Heavy Petting

My wife and I like animals.  Over the years we have had lots of pets.  When we moved to Texas, it seems like a lifetime ago, we did it in a van filled with us, our kids, a dog named Woodstock, a parakeet named Pickles, two anonymous gerbils and a slew of houseplants.  We looked like a cross between Noah's ark and the Partridge Family.  Although we've had a cat, a lizard, fish and other animals,  we're mostly dog people and, since we consider them to be social animals, our dogs lived in the house with us.  For thirty years there was never a time when there wasn't at least one pooch in the house and sometimes there were as many as three.  I'm clumsy and don't like having an animal running around the floor that is so small that I might hurt it if I stepped on it, so most of our dogs have been around 80 – 100 pounds.  They've also mostly been labs, which means that they were really active and therefore big eaters.

About five years ago were down to one dog, Buck, a lab that was about eight years old.  He contracted the canine form of AIDs and passed away on July 3, 2006.  We were terribly sad because we both loved that dog.  Buck faded for nearly a month before he went, though, and he was in such misery that we should have had him put down.  We didn't do that because we couldn't stand to let him go at such a young age and we kept hoping that he would come around.  So it was really a blessing when his suffering ended.  Also, even though labs are hunting dogs, Buck was deathly afraid of the fireworks that  usually shatter the air around here on July 4th.  So at least he didn't have to go through that another time before he died.

After Buck was gone the house felt empty.  He was always underfoot, of course, because that's part of the family dog's job.  We never sat on furniture with our feet on the floor because we had this big, warm, furry footstool cozied up to the couch.  Whenever we came home from running an errand we were greeted with boundless joy and enthusiasm and the hope that there might be some goodies wrapped up in a napkin.  Buck didn't beg, though.  When we ate supper he lay on the floor quietly waiting until we were finished in hopes of getting some tasty leftovers and he was rarely disappointed.  We never worried about a break-in in the middle of the night because Buck slept on the floor near our bed and his sharp ears would pick up the sounds of someone outside long before ours could.

It felt so strange to us to no longer share our house with a dog.  So after grieving for a few weeks my wife and I started mulling over the question of whether or not to get another one.  We briefly flirted with the idea of a cat but both of us decided that we didn't like the fact that, unlike dogs, cats usually get up on furniture and counters.   No, a cat was definitely not in our future.  If we got another pet it would have to be a dog.  We debated about whether to get a small dog like some kind of terrier or miniature schnauzer or something, but we were so used to larger dogs that we gave up on that idea.  We quickly realized that what we really like are labrador retrievers so it would have to be a lab or nothing.

We already knew all of the positives about owning a lab.  We had never really listed the negatives, but some of them were pretty obvious to us.  For one thing, labs are extremely active dogs that need a lot of interaction and exercise.  They have lots of enthusiasm and play rough.  That wasn't a problem when we were younger.  In fact we liked roughhousing with the dogs way back when, but we are not really up to that now.  So we thought that it would not be a good idea to get a lab puppy because we just couldn't give it the attention it deserved and that wouldn't be fair to the dog.  An older rescue lab seemed like a more viable option.  Whether we got a puppy or a rescue lab, though, we knew we were talking about some significant expense.  I had calculated at one time that we spent between $1000 and $1200 per year on each dog that lived with us.  That included food, medicine and vet bills but not extra toys and goodies that we might buy for them.  Nor did it include kennel fees for those times when we took extended trips.  Another downside, and the one that finally made us decide not to get another dog, is that an inside dog can reasonably be expected to hold its bodily functions in for a relatively short time.  That makes it more or less impossible to take really long day trips or to turn a day trip into an overnighter.  We have found that we like the spontaneity that living without pets supplies.  So in the end we decided to live petless from here on out.

This is a question that a lot of retirees have to face.  It is comforting to have the companionship of a pet, especially a cat or a dog, as one gets older.  This is especially true for those whose spouses have passed away.  I can't quote any sources but I'm fairly confident that someone-or-other has pretty much proven that people who have someone or something to care for live longer than those who don't.  So, from that perspective at least, having a pet to share life with is a good thing.  There are those downsides though.  No matter what kind of pet you have, you will have to spend money from your fixed income to feed your pet and to maintain its health.  In addition, many dogs in particular are high energy animals that require a lot of exercise and probably a lot of interaction and toys to keep them from getting bored.  That can be hard to provide as you age.  If you have a big dog the problem gets worse as the dog ages.  It is pretty easy to lift a twenty pound terrier into a car for a trip to the vet, but it is a different story if you are dealing with a 100-pound lab with bad hips.  Then, of course, there is that time in the pet's life when it has aged to the point where it is in pain and discomfort much of the time.  Eventually most pet owners are going to have to make the choice to put the dog out of its misery and I can speak from personal experience when I say that that is a really difficult thing to do.

So I guess the bottom line here is that, if you are a person who is aging and who shares his life with pets, you might want to think about the pros and cons of owning them before replacing a pet that has recently passed away.  Big dogs live around 12 - 15 years and small dogs and cats and live to around twenty pretty easily.  So if you're in your sixties or seventies and thinking about getting a new pet, please make sure that you can handle the downside for the life of the pet or at least make some arrangements for some else to do that for you if you should suddenly be incapacitated and can't take care of it.