The Third Act

If you’re petless, living alone and over (or cresting) the proverbial hill, expect to be told to get a dog either by your children, grandchildren or younger friends. Could it be the younger generation feels sorry for us fogies, equate being alone with lonely? Perhaps they don’t yet appreciate their own company, a guilty pleasure for many oldies. Or maybe the get-a-dog mandate relieves the pressure they feel to spend more time with older relatives? Or do they believe old folks have nothing but time on their hands, must be colossally bored? What better to do than walk a dog three times a day, pockets stuffed with treats and plastic poop bags?

I have to interrupt this broadcast. Is there anything you can think of that’s less appealing than discretely averting your gaze as your dog struggles to deposit a stool on someone’s front lawn, leaving you to obligingly pick it up? And vacations? It’s easy to spend more on doggie daycare than you paid for the dog. Your children’s, grandchildren’s and friends’ enthusiasm for dogs seems to vanish when the prospect of watching Fido for a week is brought up. Actually, it doesn’t matter. Your travel fund will have already been gobbled up not only by boarding fees, but also by the cost of dog insurance, drawing up a dog directive (in case you die first), vet bills, putting a fence around your yard, grooming and sessions at dog training schools because your newly adopted best friend of man turns out to be a nonstop barker or bicycle chaser or sees everything in the house as a potential chew toy. It should come as no surprise dog ownership in the U.S. contributed $303 billion to the U.S. economy in 2023.

But enough of the speculative snark. Let’s hear from the bark. For Boomers, the socio-psychological benefits of having a dog sound like the best all-purpose drug on the market. If you’re a Boomer and get a dog you can look forward to feeling braver and safer, enjoying more time in nature, reaping all kinds of physical benefits (less heart disease, increased longevity, more energy, improved fitness, reduced stress). You’ll find yourself more expressive and affectionate, and enjoying increased self-esteem and confidence. Add to that a resurrected sense of humor. Dogs are entertainment (Check out Corgis’ propensity for frapping). And if your pleasure in your own company is verging on reclusive, you’ll become more socially engaged with a dog at the end of a leash. People walking their dogs are always stopping to compare dog notes. Pretty soon it’s a conversation, pretty soon it’s community, pretty soon, if alone actually did feel a little lonely, it doesn’t anymore. Plus, it’s not as though those recommending old-timers get a dog don’t know of what they woof. Millennials and Gen X-ers are big on dog ownership.

But is it fair to have a dog in town? Herding dogs with nothing to herd? Dachshunds with no badgers to ferret? Having lived many years in remote parts of the high desert, where our working dogs had lots of space to roam, I’ve always felt it wrong to confine a dog to town. But this wolf-to-dog evolution has been going on 15,000 years. Most dogs are fine with a studio apartment. It’s speculated the coevolutionary relationship between early man and wolves is why humans have thrived. According to Greger Larson, a bio-archaeologist at Oxford University, “Remove domestication from the human species, and there’s probably a couple of million of us on the planet, max. Instead, what do we have? Seven billion people, climate change, travel, innovation and everything. Domestication has influenced the entire earth. And dogs were the first. For most of human history, we’re not dissimilar to any other wild primate. We’re manipulating our environments, but not on a scale bigger than, say, a herd of African elephants. And then, we go into partnership with this group of wolves. They altered our relationship with the natural world.”

At this stage of the wolf and human dance, I’m struck that our dog friends’ job now is more important than ever…to render us more humane, remind us what it really means to be human, more in tune with the world, better able to leave it better than we found it. But what I really want to know is, when a dog stares into your eyes, does he think in English or bark?

—Poet and author Ellen Waterston is a woman of a certain age who resides in Bend. “The Third Act” is a series of columns on ageing and ageism.

This article appears in Source Weekly May 23, 2024.