A Ramble with Hal

Aging in Place—with My Dog

As pills go, it’s tiny. It’s orange. It makes you pee a lot: It’s the water pill. The official name is hydroclorothiazide.

My sister has the same 25-milligram prescription. One morning at her house, I spied the pill in a little tray on the kitchen counter.

“You take this, too.” I said. “That’s funny.”

“It makes me get up at night,” she lamented.

“Me, too.” I replied.

But when I rouse out of bed at zero dark thirty, I’m not the one going potty. It’s my dog, Bodie. He’s on that pill. Me, I’m just along as chaperone.

Bodie is a Jack Russell Terrier-Chihuahua. In 2010 when I adopted him from Happy Tails (which dealt mainly in cats, but don’t tell him that), his estimated age was two years. Currently, in human-to-doggie years, he’s 66: The same age as his caretaker. I could say “dad,” which is true as status goes, but—in a bit of inevitable nepotism—Bodie also doubles as our ranch’s Chief Security Officer. He’s an employee—and boy, does he let me know it, threatening trips to HR whenever I forget his meal times. When his title was Security Guard, the threat loomed even more ominous as he had the union reps on speed dial. You don’t want to mess with those guys.

At the ranch, we grow u-pick organic sagebrush and squirrels. Admittedly, we’re still in product development stage, so the budget is tight. That means no employee health plan. I pay for the water pill out of my own pocket—$18 dollars for a three-months’ supply. Then, there’s the special doggie diet of prescription canned food—a chicken stew and a chicken pate. (No, I haven’t asked if the chickens are force-fed.) Despite the little orange pills twice a day and the expensive food, the big lift has been three surgeries to remove bladder crystals. The operations come with an I.V. rack, overnight stays in the veterinarian hospital, and a passel of medications that can cause an alarming tummy upsetment—literally—if not properly sequenced. He needs the procedure every other year. So for a few weeks, I take off my ranch CEO hat and don a nursemaid’s rig and tend him while he recuperates in his bed…on the couch…in the living room. At the ranch, things pretty much come to a halt—though the sagebrush and squirrels keep growing nicely on their own.

Now, some might say Bodie—given his age—should be retired from security work. As you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, he’s not going to stop any time soon tracking vectors (his term) that invade his territory, which consists of 18 acres, a county road, a large volcanic butte across the way, nearby short-line railroad tracks, and, increasingly, the sky.

Of course, as the years rack up, so do the medical issues. I’m OK with that—for Bodie. Me, I’m a lucky guy. I’m not on medications. The last time I was admitted to the hospital, John F. Kennedy was president. So, while Bodie is still able to bark at freight trains (100 percent rate of success in scaring them away), I’ll let him keep at it, bladder crystals and all. It’s how I’d want to age in place—yapping happily.

© Copyright 2023 by H.A. Silliman