All That Ails You: The Adventures of a Canine Caregiver Read online

  all that ails you

  The Adventures of a Canine Caregiver

  BY MARK J. ASHER

  CONTENTS

  1

  Moving into an assisted living home is a far cry from…

  2

  I didn’t start my life out at an assisted living home.

  3

  I still remember the first time the Petersons brought me to SunRidge.

  4

  I was completely content one summer afternoon…

  5

  After Mark left, and Walter returned to his room…

  6

  It didn’t take long for Walter to wear out his welcome…

  7

  Over the next couple of weeks Walter kept a low profile…

  8

  A few days after the reporters visited SunRidge, I began to sense…

  9

  Some of the ear plugs left me through my rear end…

  10

  When I returned to SunRidge, Veronica greeted me with…

  11

  The following morning, after I finished my breakfast, I walked out…

  12

  Marjorie was special. Everyone at SunRidge was sad.

  13

  On a quiet Sunday afternoon the following week…

  14

  After Marjorie died, I spent more time in the front office.

  15

  The holiday season is a complicated mix of excitement and angst.

  16

  Not long after Thanksgiving, one evening after I finished my…

  17

  The time between Christmas and New Year’s is normally quiet…

  18

  The next morning I drove back to SunRidge with Theresa.

  19

  The good thing about being around someone who is new to dogs…

  20

  After firing Corina, Walter contemplated what to do about replacing her.

  21

  My most exhilarating experience at SunRidge came from…

  22

  Over the next few months, I grew closer to Walter…

  23

  It wasn’t often that the entire Peterson clan could get away…

  24

  The reception I received when I came back to SunRidge almost…

  25

  The slower pace of living at a place like SunRidge can…

  26

  Jane’s timing to buy coverings for the outdoor furniture proved to be…

  27

  During my time at SunRidge, I had become used to waiting…

  28

  The next morning, when Jane came to work…

  29

  Once we returned to SunRidge, I crashed on my bed…

  30

  The next morning after breakfast, Walter called me back to his room…

  31

  We drove for quite a ways before getting off the freeway…

  32

  After we loaded into the car, Mark turned on some music…

  33

  The final stages of life for a resident and his family can be…

  Afterward

  Three months after Walter died…

  Acknowledgments

  About The Author

  More Books by Mark J. Asher

  Copyright

  Being old isn’t easy. One of the residents at SunRidge, Jane Dryden, who has since passed away, used to say the secret to having a good day was not allowing your ailments to overshadow your blessings. But there are difficult days here, when that philosophy is hard to follow or even recall. Those are the times I am needed most, when only a dog, without words, can bring love and levity to darkness and despair. You see, sometimes in life, the best thing for all that ails you has fur and four legs.

  1

  Moving into an assisted living home is a far cry from checking into a four-star hotel for a two-week vacation, but Walter Kepsen was in worse shape than any resident I’d ever seen arrive at SunRidge.

  Some of it you could see—the way he anxiously fumbled through a stack of papers on his lap, how he quickly became exasperated when he couldn’t find something in the side pocket of his scooter, and how he responded—like a threatening sky about to thunder—when Veronica broke away from their conversation to answer a phone call. But much of it, being a dog with a keen ability to detect human emotions, you could feel.

  Nevertheless, always happy to see a new face, I cheerfully sauntered up to him. I sniffed around his shoe, and the tires on one side of his scooter, before I looked up, wagging, with a welcoming grin.

  I might as well have been a ghost—Walter didn’t acknowledge my presence with even a glance or a grunt.

  I poked my nose in a few more spots, smelling nicotine on his fingers and an old blood stain on his pant leg. Once I was satisfied with my exploration, I retreated to a spot nearby, laid down, and watched as Walter and Veronica continued going over the check-in logistics.

  Studying Walter from a few feet away, I realized how large a man he was. If he were standing, I imagined him to be at least six feet three inches tall. He had fingers the size of sausages, and his ears were big and doughy, like a soft pretzel. Beneath an old, worn baseball cap, he had thinning grey hair that was strewn about like a man who had spent the day sailing. His face had ruddy skin, with deep creases across his forehead, and a noticeable mole next to his nose.

  I would later learn that Walter was 74, when he came to SunRidge, which made him one of the younger residents. But if you measured wear and tear versus days lived, he seemed much older.

  My attention was diverted when Jane Peterson, the head Mom, and owner of SunRidge, came up to greet Walter. Her sunny disposition did nothing to ease the scowl on Walter’s face. The two of them made forced conversation for a minute, before Jane led Walter to his new room. I followed alongside.

  There’s always an adjustment period with each new resident, in which I learn about their personalities, temperament, mental capacity, and physical limitations. Walter wasted no time in defining his preference as it related to me.

  “What’s with the dog?” he barked, glaring down at me, as we approached his room.

  “That’s Wrigley, our house dog,” Jane answered, looking over at me with a smile.

  “Get him away, will you. No one told me there was a dog here.”

  “Wrigley, go on, scoot!” Jane commanded me, with unusual emphasis.

  From trailing Father McMahon during his visits to SunRidge, in hopes of getting one of the liver treats he often kept in his front right pocket, I know the bible says: Forgive them, for they know not what they do. But after being around seniors for a while, I picked my spots to adopt the philosophy of: Ignore them, for they know not what they need. So in that spirit, I gave Walter a quick lick on his hand before heading across the hall to see Marjorie Thompson.

  The door was slightly ajar, which was Marjorie’s signal to me that it was okay to enter. I nudged it open with my snout, walked inside, and found Marjorie fast asleep on her recliner. I made my usual rounds, sniffing for anything new, and glancing out the window before settling on the floor nearby. As I was dozing off, I heard Jane saying goodbye to Walter.

  “Can I get you anything else, Walter?” she asked him.

  “Yeah, get me out of here. I can’t believe my son took me out of a perfectly fine apartment, and left me to die in a dump like this.”

  “It might take a while, Walter, but we’ll do our best to make this feel like home,” Jane assured him.

  “You can start by moving that chair,” Walter instantly replied. “I don’t like where it is, I can’t see outs
ide.”

  “No problem,” Jane responded, now standing in the doorway. “I’ll have it taken care of by the end of today.”

  Carla Swenson, a caregiver, who worked the 6:00am to 2:30pm shift, was the next SunRidge employee I saw encounter Walter. She had the personality of a Lab—happy-go-lucky, jovial and accommodating. There wasn’t a resident that didn’t adore her.

  I was lying in my familiar spot—just inside of Marjorie’s doorway—when Carla walked into Walter’s room.

  “Whatever you’re selling, I don’t want any,” I heard Walter say, before Carla could say hello.

  “I’m not here to sell you anything,” Carla replied.

  “Then get the hell out of here.”

  “It’ll just take a minute,” Carla told Walter. “I need to draw some blood.”

  “Can’t you see I’m watching a game right now?” he responded.

  “You can watch your game, while I do my job.”

  “What exactly is your job?”

  “Didn’t anybody tell you?” Carla asked playfully, trying to draw Walter in.

  “No,” Walter grunted.

  “I’m the local vampire who comes to suck your blood.”

  There was silence for a second, and then I heard Walter reply, “Well, it’s been long time since I’ve had a woman suck anything of mine, so go ahead. Just don’t block the TV.”

  Carla had a bemused expression on her face, when she left Walter’s room, and came over to rub my head.

  As you might have figured, Walter didn’t last very long as the new resident who nobody knew. That night in the dining room, while everyone was eating, the rumble of human chatter and the sound of metal utensils against plates came to a sudden halt.

  “This meat loaf is terrible!” Walter blurted out, before throwing his utensils and napkin down on his plate, and pushing himself away from the table.

  You could have heard a pin drop. As he grabbed his cane and left the dining room, every head in the place, including the kitchen staff, looked over at Walter.

  Thankfully, Sandi Schifman broke the silence.

  “Well, I think everything tastes just delicious . . . and I intend to enjoy every bite of it,” she said, allowing conversation in the dining room to slowly resume.

  I watched Walter as he made his way past me. I waited for a few moments at the periphery of the dining room, and then followed him at a distance. When he arrived at his room, out of view from everyone but me, I discovered that he hadn’t entirely disliked his meal. As he reached into his pant pocket for his room key, three wheat rolls fell from beneath his sweater. He picked up two, but missed one, which bounced behind him. When he closed the door, I confiscated the remaining wheat roll faster than you could say hypocrite.

  A few days later, I was walking by Walter’s room when I heard a loud grunting noise. I poked my head inside the partially opened door, and didn’t see him in the entryway or in the living room. My nose lured me to his couch where I found a nice-sized piece of turkey in between the cracks of the cushions. Feeling lucky, I doubled back to the kitchen to search for scraps. There were a lot of smells, but nothing noteworthy in the corners or crevices. When I went to sniff under the refrigerator, I heard the loud noise again.

  I followed it into the adjoining room, made a quick right turn, and found Walter sitting on the toilet with his eyes closed. I leaned my head down and sniffed between his legs.

  “Jesus Christ!” he yelled. “Get the hell out of here!”

  I must not have found the exit fast enough, because Walter swatted me with his cane, catching me on my butt.

  In my time as the house dog at SunRidge, I’d been squeezed tightly, cried on, prayed to, slept on, but never hit. It caused me to do something I hadn’t done since I was a puppy.

  I quickly darted back toward Walter, grabbed the top sheet of toilet paper from the dispenser with my mouth, and ran with it a few feet. As I left the room, I heard him mumbling something to himself. There would be no parting lick this time.

  Over the next year and a half there were a lot of twists and turns before Walter passed away. If you would have told me half of what happened, I would have thought that you had snuck into the medication room and misread the dosing instructions on a bottle of Demerol.

  2

  I didn’t start my life out at an assisted living home. I came to SunRidge shortly after Jane Peterson adopted me, when I was six years old.

  Initially, I lived at the Peterson house with Jane, her husband, Ron, and their daughters, Theresa and Tamara. But running SunRidge is a family business, so they brought me to work with them often. Before long, the residents began to grow attached to me.

  The seniors liked the idea of having something soft, cheerful, and comforting around. I quickly realized that old people had two things that every dog craves: time and love. It wasn’t long before I became the official, full-time house dog.

  I know what you might be thinking—wouldn’t a dog rather be living with a young family with two energetic kids and a large backyard?

  One of the attributes of being a dog is not living in the past. I’m grateful for that because mine is a painful one.

  For the first six years of my life, I went from home to home, with depressing stays in-between at the shelter. I’ve been everything from Bart to Bartholomew. I figure by now I’ve had as many names as a call girl with a long career.

  The unfortunate part is that I’m a good dog—smart, cute, and mostly well-behaved. Sadly, sometimes a good dog can have bad luck, and that’s my story. On the positive side, like many dogs who’ve had a hard go, I’m as sweet as sugar with none of the side effects.

  Breed wise, I’m a mix of many things, my best guess is German shepherd, Husky, and maybe some Lab. My coat is brown and black, and I weigh 45 pounds. People always comment on my widow’s peak, which makes me look sweet and gives me character. My most unusual feature has to be my tail because it’s disproportionately large in relation to the rest of my body.

  My first home was on an old cherry farm in Emmett, Idaho. It was a wonderful place to be a puppy—lots of open space with room to roam and fresh scents to smell.

  But while the nature was plentiful, the owners were pitiful. The family didn’t give me any love or training, and the youngest son liked to do cruel experiments on me when he got bored.

  I don’t know if the parents found out or they just got tired of me, but six months later, I was given to another family down the road. I lasted there for a little less than a year before I was put in a crate, loaded in the back of a truck, and taken on a long ride. It turned out to be a one way trip to an animal shelter just outside of Boise.

  It was hard and strange to go from spending my days in the country, where there weren’t any restrictions, to a small, confined concrete box.

  Shelter life doesn’t take long to figure out. You quickly realize there are only two ways out: the front gate, which leads to a new life or the back door, which leads to death. You spend your days hoping that someone looking for a new dog will take notice of you. If they do, they’ll ask to take you out to one of the outdoor runs for a meet and greet. If you’re lucky, they’ll take you home and give you a new life. If you get adopted by a good owner or family, you’re golden and set for life. But, if you get a bad one, most likely you’ll end up back on death row.

  Unfortunately, I know the latter scenario all too well. The first time I got adopted was by the Phelps Family, who had two young kids: Jake and Jesse. I was overjoyed to be free again and belong to a new pack.

  It was my first experience being around kids, and I happily discovered they’re just like dogs—the first thing on their minds is fun, and the last thing they want to do is follow the rules. We had a great time together, hanging out, playing games, and visiting the neighbors across the street, who had a super-friendly St. Bernard named Conroy. During the summertime, the parents took the kids and me camping on the weekends to great spots with mountains, meadows, and streams, where we could run free a
nd play.

  Heartbreakingly, over time, the family began to fall into financial trouble. Eventually, they were forced to move out of their home into an apartment, which didn’t allow dogs. It was a bad break and a real crusher, because I felt I had finally found my place in the world.

  If by chance I come back in my next life as a human, I’m definitely going to build a huge apartment complex that only allows people with dogs.

  Whether I liked it or not, I was back in solitary confinement at the same crappy shelter. Luckily, it only took a few months for another couple—this one without kids—to adopt me.

  Tracie and Norm fought like cats and dogs, day and night. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why two people would stay in the same place when they couldn’t stand one another. But I’m a dog—when we don’t like one of our own kind, we might tussle a bit, but eventually we go off and find a different dog to play with.

  Tracie loved me; Norm hated me. When he wasn’t around, she would love me like her first born, pampering me with toys and treats, and anything else my nose gravitated to along the pet store aisle. When she wasn’t around, he would drink like a dog with a chunk of peanut butter stuck to the roof of its mouth. Afterward, he would get agitated and angry. I didn’t have to do much to earn a swat from a rolled up magazine, or on a bad day, the TV remote.

  I never snapped at him, but I wasn’t above subtle revenge. At night when Norm used to take his socks off, and leave them on the floor beside the bed, I would move them into the exercise room or the living room. It drove him crazy. I can still hear him yelling to Tracie in the morning, when he woke up, “Where the hell are my socks?”