Suddenly, My Dog is Old

Over the weekend, I played fetch with my dog, Rory. It was a longer, more rambunctious game than we have played in a while and it was hard to miss how often Rory lost track of where the ball went, her vision clouded by cataracts. Or that, even as she kept nudging the ball toward me, smiling and panting while she waited for me to roll it across the room, her legs started to look more slack. When we were done, I gave her an evening dose of the pain medicine that I usually reserve for the mornings.

Rory came into my life as a puppy. I was midway through my Master’s degree and I felt like I needed someone else around as I spent long days alone in my apartment studying. The shift from my community in college to a more solitary life in grad school had been harder than I anticipated. I had never had a dog and I desperately wanted one.

I found a hound mix at the local animal shelter. I still remember her picture and her name, Polly. Then, before I went to meet Polly, there was some conflict in my family that I’m just going to gloss over today. To fix things, my dad got me a puppy. I named her Rory. It was 2010, a simpler time before everyone decided that Rory Gilmore was terrible.

From the start, Rory was more difficult than getting a dog from the shelter would have been. I had to pay for all her vaccines and put down a double pet deposit because I accidentally broke my apartment’s pet policy by bringing home a puppy younger than six months old. Rory got several UTIs, which made her hard to train, and caused more vet bills. My vet had trained in the UK and said that dogs over there are allowed to go through their first heat sometimes so the hormones help their development. We took that route with Rory (Don’t tell my old landlord!) and now she has an amazing bladder. Then there were the vet bills from having her spayed. And the bills when someone fed her bacon and she got so sick, puking and pooping on me simultaneously on the long drive between my parents’ house and my apartment, that the vet decided we should do an ultrasound to make sure she hadn’t eaten one of my little sister’s Polly Pockets or something. With all the vet bills, that $100 adoption fee for Polly the Hound seemed like an amazing deal.

But Rory was the dog I needed, my little canine soulmate—grumpy about noise and introverted—and she has been my near-constant companion for almost 14 years. She was my buddy through grad school and, with reservations, through the early years of Julio and my marriage. She was a comfort through burnout, miscarriage, autoimmune issues, and losing my dad. She guarded us when we brought our daughter home from the hospital. She hung out with us as we worked from home, and eventually got used to alpacas. And, suddenly, she’s old.

Jessica Branstetter Photo

Rory graduated from puppy and intermediate obedience classes. She has climbed 14ers 23 times (15 unique summits). She has pooped on the Grand Canyon. She has traveled Route 66, gone to the beach (which she hated), and lived in four states. She flies like a seasoned traveler. She patrols our big backyard methodically, but is so gentle that we let her wander freely among the chickens. Once, she ran a 5K race with me.

But in 2020, she refused to go on walks and started to grow little tumors. So far, they are benign, but a couple have sprouted in places where they bother her, like her paw or her ear, and we have had them removed. In 2022, when we had a tumor removed from her paw, the vet gave her some Rimadyl (essentially doggie-safe ibuprofen or aspirin) for the pain and it made such a difference in Rory’s energy and temperament that we realized her arthritis bothered her more than just on walks. The vet instructed me to make sure she wasn’t jumping off the furniture until her stitches healed and I thought, “Sure, no problem, Doc.” Then, hours later, watched Rory leap off the sofa like she was a puppy again. We have kept her on a daily dose of Rimadyl since, in addition to the glucosamine she had taken for her joints for years. Recently, we added a pumpkin supplement for her digestion. She loves it.

Four years later, her face is much grayer. It makes me tear up a little looking at the difference between pictures of her when she was young and the collage at the top. As her cataracts really started to develop in the last year, she began to look elderly. Her limbs seem looser. Her snoring is louder. Sometimes she wipes out coming up the deck steps. In the last six months, it feels like she is underfoot constantly. We think the volume has been turned down on her senses just enough that she doesn’t realize we’re coming until we are right on top of her.

But her energy is good. Even though she has mellowed, she still takes part eagerly in family life. Coming to dinner. Listening to bedtime stories. Always excited when we get down on the floor to play.

Rory turns 14 on Saturday. When she was a puppy, I bought The Dog Owner’s Manual, a little book about caring for dogs in the voice of a user’s manual for a tech device. In the book, there’s a chart that shows how old dogs are in dog years, adjusting for the different rates at which small/medium, large, and extra-large dogs age. 14 is as high as the chart goes: 84 for small dogs, 96 for large dogs, and 108 for extra-large dogs. According to the book, every additional year is like 5 for a small dog, but after 14, the chart ends.

I think Rory will be with us for a few more years (touches wood), but it is hard not to notice that she is old and the signs of her aging are getting clearer. And it’s bittersweet, because she’s such a good girl, living her golden years with gusto, and it is hard to imagine that someday she will be gone. Until then, we’ll keep loving her, playing fetch, and watching her nap while the chickens and rabbits wander around her, knowing that she is the gentlest and laziest of beasts.