Riding the seasons of life with our dogs.

If you’ve had dogs for any amount of time in your life, you know that there are waves of effort and obligation. Some of us get lucky and are able to bring dogs into our lives when they are just puppies and we are enthusiastic about their potential and absolutely smitten with just how small and adorable they are. Many trainers, myself included, refer to this as the honeymoon phase. You are happy to get up in the middle of the night to work on potty training and you are rewarded with a puppy that sleeps most of the day. This is a sacred time and one that I have been very fortunate to have with both my current dogs. This is a phase with dogs that I have focused heavily on in my career. The power of shaping a dog and giving them a safe and secure place to learn and grow is truly a gift. Not to mention how fun it is to see them grow up!

Then there are adolescents, which is my least favorite age range in dogs. Not because I don’t like teenage dogs, in fact they are some of my favorites to work with. This is my least favorite age range in dogs because it is the one that requires the most effort and attention. This is also the phase where if you drop the ball, you will likely pay for it for years to come. I recently chatted with a colleague for an episode of my podcast where we dive deep into training the teenage dog. It is worth all the effort but this is when dogs will require the most of you. 

Then you get to what I call the glory years. Your dog's brain is fully developed, they hopefully have most of the life skills that they need, they don’t require constant attention and you can really appreciate all the efforts you put in in their youth. You can appreciate your dog for who they have matured into for better or for worse and you get the impression that you will be able to appreciate them for years to come. Of course not all dog owners have the luxury of starting from the beginning and many rescued adult dogs still need a lot of love, attention and training but they are still mature enough to not take up the majority of your time. The glory years are filled with time together, growth and the gift of weathering whatever life throws at you. If you get lucky you get to ride these glory years until they become a senior. 

This is where I am in my life with my dogs, living out the glory years. My dog Spicy just turned 4 years old and she has matured into everything I could have ever wanted her to become when we brought her into our lives at just 8 weeks old. We’ve had a few scares, a few seizures but thankfully she has been happy and healthy for the most part. She has great life skills and while we are always working on her training, she is a pleasure to move through the world with. My dog Waylon will be 10 in the coming year. He too came to us as a tiny 8 week old puppy and Waylon has given us a lot of scares in his life. Whether it was chasing large animals in the woods, chasing a mountain goat off a 14,000’ mountain, getting quilled by a porcupine on 3 separate occasions or consuming large amounts of toxins that lead to a week of hospitalization. He has lived a lot of life in his years but after everything he has done that made me feel like he was going to die early, I thought we had made it. He has gotten the crazy out of his system and now he gets to grow old into being a senior. Until this week when reality came crashing down on us. We found out that Waylon has cancer, it is early days and we are still learning what this means for him. But it has hit me like a ton of bricks. 

If you have ever had to say goodbye to a dog when they were way too young, you know my heartache. I feel entitled to seeing him grow old into a senior. I feel entitled to see him be a gray old man because we both deserve that time together. But that isn’t the way life works for all of us. This is a feeling I am familiar with, when many years ago we lost our beloved dog Sunny to cancer just before his ninth birthday. I had to say goodbye to another beloved dog Bo Jangles when he was hit by a car and died before he made it to five. This time though, with Waylon it hurts just as bad thinking that I might not get to see him age into a senior. 

I have had the great privilege of savoring a dog well into their senior years with Tiva. She lived to almost 15 and while it still didn’t feel like long enough. I felt like she got to live an amazing life and almost 15 years of life was a consolation for me, at least she had a great life until the end. Don’t get me wrong senior dog care can be challenging, not to mention expensive but for me, I was honored to do it. Even when it felt hard. It felt hard, but as she aged I knew it was coming. 

There is just something so cruel about being caught off guard, feeling like you still have years to come with a dog and suddenly learning that it might in fact be months. I try not to spiral in my thoughts of doom as we navigate this diagnosis with Waylon. I remind myself that plenty of dogs beat cancer and get to go on with many great years of life. I remind myself that he has lived more life than many dogs will ever get to. I try to appreciate everything we have been through and how much we love each other. But it changes things. It really puts into perspective just how fragile our dogs' lives are. A reminder that another day is never guaranteed.

While I don’t know what Waylon’s future holds, I do know that it has pushed me to stay present in the here and now. To pet him just a little longer before I need to leave for work, to share my food with him everytime I eat, to smooch his perfect block head more than he would probably like. To make the effort each day to make sure that he had a great day. To stand in the same spot for 90 seconds so he can really smell that scent. To let go of the frustrations I once had with him. To revel in every single second I get to be his person and him my dog. 

If we are lucky we get to ride every wave of life with our dogs, we get to know them from puppy hood to senior hood. But we don’t all get that chance and that doesn’t make the relationship any less meaningful, it just serves as the cold hard reminder that death is inevitable and it is our obligation to give our dogs the best life we can while they are here because damnit that is what they deserve.

- Rachel Laurie Harris