What if…

Jay, over at the Depp Effect, has a wonderful three-legged, rescue(d) Greyhound called Sid, which always makes me wonder if the dog ever comes to you when you call him. I mean, if you call your dog Sid, that’s what he’s supposed to do isn’t it?
Sit? So how do you call a dog named Sid to come to you without confusing him?

Anyway, he’s a gentle guy and very well-behaved (if we can believe Jay, and I think we can). Sid is employed as a therapy-dog and he regularly takes Jay with him to visit the residents of a retirement home. Jay wrote a great story about that.

Reading her story made me think what would happen if I took one of my dogs to visit the elderly in a retirement home.

Holle for instance. She is a tank-shaped Labrador and very enthusiastic if she sees fresh blood in the form of a human.
Being a Labrador retriever, a dog that brings things to you with the aim to make you happy, she wants to have something in her mouth when she’s in a “Hi! Look at me! I’m a huge cute retriever!” –state. So she often just grabs the thing nearest to her. Usually a hand or an arm. Which scares the hell out of some people. Imagine if I take that tank-modelled, hand-grabbing, growling monster to see the elderly. I expect a whole bunch of them to drop dead immediately. So, should you need a place in a retirement home… Holle is for hire.

I could of course take Biggles to bring joy to the elderly. He’s the funniest and most enthusiastic Labrador on Earth. I took him to see the vet yesterday, because he has a little lump on his belly. Fortunately the vet decided it is a harmless lump that only needs to be removed if it gets so big that his pee-stream gets deflected and he’ll end up peeing against his paw. (Yesterday he peed on a chicken. Not intentionally. He just lifted his paw to pee against a tree and the chicken walked under him. They were both highly surprised.) The vet’s assistant doesn’t meet our animals very often, because usually the vet comes to our house. She was delighted to meet Biggles. And the feeling was totally mutual. He cracked her up. Jumping around, all four feet off the ground, his lead in his mouth, grunting from happiness.  He doesn’t wag his tail. He wags his whole body. And every time she left the room and then returned again, he acted as if she’d been away for years and he’d missed her terribly. “Gosh, is he like that at home too?”, she asked a little out of breath from laughing. “Yep. Except when he sleeps”, I answered truthfully. The vet nodded. “Gawd, imagine having that around you all day long”, vet’s assistant wondered. “He’ll drive you mad.”

At which point vet and I looked at each other and both said: “Which explains a lot.” You see, our vet has a sense of humour and I have self-knowledge.

So… taking Biggles to see the elderly might liven up things, but perhaps a little bit too much. Not a safe option either. Imagine people clinging on to their Zimmer-frames for dear life and Biggles running off with walking sticks, knocking people over from left to right. It will be mayhem. And not a great idea. Unless of course you really need that place in a retirement home. Biggles is for hire too.

And then we have our Phoebe. But I couldn’t take her. They might keep her. She’s elderly herself. She’s 13, which is a respectable age for a labrador, and almost totally blind and deaf. Fortunately she has a strong heart, because she doesn’t hear or see you coming, so she’s often startled. She knows her way around our home and the grounds, but she’d probably be bumping into things if we take her somewhere else. 

(We do however have a fourth black labrador, who is very well-behaved and could be cut out for the job. The only problem is: Mozes is the only one who is convinced he is a dog. He actually is a cat. A cat with an identity-crisis.)

So sadly none of our dogs (or cats) are really suited to have the important job of being a therapy-dog. But Sid is. I’d love to have a gentle dog visiting me should I ever end up in a retirement home. I can’t imagine life without fourlegged hairy creatures around me.

If you want to meet lovely Sid (and Jay), you should go over to Jay’s place.