imagine a home without a furry companion. Wren, like Rocky, is a senior (like us) and we’ve made accommodations for her aging body, just like our own. When her time comes, I doubt we will get another dog. 😦 Fortunately, cat allergies aren’t a problem, so there may always be a cat.
If we find we miss having a dog, we may adopt a senior, smaller dog. There are many programs that match seniors with senior pets. https://pethelpers.org/seniors-for-seniors/
I recently bought an electric vehicle, which we’ll use as our around town car. After much research, we settled on a Hyundai Ioniq 5 because it’s highly rated and has AWD. Owning an EV launched me into a whole new mode of transport. Not exactly a jet pack, but definitely a different way of thinking about getting around.
Some mind shift was inevitable. My RAV4 was 15 years old. Any modern car would have been a shock to my system. But it was time for some upgrades. To use the phone handsfree, I relied on an aftermarket media center we’d installed. Sometimes the tiny microphone and speakers worked. Often the system hissed during calls and wasn’t worth the trouble. I didn’t have a backup camera. In parking lots, I’d learned to swivel my head like a horror movie villain to spot any oblivious people walking behind my car.
The Ioniq 5 is a beauty! Gray green with light gray interior. Sleek and modern looking. It has good pickup and handles well. It also has a million systems and functions I’m only beginning to understand.
Fob + push button start. Keys were easy to remember. They were integral to unlocking and starting the RAV, but now there’s no reason for the fob to leave my purse. After decades of obsessively managing keys, this is a disconnect—one of many.
My phone can open the car. Until my husband (thank goodness I’m married to a very patient tech genius!) reconfigured it, the car unlocked whenever I walked by with my phone in my pocket. That’s OK in my garage. Not OK in parking lots. Eventually it would lock up again, but the uncertainty made me uneasy. Now I touch a magic spot on the door handle to lock and unlock the car.
My car knows me (and likes me, I’m sure). When I open the door, it adjusts the seat and mirrors to my exact preferences. It greets me when my phone syncs. Nice, but a bit of overkill. My RAV never spoke to me (it was more of a humble workhorse), and adjusting the seat wasn’t an issue since no one else drove it.
Finding good driving tunes can be a lot. Now I have AM/FM plus Apple Tunes and Sirius. And way too many ways to change from an annoying song to something better. Toggle controls on the steering wheel up and down. Or press Star for Favorites. Or slide through 3-4 screens on the electronic control panel and push buttons. Whoa! Maybe I’d better pull over to do that. Thanks to the Tech Genius, I now can get from the local NPR station to Bluesville on Sirius and back. One day I may even figure out how to play a podcast. What I don’t hear is road noise. Only the EV hum.
There are endless ways to fuss with the temperature. The car is engineered so my comfort and the front seat passenger’s are paramount. Each of us can specify our preferences. Probably there are ways to enhance backseat passengers’ comfort (one day I’ll figure that out).
I can choose AC, fan/no fan, or I could even open the windows. The car also has air-cooled seats. (Wh a a a t?? Crazy, but good.) If I mindlessly set my temp at 71, the car will do everything in its power to keep it there including turning on AC without asking. If I turn off the AC, the fan will come on full blast in attempt to maintain 71 degrees. Wait, I didn’t mean it! 73 degrees with the window open a little is fine.
Let’s not overlook the obvious—battery instead of gas tank. In the olden days, when the RAV was down to a quarter tank, I refilled. I got approximately 22 mpg, and a tank lasted about two weeks, since I just drove around town. Fill-ups ranged from $36 to $48.
When I get in, the battery may be at 80%. Or 61%. The question remains: how much battery do I need for my ordinary trips? I. Do. Not. Want. To. Run. Out. That’s not likely since I’m only putting on 70 – 90 miles per week and the car has a range of 280 miles.
How often to recharge is a different learning curve. Before we had a high-speed plugin installed, we charged the slow way, which added about 10% to the battery overnight. I didn’t let the battery get too far down.
Now the high-speed system adds 25% in about 1-1.5 hours and costs $1.06 or $5.25 to charge the battery from 20% to 80% (car batteries last longer if they’re not charged to 100%). Hmmm. $5.25 for electricity every two weeks vs. an average of $42 for a tank of gas. Even I can do that math, and I love reducing the role of fossil fuels in my life.
No more oil changes. It took a minute to register maintenance will be very different. No engine, so no lube and oil. No exhaust, so no muffler system. Now maintenance is the mothership computer talking to my computer on wheels. I’ll still need tire rotations and a filter or two. (Wait, how will I get my car washed if I never go to the gas station?)
Although the technology surprises and baffles me sometimes, eventually I’ll master the major systems. I’m brave. I’m fierce. I’m doing this . . . with help from the Tech Genius. Most days I really enjoy this brave new world of transport.
On the day of our sale, when the buyer signed and I knew—really knew—that our home was sold, I felt the pressure of years gathering in my chest. Tears burst out.
I was standing in the kitchen of our RV when the weight of it hit me.
I was not four years old, or eight, or ten, or a teenager. My twenties were behind me.
My survival had become a life. A home. A marriage. Children raised in safety. Love sustained over decades.
How did this girl who came from dirt, chaos, filth, take care of a home for thirty years?
How did this girl, who knew nothing about how to keep a relationship together, stay married for twenty-eight years?
How did this girl, who was so abused, not abuse her children? Not allow them to be abused? Not raise a hand to them?
How did this girl, who was not raised by love, raise with love?
How did this girl insist that her children learn how to protect themselves? That they had a duty to protect themselves?
How did this girl, whose body belonged to everyone else, keep her soul her own?
She lived through their abuse, their dislike, their disdain, their ridicule, their name-calling. She lived through it.
Slowly, steadily, methodically, she took the next step. And then another.
She built a life the same way she healed—one small choice at a time.
Her saving grace was realizing she could finally say:
No more.
I don’t need you.
I don’t need to mother you.
I don’t need to be your keeper.
I don’t need to be needed by you.
I am enough by myself.
And then she began to see possibility. To see life.
Jody.
A relationship that mattered. One worth fighting for.
She learned to communicate. To apologize. To stay when staying was hard. To work things out.
Her healing continued because that responsibility belonged to her. No more giving up her thoughts. No more giving up her right to decide what was right for her.
She would decide.
She would become her own best friend. Her own witness. She would build a relationship with her spirit, with her soul.
Thirty years later, standing between what was and what will be, she understands something fully:
They did not get to decide who she would become.
She did.
The little girl who survived became the woman who lived.
On the day of our sale, when the buyer signed and I knew—really knew—that our home was sold, I felt the pressure of years gathering in my chest. Tears burst out. I was standing in the kitchen of our RV when the weight of it hit me. I was not four years old, or eight,…
One response to “Dogs and Aging Families”
After a lifetime of owning pets, it is hard to imagine a home without a furry companion. Wren, like Rocky, is a senior (like us) and we’ve made accommodations for her aging body, just like our own. When her time comes, I doubt we will get another dog. 😦 Fortunately, cat allergies aren’t a problem, so there may always be a cat.
If we find we miss having a dog, we may adopt a senior, smaller dog. There are many programs that match seniors with senior pets. https://pethelpers.org/seniors-for-seniors/