Barbara Dobbins, my friend and frequent contributor to WDJ, once wrote a post for this space that described how her senior Border Collie, Daisy, had earned a “permanent hall pass” for jumping up on the counter to help herself to any food that had been left out. Two years into cancer treatment, Dobbins was happy that Daisy had an appetite! She also described other dogs she knew whose owners had decided to look the other way when the dogs did naughty things.
Otto is definitely showing some signs of aging
At 12 ½ years, my senior dog, Otto, has seemingly decided he should get a pass, too. My husband and I are not sure whether he’s getting a little senile, or simply emboldened by the plethora of as-yet uneducated foster puppies that have been trampling the landscaping and chewing drip-irrigation lines (or, alternatively, whining in a crate), or some combination of these things. Whatever the cause, the fact is that his behavior has begun to deteriorate just a bit.
Don’t get me wrong; he’s still a very, very good dog! But, adolescent misadventures aside, he’s always been near perfect – like the kid who sits in the front row and always – ALWAYS – has his hand up in class. If he hears me telling any other dog to “sit” or “down” or “come here,” he’ll pop up out of a dead sleep and run over to prove that he can perform those behaviors better and faster than the other dog can. So it’s a bit of a shock to have him completely blow me off when I call him after hearing him roar his terrible roar at the FedEx truck that’s passing by our house, and see him go tearing down the fence line, determined to chase the truck to the very edge of our property. How do I know he actually heard me and decided not to leave the chase? Because I could see him look over his shoulder and hesitate just a moment, and then decide, “Oh forget it, she’s too far away.”
Otto’s sudden interest in playing fetch
He’s also apparently decided that enough is enough when it comes to the relentless fetching of our younger dog, Woody – one of those dogs who would likely fetch until his feet turn bloody or until he passes out from heat exhaustion. If Otto is by himself, he will fetch a time or two, and then, chase the ball or other fetch item a third time, but just as he’s about to reach the fetch item, seemingly catch a whiff of some mystery aroma he just HAS to check out! “Excuse me, Mom, I think there was a raccoon on our lawn four nights ago, I should investigate.” In other words, he’s never been all that into fetching. But suddenly, he’s started to get very competitive when Woody is fetching.
He’s not nearly as fast or as coordinated as Woody, but he’s started to insert himself into any session of fetch, trying to beat Woody to any throw where that seems likely – which, because Woody never watches the ball, but just takes off running in the most likely direction, and Otto actually visually tracks the ball, Otto can get to more of the throws than he ought to be able to at his age. He also will try to intercept Woody on his way back to me with the ball and forcibly take the ball from him! Thank goodness, even though Woody is 4 ½ years old, he is still very submissive in the face of Otto’s “attacks.” He doesn’t quite give in, but he has not yet once tried to retaliate, either; he either tries to outmaneuver the older dog, or will stop and hunker down in a submissive pose, holding the ball tightly in his mouth and squinting his eyes tightly shut as Otto bites his face, trying to get the ball. “Sorry, man, I just can’t let go!”
Does Otto actually want to play fetch himself? Is he jealous of the attention that Woody gets for fetching? It seems that he just wants the ball; if he gets it, he just leaves with it! “Ha! That stupid game is over!” he seems to say. And, yes, I’ve tried having two balls on site when we are playing, so if Otto steals one, Woody and I can play on . . . Otto will drop whichever one we let him have and come in pursuit of the “active” ball in the game, so lately I’ve been putting him in the house when Woody needs a good, long session to work off some energy. I don’t want him to get hurt trying to overdo the fetching heroics!
It’s just weird, because he used to just watch Woody fetching like, “Yuck! What an idiot!” And now he’s like, “I have to STOP this!”
Other changes in Otto’s behavior
Also new: For most of his life, even if he didn’t want to do something, like, suffer through a bath in the yard with a hose, he would come when I called him. Slowly, sadly, but he would come (and he would get thanked, rewarded, and fussed over). Now, if he sees a hose and thinks a bath might be in the works, he just leaves, even if I’m calling him. “Nope! Just… nope!” He thinks – actually, he knows – I’m just not going to make him suffer through a hose bath anymore if he doesn’t want one.
But the biggest surprise came a few days ago, when my husband left his dinner unattended on the coffee table for a minute, and Otto just started helping himself to the food. WHAT?! He’s NEVER been a counter-surfer or helped himself to food like that before, which made both my husband and I wonder if this is a bit of dementia creeping in. He actually looked a bit surprised when both my husband and I, shocked at the same time, yelled “Hey!” I told my husband, we have to treat him more like a puppy again; we can’t take it for granted anymore that he knows all the house rules and will follow them. While I’m happy to issue him that “permanent hall pass,” and will likely just go ahead and let him have the rest of any burrito he manages to steal from now on, part of me is a little sad at these age-related behavior changes. Dogs just don’t live long enough! We’ll cherish all the time we have together, a little more now.
#OldDogPrivilege 😉
Definitely can relate to this! We (my husband and I) have a 13 yr old (just turned 13 on Sept 13th) Jack Russell named Mylie. I’ve had her since just before she turned 5 and for being a breed that is known to be “crazy” (high energy, etc.), She has always been the best girl!
Along with her black “mask” turning nearly white, I’ve definitely seen some changes in her behaviors over the years. We’ve definitely made adjustments in expectations for her with some of the behaviors because overall, she is still a very good girl and in the grand scheme of things, these little “missteps” are not that big of a deal. Her quality of life matters much more to us than perfection…and I just couldn’t bear the thought of endlessly correcting her, who would be looking confuaed the whole time, until she got something like sitting before being fed and waiting for the “go ahead” command (our 2 yr old pug/jack Russell mix still has to do this, however, and he does, even if she doesn’t) or always sitting when requested (usually when her brother is sitting for a treat and I don’t want to give to him and not her—so she gets one whether she feels like sitting this time or not, because she has earned every treat regardless!).
Some other things we have seen change are how she “doddles” when it’s potty time, often staring off into nothing for (what seems like) several minutes…or the way she has trained us to cater to her in various ways at mealtime (like feeding her off the floor or out of my hand instead of out of her bowl, or like last week, when she decided that she wanted to eat out of her bowl while standing in her little “brother’s” crate 🤷). She also gets goofy spurts of energy, which are funny to watch/hear and she will wrestle around with our 2 yr old to her heart’s delight (which was part of the reason we opted to get a puppy after we lost my husband’s 11 yr old pug/jack mix to CHF 3 yrs ago-she was lonely and we knew that a young dog would help keep her young, which I wholeheartedly believe it has!).
Sometimes (not often) she will have an accident in the house, but we don’t scold her, we just clean it up and move on. Truthfully, I feel that my husband and I are to blame for any of her accidents, because we may not catch her “signs” (we bell trained our young one for this reason) and she cannot hold it very long once she gets that “potty prance” going. We have just adapted to being more mindful of her cues and also ensuring that she go outside to potty with our other pup before bed, even if she “doesn’t feel like it” (she really doesn’t want to move from her cozy spot on the couch sometimes), and even if they were just out about an hour earlier. Sometimes she won’t go on this potty trip, but we’ve done everything we can at that point.
My husband thinks she is going deaf (I challenge that every time she starts barking at something that I barely heard…I think she has “selective hearing” 😂) and blind (she has the start of cataracts but as soon as we noticed them, we got her on a quality supplement that had fantastic reviews and anecdotal evidence of great results, and while it didn’t get rid of the cloudiness that was there, there had been zero progression of this getting worse and our vet did not seem to be concerned with her vision in any way-he tells us all the time that she is doing great and to “keep up the good work,” commenting that he wished he saw more dogs her age in her shape).
If only we could selfishly keep them here with us forever. ♥️
My dog isn’t nearly as old as the other dogs and some would still consider her a puppy but to me she has grown up so much especially in the past year. She is a German Shepard mix with Labrador. We got her when she was 3 months old and when she was very tiny. Now she is is up to my waist but when she jumps she is almost as tall as me. She has been growing so much. At the beginning she was very playful and still is but the difference is now she likes to cuddle and whenever she wants she just come up to me and wedges herself under my arm. She is the cutest dog.
In regard to euthanizing a pet because their owner has died—please don’t. There are many seniors out there who adopt older dogs from shelters and can give them as good a home as they had with you. A shelter home for awhile obviously isn’t as good as a real home, but it’s not bad. There are shelter workers and volunteers who love these dogs and give them attention and affection until they are adopted.
Excellent point, Sue! I volunteer at my local shelter and have been a part of many senior dog adoptions. There are quite a few people who have hearts for seniors, including seniors with disabilities. Our shelter, and many others, have a permanent foster program that allows senior dogs to live out their remaining time in a home environment while the shelter retains all medical responsibilities. We volunteers definitely love up on the frosted-faced doggos in the shelter all the time. Seniors still have an abundance of love to give. They should all be given the opportunity to live out their lives with a loving family.