AM I GETTING TOO OLD FOR A PUPPY?

Many of my friends have said lately, “Once my current dog (or cat) passes away, that’s it. No more pets for me. I’m getting too old for them. Besides that, I’m having trouble taking care of myself, never mind a pet.”

This has made me seriously think about what I will do once my two dogs pass away.  Will I be too old to take care of a new dog? But if I choose never to get another dog, will I be able to stand the loneliness? The silence? The non-furry floors?

To be honest, I’ve been thinking I would like to get a puppy because the last puppy I had was over 20 years ago. After that, I adopted full-grown dogs, so I really miss the “cuteness” stage.  However, I clearly do remember what it was like to raise a puppy, so I’m wondering if I’d be able to handle it now that I’m so much older.

Back in 2000, my husband and I became the proud parents of a rottweiler pup I named “Sabre” (okay, I admit it was a vanity thing - “SA” for Sally and “BRE” for Breslin).  The day we picked her up from her foster home, she was eight weeks old and already weighed 18 pounds.  She had paws the size of small hams, which made me a little uneasy.

 “If she ever grows into those paws,” I told my husband, “we’ll be raising a horse, not a dog.”

CHECK OUT THOSE PAWS!

Sabre sat on my lap during the ride home in the car.   When we were only a few miles from home, she began to whine.

“What’s wrong with her?” my husband asked, immediately panicking. “She’s not getting carsick is she?  I don’t want her to get sick on my nice clean upholstery!”

I shrugged.  “I have no idea why she’s whining.  But we’re almost home, so she should be all right.”  No sooner did the words leave my mouth did I feel a warm, wet puddle spreading across my lap.

The pup stopped whining.

Having raised puppies before, even though it had been nearly 10 years since the previous one, I still remembered what to expect the first night or two - total sleeplessness.   We had a warm, cozy bathroom, so I put Sabre in there with a little fleece bed in one corner and a baby gate across the doorway.

My husband and I had just settled into bed and turned off the light when Sabre began to cry.  This, however, was unlike any crying I had ever heard before.  This puppy sounded just like the screaming woman in the shower scene from “Psycho” (and at about the same volume as a fire-engine siren).

My husband sat upright in bed.  “Oh, my God!”  he said. “The neighbors are going to think I’m murdering you!”

I climbed out of bed and wrapped a small plastic wind-up alarm clock in a towel. “I’ll put this in bed with her.  The ticking will relax her.”

For 30 minutes afterwards, there was blissful silence, then the screaming began again.  With my eyes still half-closed, I got up and walked barefoot into the bathroom…right into a puddle on the floor.  What was left of the alarm clock was sitting in the middle of the puddle.  

I decided to try the radio method, which I had read would calm a puppy.  I turned on the radio, tuned it to a soft-music station, set it on the sink, and then went back to bed.

As it turned out, Sabre hated soft music.  In fact, I discovered (after 20 minutes of trial and error) that the only thing she did like was loud, rock ’n roll music.  She finally fell asleep…as my husband and I remained wide awake all night, forced to endure endless choruses of such soothing lullabies as “Highway to Hell” blasting from the bathroom.

The next morning, I began my tried-and-true method of housebreaking.  This involved taking the pup outside every 20 minutes without fail.  And when she actually DID do something out there, instead of on the carpet, my training method also included making a big deal out of it - jumping up and down, cheering, turning cartwheels and praising her until she felt as if she’d just won the canine equivalent of America’s Got Talent (and the neighbors were ready to have me committed). 

This method had worked like magic with my other dogs, and they had been completely housebroken in only two days.  Whenever I made a big deal over Sabre doing her duty outdoors, however, she looked at me as if she thought I needed a lobotomy.   Not only that, I swear the puppy was a pee factory.   She would stand at her bowl and drink water, and as she was filling one end, she simultaneously would be emptying the other.  It took me three months, and about $500 worth of Nature’s Miracle pet-stain remover, before she was completely housebroken.   The first day she made it through 24 hours without an accident, I was so excited, I nearly hired a marching band and broke out the champagne.

Sabre, however, excelled in other ways.  She never chewed anything other than her dog toys. She preferred to sleep in her dog bed rather than on any furniture, including our bed. And she was an excellent watchdog.

Anyway, not long ago when I mentioned to one of my friends that I thought I’d continue to adopt dogs for as long as humanly possible, she said, “Well, then, make sure you keep them well-fed.”

I gave her a puzzled look because I had no clue what her comment meant. I mean, I’ve always made sure my dogs were given plenty to eat.

She then said to me, “Well, face it, you’re old. You could drop dead in your house at any time and not be found for days. By then, your dogs will be so hungry, they will eat your corpse. There probably won’t even be enough left of you for anyone to bury.”

My first thought was, “What kind of friend says things like that? Thank you for all of my future nightmares!”

My second thought was that maybe I should consider getting a hamster for my next pet.

I’m pretty sure they’re not carnivorous.

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Sally Breslin is an award-winning humor columnist and the author of “There’s a Tick in my Underwear!” “Heed the Predictor” and “The Common-Sense Approach to Dream Interpretation." Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.