All That Ails You: The Adventures of a Canine Caregiver

by Mark J. Asher

  “Technology has taken over these kids,” another resident replied. “Once in a while they need to turn off everything, go outside, and breathe some fresh air.”

  “I must say, it sure is odd to see two people sitting across from one another texting instead of talking,” another resident offered.

  “But isn’t life always changing?” Tim, the reporter, challenged. “You can’t expect the world you’re born into to be the same as the one you leave, right?”

  “I love video chatting with my grandkids . . . who would have thought that would be possible in our lifetime?” Marjorie volunteered. “But what I fear with all this technology, is that there will come a day when people won’t interact anymore in a genuine way. That makes me sad.”

  “The Internet, texting, tweeting, Facebook, that’s just the way it is today,” I heard someone say from the back of the room. “We had our things in our time, they have theirs.”

  “Maybe so, but the quality of life used to be better,” another senior countered. “There was less stimulus, and more time to just be. This incessant technology drives me crazy. It fills every second of every day.”

  “Has all of this technology made us better off?” another resident asked. “We all did just fine for a long time without it. If you ask me, a lot of it is unnecessary.”

  “I disagree,” the senior sitting beside Marjorie said. “After being able to enlarge the type on my ereader, I couldn’t go back to reading the old-fashioned way.”

  “I love Facebook,” another voice chimed in. “It keeps me in touch with my kids and grandkids, who are all spread out.”

  “I’m addicted to playing Solitaire on my iPhone,” a female resident offered.

  “What does everyone think about TV these days?” Randi, the reporter, asked.

  “It’s like watching a freak show, going from one channel to the next,” a male resident responded.

  “Well, you must not be into watching tattoo artists compete or following the lives of mob wives,” one of the female seniors kidded him.

  “Boy, I have to say,” Tim interjected, “it’s a long way from Leave It To Beaver and I Love Lucy to shows like Fear Factor.”

  “It’s unbelievable… How did we go from the greatest generation to this junk?” another asked.

  “It’s sad to watch the culture decline,” another resident lamented. “Nowadays the idea is to do something that’s shocking, vile or voyeuristic, just to get attention and make money.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” another resident said. “It’s become such a sensationalist society. What used to be indecent and outlandish is now front page news.”

  “Newspapers…” a male resident responded. “What a shame they’re quickly becoming a thing of the past.”

  “There’s only one thing that hasn’t changed in all these years,” Marjorie declared.

  “What’s that?” Randi asked, leaning forward with curiosity.

  “He’s lying at my feet,” Marjorie answered, smiling and looking down at me.

  “As the owner of a yellow Lab I’m crazy about, it’s hard to disagree with that,” Randi responded.

  “Well, I think that’s a good place to stop,” Tim said, concluding the discussion, and then thanking the residents for their time.

  When everyone started to get up, I leapt to my feet with delight. I milled around, mixing with a few of the residents, and then followed Randi and Tim back to the front office, where they chatted with Jane and Theresa for a few minutes before saying goodbye.

  8

  A few days after the reporters visited SunRidge, I began to sense that something wasn’t right with Marjorie. At first I feared she was having a urinary tract infection, because she was agitated and restless.

  Urinary tract infections are common among older people. The caregivers refer to it by its initials—UTI. But if you’ve ever been around an elderly person who’s suffering from a UTI, you know that it should be referred to as CPS for Crazy Person Syndrome.

  Marjorie contacted this insidious infection shortly after we met, and I won’t soon forget it. I still remember the moment I realized something wasn’t right. I was lying on her bed, when she turned to me and said, “Wrigley, can you put that donut around my neck?” Well, needless to say, there was no donut, and the only place I would have put it, if there were one, was in my mouth. I needed something to offset the agony of watching Marjorie descend into madness.

  What’s a dog to do, I thought, as the situation was unfolding. I stared at Marjorie’s cell phone, wishing I could pick it up, and call her doctor. Instead, I got up and repositioned myself, so that I was close by Marjorie’s side.

  All was quiet and calm for a good while, until she pointed her finger in the air, and blurted out, “To the gallows go the dogs. Catch them all at once. I want them gone!”

  At the rate things were going, gone was starting to sound real good.

  Thankfully, before things got much worse, Carla came into the room and recognized our friend needed help. She didn’t need to rely on her intuition or professional skills to discover there was a problem—she knew right away when Marjorie told her that, “The SunRidge spaceship had been stolen by Russian terrorists.”

  Carla immediately phoned Marjorie’s daughter, Maureen. She arrived quickly, called a doctor, and took her mother to the hospital. Everything was taken care of, and Marjorie returned to SunRidge not long after.

  The following morning when I went to visit Marjorie, her room was vacant. I tried a few hours later, and she still wasn’t there. That evening, while I was eating my dinner, I overheard Jane tell Theresa that Marjorie had been taken to the hospital.

  I finished eating my duck and potato kibble and rested on my bed, hoping to learn more about her condition. Soon afterward, Jane and Theresa both left the office to attend to other things. I followed Theresa around the corner to the bank of mailboxes and sat with her for a second. Then I decided to walk around the building in hopes of interacting with a couple of the residents.

  It was a quiet night, and every door I passed seemed to be closed. When I went by the living room, and spotted Valerie Smith alone on the couch watching TV, I approached her. Although she was one of the residents who wasn’t much of a dog person, Valerie didn’t mind it when I laid at her feet, and rested my head on her slippers.

  When I awoke, Valerie was gone, and I saw Theresa coming into the room to take me out for my final walk of the night.

  We always took the same exit out to the courtyard, and then walked along the brick pathway, past the gazebo, to a large oak tree at the edge of the property. I liked to relieve myself on it, and Theresa enjoyed the uncluttered view of the sky from there.

  The night was cool and clear, and the moon was almost a perfect circle. I watered one side of the tree, then traded places with Theresa and marked another spot—scoring a perfect bull’s-eye on a splotch of bird turd.

  “Beautiful moon tonight . . . look at that, Wrigley,” Theresa said, pointing to the sky.

  I played dumb and jumped up on her, hoping she’d relinquish the treat I could smell in her left pocket, even though I knew she’d give it to me once we went back inside. She held my paws for a few seconds, before releasing me back to the ground.

  “I just read the other day that the Russians sent a few dogs to the moon during the 50’s and 60’s. Can you imagine that?” she asked aloud, intrigued by the thought. “You’d sure look cute in one of those space suits, Wrigley. I can just see the expression on your face when the dog bones start floating through the air.”

  Theresa sat cross-legged on the grass, and stared out into the stillness of the night.

  “Refreshment time, Wrigley,” she told me, while petting my coat. “I just need five minutes of quiet with no human voices. The silence helps clear my head.”

  When Theresa felt better, she got up, brushed herself off, and led me back inside. Once we reached the front office, she handed me my customary nighttime treat, grabbed a few things off of her des
k, leaned down to give me a hug, and then left for the evening. I curled up on my bed and waited for morning to come.

  Unfortunately, I was having a hard time staying asleep. I kept getting up to scratch my bed with my paws, trying to get comfortable, but it didn’t help.

  Finally, I decided to leave my bed. I stretched my paws out in front of me, until my belly touched the ground, and then walked out into the hallway. It must have been around 11pm, and the place was quiet.

  I wandered into the dining room, assuming the imaginary boundary line was of no consequence if the space was empty, and searched for crumbs beneath the tables. The cleaning crew must have already come through the area, because the ground was spotless.

  Next, I took my usual route down Marjorie’s hallway, and when I came to her room, walked through the open door. Everything looked the same as it had the day before. It felt strange to be in Marjorie’s room, with all of her belongings, and not have her there. To be close to her scent, I pulled her red fleece sweatshirt off of the chair beside the armoire, with my mouth, and brought it onto the bed. I lay on top of it and quickly fell asleep.

  Sometime later in the night, a couple of neighborhood cats got into a loud ruckus that shocked me out of my sleep, and brought me to my feet. I stared out the window for a while, but couldn’t see anything. Before I turned to lie down again, I helped myself to a sip of stale water from a cup sitting on Marjorie’s nightstand. While I was drinking, I noticed an opened box of ear plugs.

  I sniffed at them, not imagining I’d have a desire to eat them. My imagination turned out to be stronger than I thought, because I ate every last one of them. To my surprise, even though ear plugs don’t have much flavor, they were seriously chewy and good.

  Dogs don’t dwell on the consequences of their behavior, so I didn’t think about the incident again. I was as surprised as Jane, when the following day she took me out to the courtyard to go potty, and I heard her yell, “EARPLUGS?! WRIGLEY, YOU’RE CRAPPING EARPLUGS!”

  9

  Some of the ear plugs left me through my rear end, and later, the rest left me via another orifice, to put it as pleasantly as possible.

  “That’s one abstract work of art,” Wanda, from the cleaning crew, commented to Jane, as she surveyed the various spots on the reception area carpet, where I had left my remains.

  “There’s an idea for a book—vomit art,” Jane said, sarcastically. “Thank God, lately he’s been throwing up mostly outside.”

  All I could do was lie listlessly on my bed, feeling sick as, well, a dog. Sorry, I couldn’t resist that one. Jane and Theresa checked on me throughout the day, becoming increasingly concerned, until they decided it was a good idea to take me to the doctor.

  Vets are my least favorite people in the world. I can’t think of a close second. What kind of person greets you like a friend, with enthusiasm and treats, only to poke and prod you moments later?

  Unfortunately, because I’ve had so many different owners in my life, I’ve seen my fair share of them. Dr. Wolensky, the last one I went to before being adopted by the Petersons, was the best of the bunch, but I still trembled every time I got near her office.

  I’ve been relatively healthy throughout my life, but ever since I was a puppy, I’ve vomited a whole lot more than the average dog. It’s always the same story—eat a bunch of grass and then heave it back up along with some yellow bile or unprocessed food. Neither Dr. Wolensky, nor any of my other vets, were able to attach a name to my ongoing affliction. The process of trying to find out what was wrong, which required many vet visits through the years and several changes in my food, was far worse for me than any diagnosis could ever be. Whatever my condition was I’m sure woofing down ear plugs didn’t help matters.

  As we made our way that afternoon to see Dr. Sager—my current vet—Jane occasionally looked over and asked if I was okay. The look on my face plainly translated from dog to English as: Hell no.

  When I finally got tired of nervously standing, I curled up in the passenger seat, and listened to Van Morrison’s voice, coming through the speaker near my head. He was Jane’s favorite singer, and the CD seemed to be playing every time I got into her car. With the sun beaming through the front window, bathing me in warmth, I momentarily forgot where we were going.

  But when the car stopped, I popped my head up, and began shaking like a naked baby in a snowstorm. Jane came around and opened the door on my side, and lured me out of the minivan. As we got near the building, I insisted on relieving myself on a well-soiled pee post that doubled as a bush by the entrance. The second I put my leg down, I pulled hard on my leash, away from the front door, but Jane was prepared for my maneuver, and spun me back around and inside the office.

  The waiting room in a vet’s office is a strange place. Some dogs—mostly puppies or less intelligent dogs—think they’re in for a fun adventure, because they see a lot of their own kind in there. But most find out, when they get to the next room, that the experience is a far cry from a good time.

  I exchanged wags and whiffs with an old Lab named Gus next to us, then retreated to a spot underneath Jane and anxiously waited. Before long, the lady behind the desk called our name, and after a quick weigh-in, we were taken to the examining room.

  Jane sat down on the wooden bench, and I sat between her legs, while we waited for the doctor to come in. Usually it took some time, which always made the wait harder to take, but on this day he came quickly.

  Dr. Sager followed his standard procedure—praise, poke, prod.

  “Look who we have here . . . what a good dog.”

  “Let’s see what we have going on…”

  “I’m just going to take a quick peek here…”

  The vet tech, Mallory, or the decoy, as I think of them, echoed Dr. Sager’s praise and promised me an after-torture treat, in an attempt to distract me from the examination.

  “What’s been going on with him?” Dr. Sager asked, turning to Jane.

  “Well, believe it or not, he ate a bunch of earplugs.”

  “Believe me, I’ve seen worse,” Dr. Sager told Jane. “Once a dog, always a child . . . right, Wrigley?”

  While the two of them continued to chat, Mallory made good on her promise with a decent-sized treat by vet office standards. She then proceeded to give me a wonderfully relaxing back massage.

  I was beginning to loosen up a bit, and my tail began to wag for the first time in a while. But when I looked back over at Jane and she gave me that sympathetic pout of hers, I sensed I wasn’t going to like what came next.

  “I’d like to keep him overnight for observation,” Dr. Sager said, kneeling down and putting his hand on my head, as he delivered the blow.

  I took the news like a dog on a leash—without a choice in the matter. Jane leaned down and squeezed me tightly, and gave me a kiss, before Mallory led me through the dreaded door to the back office.

  An hour or so later, while I was half-asleep in my 3 by 2, a young woman on the veterinary staff paid me a visit, and made an innocent, yet suspicious offer.

  “Wrigley, I have something super yummy and good for you,” she told me, holding a syringe filled with white liquid.

  It definitely didn’t look like either one. So, as she moved toward me, I quickly closed my mouth.

  “C’mon boy, this medicine will make you feel much better,” she tried to assure me.

  Well, at least she was now being honest about what it was.

  “I promise it’ll just take a second, Wrigley,” she pleaded again. “I know you can do it.”

  I know I can do it too. The question is do I want to do it.

  The more emphatic her voice got, the more determined I was to keep my mouth shut. After a few more failed attempts, she did what most humans do when you don’t comply with their wishes—she tricked me. She parted my lips with the syringe, stuck it in a gap between my back teeth, and then squeezed the liquid into my mouth, forcing me to swallow.

  Ick, double ick!

  The evenin
g wasn’t much better. The dog next to me, a large one whose breed I couldn’t tell, made a loud wheezing noise throughout the night. The poor guy was so uncomfortable and agitated in that small, cold, metal cage, I don’t think he slept a wink.

  Thankfully, my stay was only for one night. The next morning, when Jane came to pick me up, my tail was wagging so hard it could have knocked over a small child.

  10

  When I returned to SunRidge, Veronica greeted me with a welcome home present that smelled from here to eternity—a smoked rawhide braid. Jane didn’t look too happy about her giving me a treat so soon after returning from the vet, but once you show it to the dog, you owe it to the dog. I wasted no time in bringing the prize to my bed, and digging in.

  After making a decent dent on one of the corners of my gift, I got up to take a walk around, so I could socialize with the residents, and see if Marjorie had returned.

  Soon after I left the front office, I got diverted, when my nose picked up some interesting odors coming from the laundry room. During the daytime hours, May Clayfield was on staff, and she always allowed me to indulge in one of my canine fetishes—smelling dirty clothes.

  When I walked inside the room, there was a large pile of clothes on the ground in front of one of the washers. May was folding laundry across the way with her back to me, so I began snooping through the mound. While my nose was buried in a woman’s blouse, I heard a gasp.

  “Oh my God! What are you doing here?” a stranger’s voice shrieked. “You just about gave me a heart attack.”

  The woman, who I thought was May, turned out to be a new employee. She walked over and knelt down beside me.

  “May didn’t tell me anything about a dog when she trained me,” the woman said. “But you seem like a sweet . . . let me check . . . boy.”