What We Can Learn From Dogs
As I sit here writing, my 17 + 1.5 month old chocolate Labrador retriever is taking a nap. His back legs just twitched, which means he may be dreaming about chasing the dark-chocolate colored UPS truck that used to give him the biggest and tastiest dog treats. Ever.
As I watch his dark-chocolate Labrador legs running in his dreams, I realize there are many things I have learned from him.
His name is Jack.
We adopted Jack when he was a spry young man of 8. That’s 8 years, not 8 months.
He had the energy of a 3-year old puppy and everyone who met him believed him to be that young.
He pulled, and he yanked, and he sniffed at ABSOLUTELY everything. He got himself into all sorts of rotten-smelling troubles. But we always bailed him out with this medication, or that one, to tame his ills.
He was the love of our life.
Like many couples, we got married, bought our first home — a condo — and decided it was time for a child — a fur child.
We met with rescue organizations and had home-evaluations, to make sure we were up to snuff. We wound up adopting Jack, the 8-year old, discounted, senior chocolate lab who looked absolutely adorable in his reindeer antlers in his profile picture.
I tell you, adopting a dog is a little bit like match.com. Each dog has a profile page on your chosen-rescue’s website, outfitted with a picture and written description of the dog and his or her personality.
Boy, did I fall in love with “Jack Brown’s” image and his eyes. Even in his picture, his eyes showed you the window to his heart and you could immediately see that he had a big one.
We drove up to Santa Barbara in early January 2013 to meet Jack at his foster’s house. 2013 was the year after we bought our house. Upon meeting Jack, we decided he was a good match for us and decided that day to take him home.
We put him in the backseat and he looked a little nervous. His front paws — like hands, were crossed over his snout. He was quiet and held his tail between his legs. I’ll be honest, my husband looked a little bit like that as well and he was very quiet on the drive home.
The ironic part is, he grew up with dogs, I did not. Yet, I seemed far less nervous than he did.
We took Jack up the back elevator and saw him take a first timid step into our unit. He did not seem to like elevators much. He also did not like stairs that you can see through, or elevation (there’s a courtyard in our building that took him a while to get used to).
A day or two after bringing Jack home, we invited my 103-year old cousin and his significant other over for dinner. Not knowing any better, we sequestered Jack inside the kitchen while we opened the door for my cousin, not remembering that Jack was a lab.
A few minutes later, we opened the kitchen door to find that half of our dinner was on the floor, licked at, chewed at, or downright eaten.
Let’s just say, we never made that mistake again.
Lesson learned: Do not leave your spry, young lab where food is at table-surfing level.
Jack also became known as our interior re-decorator. He rearranged the furniture in our house within the first week, and apparently didn’t like our style. Either way, he immediately became a fond jokester and butt of jokes around our house.
A year after bringing Jack home, we brought our first and only human baby home.
To be honest, Jack did not seem too thrilled about it. We’ve always wondered if it was because his first family broke apart after having children, and he was eventually surrendered to the rescue.
We were told he lived with the ex-wife’s sister for a while and she kept him outside and may not have reliably fed him. We believe these stories could be true because this dog CRAVED our love AND food.
I didn’t realize it was possible to eat your full amount of food (a lot) and still act like you’ve never been fed in your entire life.
We always joked that Jack had a 2-second short-term memory because the moment he was done eating, he wanted more and was ready to eat again.
We realize now, after speaking with many people, this may just be a Labrador trait.
However, as much as he was a Labrador, he also wasn’t.
He didn’t retrieve very well at all. We would throw a ball, he’d cock his neck and look at us as if saying, “yeah, you go get it.”
He didn’t like water or the ocean much either.
We took him to a dog beach one day shortly after we adopted him and he was terrified of the water, he couldn’t get out fast enough! It seemed like something he’d never seen before, although he was already 8-years old.
Jack was a Velcro dog. Wherever you went, he went. Wherever you looked, he looked. Wherever you were thinking about going, he’d already be there. Every time we had to leave the house, he’d be right there, at the door, saying, “I’m ready, where are we going?”
As time went on, Jack began to slow down. When we first adopted him, he could walk 6–7 miles easily.
A few years later, when he turned 13 or 14 — the years tend to run together — he could only walk a mile or two.
By the time he turned 16, he was walking at most, around the block, and in the past 2–3 months, we have been thrilled when he would walk one side of a square block.
However, when you think about it, if you are 118 years old and still able to walk one side of a block, it might very well be considered a miracle — heroics.
Besides jack’s quirks, and his believing he is human — and truth be told, he may be more human than some of humans in this world — the thing about Jack, our first son, is that he never gives up.
He’s been to the emergency room a few times, knocking at death’s door; but despite these major health setbacks, he NEVER gave up.
The emergency vets would call us and say, “You know, he’s got a few lumps in his lungs, or bumps on his kidneys,” and we’d say, “yeah…we know, he came this way, a pre-existing condition.”
Despite it all, he has defied the odds to continue living.
When I wrote this, we thought this day might very well be his last.
When we woke up this morning, he refused to eat and he refused to drink. Unheard of for a lab.
We called an in-home agency, they had no room in their schedule for today, and you know what? THANK GOD FOR THAT.
He still surprises me.
Normally he will sleep several hours during the day at home. But, instead, we went for a 4-hour adventure to a park he hasn’t been to for several months. I wanted to give him his BEST DAY EVER.
It used to be he would walk next to me as I pushed my infant son in his stroller to go to this park, approximately 2 miles away, up and down rolling hills.
On this day, he got to ride in HIS stroller as I pushed him up and down these same rolling hills. We stopped as many times as he wanted to, so he could smell all the smells.
And, the whole time, as I’m wiping back tears, he just kept right on going. He watched the world go by, he looked happy.
He stopped and smelled some roses, and he looked content.
He looked like a dog who had the life he always wanted. A dog who had a loving, caring family, a family he has lived with for more than half of his life, where he knows we will NOT give up on him. Jack knows that the love he gives to us, he will get in return.
Jack has been a big part of our family for nearly 9 years. Jack was my first son.
It is clear that his time on this Earth is coming to a close. His body is giving up on him sooner than he is ready for it to, but even 17-year-old miracle dogs can ONLY live so long.
I’ve been beyond fortunate these last several years to have the calm eyes and ears of an amazing friend who is also a vet walk me through most of his ailments.
She is one of his biggest cheerleaders.
And, despite it all, he has defied the odds.
As far as we know, he has outlived nearly all of his family members (he’s a pure-bred lab and some of his relatives are AKC registered, we can track them — though we didn’t care whether or not he was purebred).
Every vet who has ever met him has called him a medical anomaly, the energizer dog, the dog that thinks he’s a cat, a miracle dog, a fighter.
So, I just want you to know, Jack, that we love you, we appreciate you, and we will MISS you so very, very much.
You keep me company when others are away. You were our son’s best friend during the pandemic when schools closed and he had no one his age to interact with.
Every moment of your 9 years with us we will remember and we will cherish. You have taught us how to be with family and to just appreciate that being. You have taught us to not hold grudges, and to forgive and to forget the past.
You have taught us that it doesn’t matter who you are, how much money you have (we could never get you that back yard), or what you look like; as long as you are treated well, that’s what counts.
You have taught us that it matters more to have a good and hearty meal, than that the meal is gourmet, because, I mean really, for nearly all of the 9 years we have had you, you have LOVED, and I mean LOVED, every bite of that same gruel we fed you 4 times each and every day, and never once (except for these past few weeks when you’ve been really ill) have you not been crazy excited to receive that same food.
And, that is OK. We will give you whatever you will eat these days.
You have also taught us that it’s OK to enjoy the finer things, when they DO come, when it IS their time.
You have taught us that it is OK to occasionally be picky but also to know when enough is enough.
I think too many people undervalue the lessons that dogs unwittingly teach us. To love without judgement. To stick by your people through thick and thin, to move on from a hurtful situation, and to know when enough is enough.
For these lessons, for your attitude towards life, and love, and even food, we will always love and appreciate you Jack Brown — the dark chocolate Labrador who stole our hearts all those years ago, and will take a huge chunk of them with you when you do finally cross that rainbow bridge.
Dana Ellis Hunnes PhD, MPH, RD is a professor at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health who adopted Jack Brown — Chocolate Labrador Retriever from the Southern California Labrador Retriever Rescue (SCLRR) in 2013. Dana lives in LA with her husband, son, and lab (until he gives up) and researches climate change, food security, and vulnerable populations. She is also the author of the upcoming book with Cambridge University Press: Recipe For Survival: What You Can Do to Live a Healthier and More Environmentally Friendly Life, Out January, 2022.
