Aging in dogs - companions teach us to age better

And then, seemingly overnight, he wasn't. If you have to go — and you do — a swift slide into decrepitude is the preferred way. The phrase is "compression of morbidity," when

the infirmities of age are delayed until the bitter end. Still, it's no picnic. The joints went first. He started limping after a vigorous bouncing-a-soccer-ball-off-his-nose session.

Then he needed help climbing into the car or crawling under the bed, his favorite sleeping spot. Our epic rambles through the woods became short hikes, then brief spins around the block.

Sometimes he'd stop midwalk, frozen like a Parkinson's sufferer. The stairs grew perilous. He became a wandering insomniac, barking at ghosts, claws clacking aimlessly through the

darkened house. He'd vanished into the shadowlands of canine cognitive dysfunction, and he would not be coming out. This was inconvenient. It strained our household's delicate

structural integrity. We were in sandwich generation mode, working spouses with small kids, an aging parent down the road, and a complement of adult-grade responsibilities. The geriatric dog

added an extra layer of filling to life's overstuffed Dagwood. Each morning, when I came downstairs, I stopped to inspect the prone body on the landing, wondering, with a mix of hope

and dread, if he'd passed quietly in his sleep, the way we all say we want to do. Eighteen years! Longer than childhood, longer than marriage (so far). Seeing this ancient animal was

like stumbling upon a living fossil, an artifact of a vanished age. At the same time, it was also a glimpse into the future. Foghat's senescence appeared as both a comfort and a warning

of what awaits: Some fears and eccentricities will lift with the years; others will only deepen. One by one, the things you love to do become too difficult and slip out of your life. But

despite it all, you will still be you, and people will still cherish your wobbly presence. Even a diminished life is worth living on its own terms. Until … when? Sometimes in those last

months I'd rest my forehead on his brow and look searchingly into his great brown eyes, trying to divine his advance-care plan across the species barrier. I'd stare; he'd

stare back. Are you still in there? Are you ready to go? Another new home, 2007, left, and another new arrival, 2009. Courtesy of David Dudley; Photo illustration by Chris O'Riley LIKE

LOSING A CHILD Getting a puppy, the comic Louis C.K. observed, is a "countdown to sorrow." Inscribed in the act of welcoming this adorable fur ball into your home is the moment of

its death a decade or so hence. Grief over a pet can equal or exceed that of a human family member, studies show. This is canine neoteny's cruel flip side: Yes, your dog gets to be an

emotional adolescent into ripe old age. But when he dies, it will feel like losing a child. Foggy's 18-year countdown finally ended one winter morning. Despite my best efforts to give

him the good death he deserved, it was just as terrible as I'd feared. My wife held him in the backseat as I drove to the vet. He'd always loved car rides, but this time he writhed

weakly and whined, intuiting correctly that something bad was up. As I carried him in, he let out a single unearthly howl, a sound he'd never made before. Then he relaxed, went still

and struggled no more. Soon we were standing around a metal table, clutching the dog just as we once did when a thunderstorm passed, trying and failing to project "Everything will be

OK" vibrations. When the drugs hit his heart, I blurted out, "Sorry, buddy," and crumpled into unseemly bawling. The gerontologist Kenneth Doka has called the death of a pet

"disenfranchised grief." It's a loss whose significance others don't recognize. You're not supposed to sit shivah for your schnauzer. You post a sad Facebook update

and go back to work, as I did. When I came home in the evening and opened the front door, I was struck by the strange new stillness — the foreign silence of a household without a dog. It was

as if a machine that had been humming in the background for a long time had suddenly been switched off. In this absence, I have enough life lessons for a thousand dogoirs. I learned that

it's impossible to determine precisely when another being's life is too compromised to go on, and that a long and enviable health span can't save a good dog from a bad death.

Maybe even a good death is pretty bad. Life is worth it; its absence is unfathomable. Sorry, buddy. And now that I'm no longer young, and he's dead, I'll do my best to follow

the path Foghat blazed into my life's last half. This is sound medical advice, as neuroscientist Head says: "Everything you do for a dog to help them age well, you should do with

them." So eat the best food you can afford. Go for a walk, even if it's raining. Take a lot of naps. Keep your teeth clean and your breath fresh, so that the people you lick will

not flinch. And when someone you love walks in through the door, even if it happens five times a day, go totally insane with joy.