On A Personal Note…

Sorry, Sister Dearest. You can’t escape it. As John Glenn said, “There is still no cure for the common birthday.”

Hope yours is a stellar one today!

[Cake from We Take the Cake.]

Gauging Age at the Grocery Store

Last year at my neighborhood Windy City grocer, I was bemoaning the saccharine, easy-listening pop music blaring over the PA system. I loathe the incessant music, news, and commercials broadcast by retailers to enhance my shopping experience. I prefer silence. But just when I thought I couldn’t take it anymore, a familiar voice rang out: David Byrne with the Talking Heads. What?!

When did the Talking Heads cross over to the Easy Listening genre? Probably about the same time I started hearing from AARP. Ouch.

Last week, while hunting and gathering at my local Bluegrass grocery store, another age reminder played over the PA system. This time, the song was familiar, but I couldn’t place the voice. I stopped to listen. Good gracious! It was a cover of a Smiths anthem—some woman blandly substituting for Morrissey. Blech.

Oh, you just wait, you youngsters out there. Wait until that day in your near future when you’re shopping at your local superstore and you start hearing hideous covers of Lady Gaga and Eminem, or maybe the PA system cranks out a favorite from Florence and The Machine. This will be your clarion call to a new age—er, rather, an old one.

Do Your Dog A Favor and Read Merle’s Door

The other day as we were driving to the post office, we noticed a couple of guide dogs on the sidewalk ahead of us. We thought they were guide dogs because of the harnesses they wore, but we were curious about them because they weren’t the typical Shepherd, Lab, or Golden Retriever one sees leading the blind. Even from the back we could tell that one was a Border Collie and the other had an unusual cinnamon-colored coat. When we got closer we could see how wrong we were.

These weren’t guide dogs. They were ANCIENT dogs in harnesses designed for people to assist them in walking. The cinnamon pooch was a Husky who had decided to stop for an indeterminate length of time while he gazed at who knows what. His coat was no longer Husky full; it was short and shot out in different directions. Both dogs were frail and I wondered how long they’d been “walking” and how much farther they had to go.

Memories of our own ancient pooch flooded through my mind—just as they did while I read Merle’s Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog. Anyone who lives with a dog, especially an elderly or sick one, should read this book.

If you just want to enjoy a good story about a pooch, Merle’s Door delivers. Merle is one smart dog—and a tremendous clown (I laughed out loud on numerous occasions). But author Ted Kerasote also provides insights into canine behavior that every dog guardian should know, plus research and history on the subject. The book includes notes on publications cited and an index. Kerasote is wondrously thorough.

Toward the end of the book is an excerpt from veterinarian Bernard S. Hershhorn’s Active Years for Your Aging Dog. It’s a list of criteria dog guardians should consider before choosing to euthanize their companions. First, Hershhorn emphasizes, “Chronological age, in itself, is never one of them!”

Here’s the list (please share it with folks who might need it):
1. Is the condition prolonged, recurring, or getting worse?
2. Is the condition no longer responding to therapy?
3. Is your dog in pain or otherwise physically suffering?
4. Is it no longer possible to alleviate that pain or suffering?
5. If your dog should recover, is he likely to be chronically ill, an invalid, or unable to care for himself as a healthy dog?
6. If your dog recovers, is he likely no longer to be able to enjoy life, or will he have severe personality changes?

If your answer to all six questions is Yes, your dog should be euthanized. If your answers to questions 3 and 4 are No, you might want to let your dog die naturally. But first, you should consider these final questions:
1. Can you provide the necessary care?
2. Will such care so interfere with your own life as to create serious problems with you or your family?
3. Will the cost involved become unbearably expensive?

Sometimes a decision to cut a dog’s life short is based on the guardian’s reaction to the dog’s condition (e.g., unsightly tumors, deformities, etc.). But Hershhorn and, by example, Kerasote help us learn to examine the situation first through a dog’s perspective and needs.

Every dog deserves a peaceful and loving ending.

[Pic from Dogblog.]

Another Christmas Eve, Another Year Older

Yup. Today was my birthday and my mother asked if I felt a year older.

“A YEAR older? I feel TEN years older!” I cried. And right then I knew I had to turn back the clock. I had to have a good day in spite of how I felt.

So I did. I took my husband to Paris for a few hours. Kentucky, that is.

Horses dotted every snow-blanketed hill on the way and stone fences paralleled our route. Not much was open in the small downtown, but it was a pleasure just to stroll the sidewalks.

Tonight, as Christmas Eve becomes Christmas, it’s snowing—apparently only about the 13th white Christmas the area has known since 1872.

Now I feel young again. Feel like I should put some cookies out for St. Nick…

[Art courtesy of the Graphics Fairy.]

For A Favorite Relative Upon Reaching A Milestone Birthday

“In spite of illness, in spite even of the arch-enemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.”
—Edith Wharton, in A Backward Glance: An Autobiography

Sage Advice from an Angel

Well, well, well. My quest to identify people in old family photos had some surprises. No sooner had I pulled out that little angel baby and my nearly blind grandmother (who will be 98, not 97 as I had earlier reported) started laughing.

“There I am!” she said. “What are you doing with that?”

“This is you?”

“Yes, that’s me.”

Then I drew her attention to the wings. “I didn’t know I had wings. Where do you see wings?”

“More to the point,” I said, “what happened to your wings? You don’t have any now.”

More chuckles. My mother claims my imagination got the best of me: Those alleged wings are just a blanket behind the baby.

Maybe so. But isn’t my version full of more possibility?

At one point over the weekend, my grandmother turned to me and warned—just as my elderly landlord used to—“It’s Hell getting old. I don’t recommend it.”

I promised I’d do my best to follow her advice.

Not long after my visit, my grandmother was rushed to a hospital—where she remains today, undergoing a battery of tests. I’m thinking positive thoughts for her.

But I wonder: Is she on her own quest to recover those wings?

[Painting by Abbott Handerson Thayer.]

It’s Déjà Vu All Over Again*

I’m writing this longhand on the edge of “Possum Highway,” on high alert to protect the pooch from the skunks and opossums who frequent this stretch of our yard. It’s nearly 4 am on Easter Sunday, the hour I would have risen as a child to peek out my bedroom door for evidence of the Easter Bunny’s visit. Now, it’s the hour of watching people return from the clubs, listening to hawks search for breakfast, and waiting for a decent time to phone my husband so he can carry our hound up the three flights of stairs to our apartment. Just the start of another typical day at Lull HQ.

Three drops of water glisten on our Japanese snowdrop tree. Gravity pulls them into the squill below, one by one. The hubbub of human activity has ceased and the pooch and I have a rare starlit sky and predawn hush all to ourselves.

The pooch received a death knell this week from our vet. She’ll be 14 next month—the same age my precious first cat was when a vet sounded the death knell for her back in 1998. Kidney failure was the culprit for the feline. She would last a few more months or so with “juicing” (daily injections of subcutaneous fluids), but old age was taking her, claimed the vet.

And then, quite unintentionally, we had a pooch in our pantry (that’s where we kept the Spotted Thing initially until she and the White Thang got accustomed to each other). My first cat and our first dog became pals at first stare.

At the next health exam, the cat surprised the vet with perfect test scores—no signs of kidney disease. And she continued that way until she was a month shy of her 24th birthday, when cancer abruptly took her from us and from her canine best friend. Had I not been hopeful about the feline’s recovery, had I not been willing to spend the effort and money in sustaining her life back when she was 14, we would have missed 10 great years of her companionship.

“Never give out while there is hope; but hope not beyond reason, for that shows more desire than judgment.”
—William Penn

Could the pooch be in the same situation? Could she be nursed through this painful stretch? Yes, I understand the pooch is a much larger creature, which puts her years beyond the cat at this point. I understand the potential dire outcome of her current state of health. But how many pets are too soon given up on, too soon euthanised? And who would deny me hope?

It’s Resurrection Day for those who celebrate it. For me, it’s a renewal of optimism.

* Headline hails from Yogi Berra.