For the re-awakening of my blog after a long siesta, I've chosen to pull a story from my third published collection, "The Battle Cry of the Siamese Kitten" (ECW Press 2022). I chose this one specifically because it features Orbit, our Shetland sheepdog who suddenly passed away at the end of last year. I'm trying to find ways to honour his memory and mark his impact on my life. Since I'm a writer, what better way than to write about him.
Old Dog Lessons
The title is
misleading. The dog giving the lessons, Orbit, is not “old”. Naturally, he is
showing some signs of aging, but that is of course a constant process, right
from birth. We all only stop aging when we die. As I write this, he is eight
and a half years old - “middle-aged”, let’s say. I won’t think of him as old
until he’s in the double digits, which is only a year and a half away. But
let’s not dwell on that. For now, he’s still middle-aged, but “Middle Aged Dog
Lessons” doesn’t have the same ring.
As an aside, this is a good time to
address a top ten question asked of vets: “How old is my dog in people years?”
There used to be an easy way to answer this, but unfortunately it was wrong. We
used to simply multiply by seven, and presto, there was your answer. A
ten-year-old dog was 70, which sort of almost maybe made sense back when most
dogs were lucky to see their teens. But that rare 20-year-old Chihuahua was
140! Amazing. Even more amazing was the routine fact of puppies going into the
equivalent of puberty at 6 months of age, or 3 and a half human years! Imagine
your toddler’s voice cracking and a wispy moustache appearing on his upper lip.
Or needing a training bra and feminine hygiene products. But we cheerfully
ignored these quirks of the “seven times” math for decades. Now we know better.
Now we do something much more complicated. Are you ready? Here’s the formula:
At 1 a dog is 15 in human years.
At 2 a dog is 24 in human years.
After that, add 5 human years for
every dog year for most dogs, but add 4 for very small dogs, and 6 for giant breeds.
Got it?
(Incidentally, if you’re doing the
cat age math, the formula is the same, with cats equating to small dogs.)
So, by this formula,
eight-and-a-half-year-old Orbit is 24 + ((8.5 – 2) x 5) = 56.5. That
20-year-old Chihuahua is now 24 + ((20 - 2) x 4) = 96. And sadly, a 12-year-old
Newfoundlander is already 24 + ((12 – 2) x 6) = 84. By the way, I hope all those
nesting brackets haven’t given any of you math anxiety flashbacks. If you
prefer, the charts are easy to find on the internet.
But Orbit is, like I said, middle
aged. In fact, at 56.5, he’s only a year older than I am right now. He passed
me late last fall sometime.
Consider the
foregoing a bonus story. It was not what I intended to write about. I intended
to write about what Orbit is teaching me as he ages.
I’m not a nickname kind of guy. A
small number of people - none of them family or close friends - call me “Phil”,
but that’s a contraction, not a nickname. One classmate back in veterinary
school tried “Flip” on for size, but that didn’t stick. However, when I worked for
Dr. Bruce Murphy over several summers while in university, he started calling
me “Flying Phil” and that became widespread among the graduate students in his
endocrinology lab.
Bruce had noticed a fundamental
truth about me. I am quick. I walk quickly, I talk quickly, and I eat quickly.
I consciously try to slow the latter two down because I know that they are not
good things. The walking quickly is mostly positive, unless I’m walking with my
family and annoying them by constantly surging ahead, but the talking and
eating are problems. Yet, despite knowing this, and despite decades now of
trying to slow down, my default is still to be quick. I’ve made my peace with
who I am, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to keep trying.
Orbit is helping now. He’s still an
energetic dog and can easily keep pace with me, when he wants to, but since
becoming middle-aged, increasingly he doesn’t want to. When I say, “Do you want
to go for a walk Orbit?”, he hears, “Do you want to go for a sniff Orbit?” In
common with most dogs, he’s always been an enthusiastic sniffer, but in the
last couple years this has apparently turned into his life’s primary mission. Whereas
a simple tug on the leash used to be enough to stop him from sniffing and get
him walking again, now I have to yank hard, and drag him. Literally. He puts on
the brakes by bracing his legs and leaning away from me, and he adopts what I
can only describe as a stubborn facial expression. As I haul, the collar rides
up against the back of his head, pushing the fur forward, and he locks his legs
in position. I’m bigger and stronger, so I win, but at a cost. Orbit is
disgruntled. People stare. I feel judged. I want Orbit to enjoy his sniffing,
but, damn it, even more so, I just want to go!
Then slowly I started giving in more
frequently, and this became a feedback loop because he saw this as an opening.
So, he tried stopping even more, and I gave in even more, to the point that
some of our walks now consist mostly of meandering and sniffing. None of this
high velocity arrow-straight ambulation. For a smell connoisseur, it must be
like powerwalking through the Louvre. Sure, you’re getting exercise, but you’re
missing all the best stuff! When I have a busy day, this is as painful as
getting in the slowest check-out line at the grocery store. Mindfulness gurus
will tell you to actively seek these situations out. It’s easy to be mindful at
the beach or during an interesting movie, but for true practice, pick something
that would normally frustrate you and make you impatient. So they say. Orbit turns
out to be a mindfulness master. Most animals are. I am trying to learn from
him. While he slows down to smell the pee, I’m trying to slow down and smell
the roses (mostly metaphorical, especially during the winter). As an aside, I
originally planned to title this story, “Slow Down and Smell the Pee”, but I
didn’t want people to skip it.
Now, when I want to walk quickly
with Orbit, because I still prefer that and because he still can keep up, I
pick routes that take us across as many open fields as possible. He still finds
the occasional apparently well perfumed blade of grass that requires deep
sniffing, but otherwise we’re able to go straight and fast and far, neither of
us old in any way.
