We hear so much about puppys and adolescents, but it's rare to focus on seniors — in this episode, that's exactly what we do. We take a deep dive into what it means to live with and love our dogs in their golden years. 

 Transcription

Melissa Breau: This is Melissa Breau, and you're listening to the Fenzi Dog Sports podcast brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, an online school dedicated to providing high quality instruction for competitive dog sports using only the most current and progressive training methods. Today I have Dr. Deb Jones, Dr. Jennifer Summerfield, and Julie Symons here with me to talk about living with and loving senior dogs and chat about the upcoming one day conference on September 14 on senior dogs. Hi, all. Welcome back to the podcast.

All: Hi, Melissa. Thank you. Hi, Melissa. Hello. Glad to be here.

Melissa Breau: Awesome. All right, hi all. To start us off, guys, just want to remind listeners briefly a little bit about each of you and kind of your current canine crew. Maybe give everyone a sense of whose voice belongs to who. Jen, you want to start us off?

Jennifer Summerfield: Sure. I'm Jennifer. So howdy.

Melissa Breau: Howdy.

Jennifer Summerfield: I, at the moment, I have two dogs. I have Gatsby, who is my older dog, who will be eleven in November. So not quite, I don't consider him a senior quite yet, but he's definitely getting into the neighborhood, I suppose. Gosh, that's hard to believe. And then my younger dog is Jesse, who is three years old. I did just lose my old man, Remy earlier this year, who was 15 and a half. So he definitely, I have him in mind when with a lot of the topics that we're going to be talking about with senior dogs.

Melissa Breau: Yeah. Deb, you want to go next?

Deb Jones: Sure. I'm Deb Jones, and right now I only have three dogs in our household, which is small for us. We have Wizard, who is the Koolie, who is three. So he's still considered the baby because he's the youngest.

And Pixel Sheltie is six. And then Tigger, the other sheltie is eight. So Tigger's the oldest, but I don't consider him old yet. We actually have that argument going on about old and oldest, and I just lost my two oldest dogs. Not that long. It doesn't seem that long ago. Star, a few months ago, she was 13, border collie. And then the year before, I lost Zen at 14, also border collie. So I've almost always had old dogs in the house for like the last two decades. And it's very strange to not have an old dog in the house at the moment.

Melissa Breau: All right, Julie, what about you? I actually have a new addition, a three month old belgian tervuren. And all the way up to 16 and a half, I have Savvy who is, I would say, starting to, I would really say starting to age and decline same as what you guys said.

Everybody's, as always said, she's looked two to three years younger than she was, than she is. And then in the middle, I have almost six year old Terv and an almost nine year old Malinois. I think the last talk that I had with Melissa, she's like, I think it's time that you're supposed to be getting a puppy. And then I got a puppy that wasn't planned at the time.

We talked about that, Melissa, but it actually is very interesting having the two ends of the spectrum. I'm picking up poop from both of them. Each of them don't have the right eye coordination of tossing treats. They're very similar, which I found very interesting with the puppy and the older dog. And also, like I said earlier, she's just been really young at heart. And I'm just still hoping to do all the sports with this current puppy, maybe focus a little bit more on a few of them versus all of them, but they're all keeping me really, really busy.

Melissa Breau: I bet. All right, before we dive too much into chatting, would each of you care to share just a bit about your topic for the conference and maybe give us an idea of what you're going to cover? Deb, you want to go first?

Deb Jones: Okay, sure. I get to talk about cooperative care for senior dogs, so since that's one of my favorite topics, and I'm focusing on the kinds of changes that happen as dogs age.

So for their physical needs as well as changes in terms of the grooming needs that they're likely to have. So the physical problems that are more common and predictable, like, your dog's probably going to have to take more medications as they age. And if you haven't taught them how to take pills yet, it would be a good idea to do it before you need it. The fact that they're going to need more regular blood draws and regular vet visits, older dogs have fun things like more UTIs. And so I talked a little bit about how to train for those kinds of collections. That sounds lovely, doesn't it? So all of that. So I go over a lot of the things that will make them more comfortable, hopefully, with their physical care as they continue getting older. So that's the focus of my presentation.

Melissa Breau: Important stuff. Julie, what about you?

Julie Symons: So I was nodding my head during everything that Deb just said because I can relate to all of that. Right. And I'm lucky that I've been able to put pills in my dog's throat right now. She lets me brush her comb or clean her up when needed. And she's pretty stoic with the vet. So that's actually been, you know, you don't realize it till then, till later on how much that stuff's important. Deb, so I'll be looking forward to some more of what you're going to share.

So my topic is scent games for cognitive enrichment. I'm just drawing on a lot of the scent sports that I do with my dogs, tracking, nose work, and handler scent stuff. And I was able to get a couple of my friends together with senior dogs last weekend, and we had fun putting, playing some of the games and getting some videos for that. And, you know, when I thought about it, I have done a lot of stuff along the way just naturally.

Like, after I would go tracking with my younger dogs, I would let Savvy, my older dog, come out while I picked up the flags, and she would go find all the leftover, you know, treats and food on the track that my dogs didn't find. And I was always amazed at how she would just be taking the turns and following the tracks just like she did. She had a TDX in her tracking career.

And then, of course, any of the nose work handler scent stuff is able to keep that pretty localized, and you can do that more frequently, and it just keeps them very mind active and maybe even get them a little tired. Because I'll tell you what, Savvy does not sleep very much at night. She does, but I don't know why she doesn't sleep more during the day.

But any of that stuff is also just going to let them restore and kind of get their fill of the, you know, of their activities. The other thing I will say is I'm going to definitely cover the benefits of novelty newness. I think our old dogs have a very small world, and that's one of the focus of my presentation, is to remember, you know, what can you do that gets them out to new places, try new things?

Because we've had so many years with them when we did all that kind of new adventures and going to places. And I do feel that they really do miss that once they start to slow down. Of course, they're not going to get the same amount, but I think we can't just, you know, leave them to stay at home and not continue to give them little bits of their previous career activity.

Melissa Breau: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's important to make sure we're still including them in some way that's, you know, age appropriate and dog appropriate kind of depending on what their unique skills are or, or kind of were when they were younger. Jen.

Jennifer Summerfield: So I am going to be covering age related cognitive dysfunction issues in older dogs. So basically kind of what a lot of people tend to think of, kind of colloquially as dementia.

It's an interesting topic because, of course, it is a really common problem in a lot of older dogs. And it also is very analogous to Alzheimer's disease, specifically in humans, as far as the actual molecular changes that are happening in the brain. And it actually kind of works as a model for Alzheimer's disease in people, which is kind of a cool thing. So we're going to talk about what we know about what causes it, which obviously is still a little bit murky.

Signs and symptoms to watch for things that you might start to notice in your dog as they get older. That could be an indication that they're struggling with that. And we're going to talk a fair amount about the different treatment options that are out there in terms of medication, but also supplements and prescription diets, some things that do have some science behind them, which is kind of cool.

And then I was planning to touch a little bit on kind of management and environmental modifications that can help make life easier for these guys and the role of mental stimulation and helping out, but probably won't go super in depth on those because I know those will probably be covered pretty well by a lot of other folks in the conference. But, yeah, it's a cool topic and I'm excited to talk about it.

Melissa Breau: Awesome. Thank you all. The conference sounds like it's going to be absolutely excellent. So let's dive a little more into kind of talking about those, the senior citizens. Right. So when exactly, you know, does a senior dog earn what's commonly referred to, I guess, as old dog privilege? What does that look like in your house? When do they typically earn that?

Julie Daniels: Julie, you want to start us off? Yeah, it's a tough one because, you know, if you're in like a dog breed club, you know, they consider veterans, I think, starting at like eight. And, you know, I always found it depends on the breed, of course, like an eight year old Great Dane is going to be definitely a senior, but my dogs are usually at their prime when they're at their eight. So I was thinking about this and I would say my dogs didn't, I didn't see decline until around twelve.

So that's what I saw with my dogs. But of course, it's very, very different. But it was basically senior privileges. We probably, when I ended up just probably more so when I find that they need to be retired from some other sports. So that's when they get, you know, some different privileges that the other dogs don't get because, you know, they're staying home more. They're not going out as much, but usually they're still pretty, pretty, you know, cognitively obviously very cognitively aware and very active and they want to still do stuff with other dogs.

So it's a hard line for me to draw because I've been so fortunate. My previous dog Rival lived to 16 as well, and I remember she was pretty active up till, you know, around 13, and then she definitely had, you know, I think, 13, 14. And then definitely I saw the old aging there. But for me, it's probably a little bit older than some other people might be seeing with their dogs or consider it being, you know, old age privileges.

Melissa Breau: Yeah. Jen.

Jennifer Summerfield: Yeah, it is hard, I think, to decide specifically where to draw that line. And of course it's going to be somewhat individual. I have shelties, also another relatively small breed. So I tend to be thinking of kind of early teens, I guess, is when I start to really think of my guys as seniors. And I agree with Julie that a lot of times it does seem like it kind of coincides with around the same time that I'm retiring them from the sports, they're doing sometimes there's a little bit of overlap there where we may still be doing the sports a little bit, but not really with any particular goals in mind.

Yeah, I know with Remy, he competed in agility up until he was twelve or twelve and a half or so. But the last year or so that we did agility, I had my younger dogs that were kind of competing a little bit more seriously. And with Remy, we just kind of, we didn't care really much if he qualified or not or he just got to have his turns because he enjoyed them.

So, yeah, I think a lot of it is tied in with that for sure, as far as what it looks like. Right. You know, what does old dog privilege look like? I know with Remy, like while we were still doing his, his sports and things with agility, he got to break his start line whenever he wanted to, which is something that with my younger dogs, I'm really super particular about that.

You know, by the time Remy was twelve or twelve and a half, I didn't, you know, I just let go of him and he took off and it was fine. I can keep up with him a little better anyway because he slowed down so yeah, I didn't care about that. And I kind of stopped holding him to his contact criteria so he could just kind of, if he bailed, it was no big deal.

We just kind of hoped for the best on the contacts, and if he didn't feel like doing his weave polls, then we just didn't do the weave polls and that was fine. So. Yes, sport type stuff, definitely. We tend to relax the criteria a fair amount. I think, around the house, you know, the biggest things that probably were different for him the last couple of years, you know, he would have trouble with stairs and getting up and off and off and on of the couch and the bed and things like that.

So, you know, if he would kind of stand close to it and give me the look, you know, I would lift him, I would carry him up and down the stairs and he was cool with that. And, you know, he gets kind of. He got kind of preferential access to those areas. You know, sometimes my dogs, they're not big snugglers with each other. So usually if somebody's in the area, you know, on the bed or on the couch, it's like, oh, well, the others don't really want to be up there necessarily. So if Remy wanted up there, then sometimes the others just had to move, you know? So, yeah, I would say those were probably the biggest changes around my house.

Melissa Breau: Yeah. What about you?

Deb Jones: I think I have to agree with everybody that twelve is somehow that magic age that defines senior for me. And I wondered if it has a lot to do with breed or type of dog. It probably does, but I've had mostly herding dogs.

I've had shelties, border collies, papillons as well. And twelve seems to be when you start to see a difference, when you start to see them slow down a little bit or change in some way, though I also think it depends on their physical health, because as soon as I see those signs that maybe there's a little bit of physical decline or there's an illness or an injury or an issue, then all of a sudden I'm like, okay, everything's out the window.

You can do whatever. You can do whatever you want now. So Zen was probably about eleven when he was diagnosed with a pretty serious heart issue. And they told me that dogs with this usually only live about a year. He lived to 14 and a half, I think, because he spent all those years doing whatever the heck he wanted. And he took pretty good advantage of it, though.

His personality was just fairly easygoing and happy anyway. But he still took advantage of it. He did what he wanted, when he wanted, whatever. I never argued with him about anything he wanted to do, if he wanted to bark. That's the thing I really didn't like. But sometimes I just wanted to bark and there was no reason. We're just going to stand here and bark for a while.

Like, I kind of like it, but hey, what the heck? So those kinds of things I try to loosen up on a lot when they're younger. I'm like on top of stuff and it's like, no, we all have to live in a certain way and we have to get along and I have to, we all have to be comfortable. But at that point it's like, yeah, you do what you want, you do you, and we'll all manage around you somehow or the other as you get older.

Melissa Breau: I like that. I think a lot of the times, you know, life changes from puppy to adolescent and adolescent to adult kind of get a lot of focus in the dog world. But what changes do you guys usually see as your dog's transition from just a healthy adult to that kind of senior status? Jen? Yeah, I would say that probably the biggest things that I tend to really notice in my own, um, you know, pet dogs.

Obviously, I might have a slightly different answer just from a veterinary standpoint with client dogs, but my own dogs, um, for sure, we start to see issues with things like hearing and vision as they get older and that, you know, I felt like with Remy, those were some of the things I really started to notice as he got to be about twelve and a half or 13 was um, he didn't hear very well.

By the time he actually passed away at 15 and a half, I don't think he was completely deaf he could hear my dog Gatsby barking, which, I mean, to be fair, like probably people in the next county can hear Gatsby barking. So that's, you know, the bar is low and there were a few other small things like that. But other than that, he really didn't hear much at all.

And a lot of older dogs will start to get cataracts or other types of vision problems. And I think that's something that often we really notice with older dogs is that they, you know, they just don't really respond as much to the environment around them because it's harder for them to perceive what's going on. Sometimes they just have those sensory definitions, deficits that come with age. And I think, you know, at least with my own dogs, I've always noticed you can really tell, you know, around that twelve or 13 year mark when they start to slow down and they start to just not really be assure of themselves, you know, as far as their coordination and their ability to kind of, you know, jump and climb and do things that were really easy for them when they were younger. So I think those, I guess, in terms of physical changes, are probably the biggest things.

Melissa Breau: Julie?

Julie Symons: Yeah, definitely the same things that you notice. You start paying attention to their vision and their hearing. And I noticed it was when they couldn't see as well and when it got dark. And I also noticed that she, Savvy, had a hard time eating the food out of her bowl. So I'd actually make sure I turn the light on in the room.

She was eating. She had light, but I would turn on more light. And I've actually, more recently, have had to kind of hand feed some of her food because it just takes her for able to have the dexterity to eat it, actually. And then I've actually been taking her to some acupuncture. Not acupuncture, chiropractic adjustments, and it's made a huge amount of difference. It wasn't as much the darkness, but just she had a vestibular event a couple years ago, so her head's a little tilted, so she couldn't see while going down the steps.

Believe it or not, she sees pretty good for 16 and a half, I would say. She has selective hearing, but can hear a little bit. And she barks more like, she never used to bark when she was just waiting in the crate. But if I take her now with me, with the other dog, she just is like a metronome barking because I don't think she can hear as well or not much at all.

And so she sees things and she's not sure what's going on, but she'll just kind of just non stop, like, just metronome barky. But it was really cool, though, once I had some of those adjustments, she was, like, zipping down the stairs, like, no problem, but it just kind of comes back, right, until she needs another adjustment. But, you know, just the physical. The physical changes her, you know, not being able to move as well.

The flooring is hard. She's losing muscle mass, so she's gripping, her toenails are gripping the floor to, like, walk. So I have, like, mats and stuff all over the house for her to walk. But then other days, she, you know, she doesn't have as hard of a time with that. So you definitely see those, those physical changes. But, you know, it doesn't even seem to bother her. I think it bothers, you know, me the most seeing her going through that because she so much wants to keep up with all the dogs.

But those are, I think, some of the more, you know, the typical. But the barking, I wasn't something I had seen before. The metronome. Barking, just barking, barking, barking. Maybe trying to be heard, trying to be seen. And then that, being able to eat her food as well out of her, out of her bowl. And then, of course, the vision and the hearing isn't a problem, but the vision, obviously, is hard.

Deb Jones: Yeah, I'd say it always seems sudden to me. It's like my dogs are young and healthy, and I get it in my mind that they're going to be this way forever. And then, you know, I'm not paying attention maybe, or I don't notice. But then all of a sudden, it's like, oh, they're really getting old. When did this happen? Because I think when we see them from day to day, we don't see the small changes that are going on.

And all of a sudden, it usually, for me, it takes some big event for me to realize, hey, this dog really is getting older. And now I have to start doing all of these adjustments, you know, the kinds of things that you guys have already talked about, like turning on more lights so they can see better, raising up the dish so they don't have to bend down to eat, because I think it probably bothers their spine to bend forward a little bit or be problematic.

But it. With Star, that, who I just lost not too long ago, she had a vestibular incident, which I know is a very common thing. But she had one early in the year, and it was like that said to me, oh, she's not bulletproof. She seemed like she was just going to go on for a long, long time and be a very healthy dog into her old age.

But that just started then, kind of a chain of events that she never really recovered from. And so I think sometimes it's a real sudden thing and you realize, oh, they really are this age. They really are older now, and things can maybe maintain for a while, or sometimes they surprise us in a bad way and go faster than we want them to because I still see star in my mind as young and active and healthy because it was pretty quick from the first time she had an incident to the time that we lost her.

But then, as I said, with Zen, like years, it's like this dog's gonna live forever. I don't care what they say about his heart. It's never gonna end. So it's always different for me, but it still always surprises me, no matter what, that they're actually getting older. And I've been through enough generations of dogs by now that I probably shouldn't be so surprised by it yet. I still am.

Melissa Breau: Yeah. So how does that senior status impact what you kind of do with your dogs? Maybe how you structure their days or their lives? Deb?

Deb Jones: I don't know that it changes a whole lot. I mean, my dogs follow me around all day. Whatever I'm doing is including going to the bathroom, as we all know. You're doing it with dogs. They're there, they follow you. I do try to give them.

The older dogs get first choice at everything. They get their treats first. They get the best of everything. Sometimes they get the things no other dogs get, which is like a big deal that you get treated very differently. So I try to loosen up as many restrictions on them as I can and just let them do whatever the heck they can that will make them happy, you know, even that, just make them momentarily happy.

And I try to loosen up most of my structure that I have over how dogs ought to act in my house, and again, let them kind of do the things that they want to do. I try to keep them involved in things and try to keep them active, but remembering how active can they be and be comfortable, because I've had dogs with arthritis a lot, too, and so I want to make sure that I'm not pushing them too hard along that and still doing a little bit of training.

My dogs just all love to train, so it would be a punishment to them if they didn't get a little bit of training every day, even if it's as simple as doing some treat toss games so that they move around a little bit and they feel like they're working for their food instead of just giving it to them. I like that. Julie?

Julie Symons: Yeah. So definitely some changes I've made because of the stairs and worrying about her falling and how difficult it is to get her up and down.

So for 16 plus years, she's always slept up with us upstairs. My dog's all sleep in our bedroom, so it was really hard. Two times I've had to do this when I had a little baby, when my 20 year old son was a baby, and I was like, why isn't my dog Rival, my beloved Rival, not sleeping upstairs? Because she didn't like the baby and I was finally, as a new mom, I was like, I'm exhausted.

It's great that she's just downstairs. So I don't have two of them, but I've always just had my dogs up with me. So the last couple months, I've just left Savvy downstairs, and I bought her one of these cool blankets that when they lay on it, it just feels cool to the touch because she does pants a lot. You know, it's been hot this summer, and even though we have air conditioning, it just seems really hot sometimes in the house or sticky.

So it's. But I think it's working out well. The other day, she was upstairs, and we like, oh, she got upstairs because we used to put the gate up, but I figured she never really wanted to go up the stairs. But one day a week or so ago, she was upstairs visiting us, you know, so that's one of the changes I made. And the cool blanket. And then I do often take her on some long trips when I go, before I got the puppy, when I was still going to some trips with nosework trials and stuff, I would take her.

And, you know, often some of my friends would say, oh, it's, you know, too bad you can't leave her home. Well, I could leave her home, but she enjoyed it. You know, she loved going to the hotels. She traveled. Sometimes the traveling was a little hard for her, but I always realized when I got home that extra work that I had to do to walk another dog, to get him in out of the car, to make sure they didn't, you know, stay in the car for too long and got out and stuff during the long days of the dog show.

But I realized she was getting the novelty. She was getting to new places, she was going out and adventures, because if I had left her home, she would have just slept and ate three meals or two meals a day for the time I was gone. So it enriched her life. I felt it wasn't too hard for her. It was more hard for me. It was more work for me.

But that's when I felt like, yeah, I might kind of, like, drive it kind of a little bit because it is more work. It was the right. It was great for her. So those are some of the things I made sure to do with her, to include her.

Melissa Breau: Jen?

Jennifer Summerfield: Yeah. I think I would agree with a lot of what Deb and Julie have said as far as sort of adjustments just to kind of the daily routine around the house.

So definitely things like, you're getting extra carpet runners and mats and things just to help with traction, because that was something that Remy had a lot of trouble with the last year or two was just. My house is mostly hardwood floors, so that's. That gets to be hard for older dogs and things like you leaving a nightlight on at night more than I might have been inclined to otherwise.

Because for sure, a lot of the older dog vision issues are more noticeable when it's dark. And he would sometimes get a little bit confused if he would want to get up in the middle of the night and go down the hall to the bathroom for a drink or something like that. And the food bowl, for sure. I did switch to feeding him in a different location where he could actually stand on, like, an area rug to eat because I noticed it was hard for him to, like, stay upright on the hardwood floor and also kind of lean forward to the bowl.

So I moved that, and then I had, like, a folded up towel I would put his bowl on so that it raised it up, but kind of had some traction so it didn't just slide away from him because he did start to have trouble with them just kind of corralling the food in the bowl to be able to eat it. So small things like that that I think you notice, like, the little things they're struggling with that you could just change something small to make it easier.

And then as far as, you know, other sorts of, you know, kind of daily activities and things, I guess some of that sort of comes back to some of the old dog privilege kind of stuff. But, you know, he. Remy always got to ride shotgun in the car if I was taking all three of the dogs somewhere. The other two had their crates in the back, but he got the front seat.

And my dogs, for the most part, go to work with me every day unless I'm going out on house calls or something like that. And normally the routine is, you know, we would come in through the back door and we might, you know, they might have a chance to kind of say a quick hello to some of the texts and things while I was putting my purse down and all that.

But then they have their crates in a little separate room off the treatment area, and that's where they go. And the last year or so of Remy's life, when we would come in and usually one of the technicians would kind of whisk him away from me as I was coming in. And while I was putting the other two dogs away, they would be, like, feeding him random things out of the refrigerator.

People would share part of their bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit with him, or they would get him a cheese stick and feed him the entire cheesesteak. So he always got kind of an extra special treat. Sometimes we would just let him hang out and wander around if it was slow. Where the other dogs are always crated, you know, so small things like that that you can kind of upgrade them a bit to the more privileged experience.

Melissa Breau: I love that. I love that way of thinking of it, too, where the older dogs, they just get the privileges that everybody else maybe doesn't. We upgrade it for them. What about tips and tricks or maybe even favorite activities just for continuing to ensure that your senior dogs are leaving, leading enriching lives, like just ensuring that they're getting that little bit of extra stuff. Julie?

Julie Symons: Yeah, we've kind of talked a little bit. That and some other questions and answers. One thing that I definitely make sure Savvy does is she gets to go on a walk with one of my friend's dogs who's a senior. So I'll take her, just her out on a walk with a friend's dog, and she gets to, you know, walk out to me, to the building to lock it up, which I have to do that tonight or clean up.

Sometimes she gets to come with me for that because she can just be off leash and just kind of wander around. Although I have to say, I took her out off leash night. She didn't have her collar on, and she just had her thruster collar on. And I saw the deer run down the driveway, and I stopped. So they ran away into the woods, and then. So I continued on.

She caught wind of their scent and took off. You guys, this is, like two weeks ago. And she's, like, in my yard, though. But she's, like, zigging and I can't catch her. This is a 16 and a half year old dog, and I can't. And I'm afraid she's going to go into the woods because she was the only one of my dogs that unfortunately got rehearsed chasing deer when she was younger, and I thought for sure she was going to find where they went into the woods.

But anyway, so, like, she gets the extra walks to go get the mailbox, things like that. And I probably answering one of the other previous questions is I don't rush her when she's sniffing. You know, like, you're, like, they say you should stop and smell the rose in the flowers that don't bother your dog. Let them sniff. But she is the one that I say you can sniff as long as you want.

I'm not in any rush, but just some other things to keep her. Again, kind of enriching lives is when I do have to leave her home, I scatter a bunch of kibble on under her table with her cooling blanket. She gets more cookies than the other dogs. That's kind of the privilege that I didn't really talk about. But I do let her, you know, just kind of, you know, do some of these snippet games, because she does remember it.

And it's only been very recently where I feel like she is starting to be just a little too old for some of the actual sport work. Like the little fun, easy stuff. But again, I think the number one thing that I would just continue to say is the novelty. Getting her out to new places, just taking her for rides in the car. And I'll tell you, getting her a new puppy was also a very fun thing.

You know, when she was younger, I was always a little worried about her. She was never dog reactive, but she would be on the spectrum of a herding breed and something moving fast. And I'll tell you, she is the sweetest old dog. Sweetest with all dogs now, and especially puppies. And that's why I got my boy Drac at the time I did, because I thought she's not going to get along with the female dog.

I got Moxie and totally loved her and has this new girl puppy, and she's great with it and she's great with it. So I guess that would be something you guys can do, is get a puppy for your. For your senior dog. Highly recommended. You guys. You guys heard that advice here first. It might be a little extreme, but I love it.

Melissa Breau: What about you, Deb?

Deb Jones: Well, I agree totally about the idea of getting out in novel places and taking walks and just letting them sniff as much as they want to sniff.

It always seems to me like once their eyesight and their hearing start to go, then their sense of smell becomes kind of their major one. A major and important one. So I would put Zen on a long line so I could catch him because he couldn't hear me and I don't know if he couldn't see me or he just didn't pay attention anymore. But I could see, stand there and wave my arms all I wanted.

And he wasn't going to respond like he used to when he was younger. So I would get him out to some of the places that it was safe to let him explore. And one place that I stayed in North Carolina, a huge field, but all fenced in, except for one tiny little spot by the building that we went in through that you would not think a dog would ever find.

I turn around and I'm letting Zen, Wander, Star and wizard are out there running around. We're all enjoying being outdoors. And all of a sudden, Zen is gone. And I'm like, he couldn't have gotten out of the field. I'm just like, he could not have gotten out of this field. And by the time I searched it totally, he had. He had apparently found the one little spot, wandered down the big driveway into the road across the street.

This is way out in the country. Thank goodness the mail carrier found him. And I had my number on his collar. Luckily, it called. And this is like a 14 year old dog who's just having the time of his life. But how he got so far away from me, without me know, I will never know how he found his way out of there and how he got away so fast so far.

So that kind of scared me. And after that, I actually taught Star to go get his leash and bring it to me because if she had his leash, then she had him. So she would kind of drag him back to me. And she was really good at that. She got very good at that game of finding Zen and bringing him back to me. But I still am like, well, you had a good day. He scared me to death. But you had a great day with that. That was all kinds of new fun stuff.

Melissa Breau: Love it, Jen?

Jennifer Summerfield: Yeah. I do think that in a lot of cases, we can come up with modified versions of activities that they've enjoyed. You know, as far as training, you're going for walks or that kind of thing. I know with Remy, I, you know, if I was doing training stuff with the other dogs, I would try to make sure that he got a turn as well.

And even if there wasn't obviously anything specific we were working on for any particular reason, you can just do something easy that he likes, that he knows how to do, and he can get some cookies for that. So we would do a lot of that kind of thing. I agree that I think scent oriented stuff like sniffing games and things can be really, really good for older dogs, especially because their other senses are not as good as they used to be.

And oftentimes they just are nothing able to do active games as well as they used to be, like fetch or running and chasing things that they might have enjoyed previously. So, yeah, we would do treat scatters in the grass outside and things like that sometimes for Remy, which he really seemed to like. So I think those are all, those are good ideas for a lot of senior dogs that maybe can't do the kind of stuff they used to, but you can find things that they still do.

Like they can still go for little short leash walks on their own and smell things. They can still find pieces of kibble in the grass or they can still set up in heel position and not sit if they don't want to and just get some cookies for that because who cares?

Melissa Breau: I love it. So far, we've definitely reinforced the idea that they should get an upgraded experience and that it's perfectly fine to reduce your criteria and just kind of enjoy your seniors a little bit more.vAll right, guys, any final thoughts or maybe key points that you guys want to kind of leave listeners with, with Jen? You want to go first?

Jennifer Summerfield: So, yeah, I think for me, probably the biggest, you know, if I were to kind of sum up what I notice about, like, myself and, and how the way that I relate to my older dogs changes once they hit that sort of senior status is, I think it just, you know, nothing.

You don't really have goals anymore in the same way, you know, like, so much of what we do with sport dogs is, you know, we have training goals that we're working on or we have competition goals and, you know, once you hit that twelve or 13 mark, it's like, you know, I don't think, think we're going to get another poc, you know, and that's all right, you know, so there's not really, you know, it's sort of freeing in a way because, you know, you, you just don't, you know, it's a different outlook, I guess, on what you're trying to accomplish.

So it really does become much more just about like, hey, what can we do that he's going to have a good time doing in terms of training and also in terms of like, you know, still running him some in competition but with very loose, relaxed criteria. And I really, you know, didn't care a single bit if we queued or not, you know, because that was the point. What difference did it make if you had one more cue and, you know, in terms of just things around the house, I think kind of making peace with, like, it's okay if they're a brat at this point, right?

You know, you spend the first, like ten or twelve years of your dog's life trying to make sure they have manners and then you just don't care anymore once they're twelve or 13, it's like, well, he might climb into your dinner plate. I'm sorry. That just happens sometimes. He might snatch the bacon, egg and cheese biscuit right out of your hand if you're not watching, and that's just a risk that you take. I'm sorry. So, yeah, I guess that's probably the biggest way that I would sum up the difference that I see in relating to my guys as they get older.

Melissa Breau: I love that. Deb. I think to bring it back around a little bit for me to the idea of cooperative care work, that's the one place where I think we don't want to let up on what we do because we're going to need. They're going to need so much physical care because every time we take them to the vet, every time they get hurt, if they have any illness. I want my dogs to be incredibly comfortable being handled in a huge variety of ways, and that's something we can always work on and continue to work on. And the good thing, I think, is that it doesn't matter what you do in terms of cooperative care as long as you do something, because it has this really marvelous carryover effect where even though I didn't work on that thing, because they're so used to people doing weird stuff handling you, they're just like, oh, fine.

They're going to do this other weird thing to me where they hold me and turn me this way and look in my eye and whatnot, and they're like, yeah, people do that. So I still want them to feel like that stuff happens and that stuff's going to continue to happen because I think it can make their lives so much more comfortable when they don't have the stress and anxiety around being handled.

So to me, that's the one place where I don't necessarily let up. I do. Again, criteria can be pretty low. You let me touch you, you get a handful of cookies. Good job. We're done. But keep it up. Keep up the work, because it will pay off on down the line.

Melissa Breau: Julie?

Julie Symons: Yeah. I wanted to mention something. There wasn't quite a question for this, but I did talk to Deb about this because both of our dogs had an anal gland tumor when they were older and a year ago.

This week is when I decided to have an anal gland tumor, cancerous tumor, removed from Savvy's analysis, one of her anal glands, and she's a year, a year later. And who would have thought at 15 and a half that I would have made that decision? But it was hard. But she was. Age is a number. And for her, she was very vibrant. And I remember talking to Deb about it because she had gone through that, and she did share that it was, you know, a lot.

It was. It was. It was a lot for her dog, I believe, the bouncing back and that kind of a thing. And I will say that, you know, she had to go on for a lot of, you know, anal exams and things like that. And she luckily, usually, you know, went back, went back without me to have some of those, you know, exams done. And it was harder on me.

I will just distribute it to this. This dog. She's very stoic. And nothing really did seem to bother her much, but it was exhausting for me. But I'm glad I made the decision, but I had no idea how much more time I was going to get. And I wasn't even trying to get more time with her because I was happy with a dog living 15 and a half, but literally, you could see her how she was a year ago.

She was going on hour and a half walks a couple times a week. She's pretty amazing that she's had that surgery last year, and I think because of her ability to handle that type of treatment and going to vets and being touched and stuff really, really made that possible. And, you know, thanks, Deb, for talking me through that last year. But the thing that I would just like to leave people with is, you know, the old dog taught me to slow down.

If anybody knows how much I try to do. I joked with somebody the other day that we were talking about superpowers, and I said, my superpower is I have more than 24 hours in a day, but it's starting to. Starting to kill me right now. So the old dog, and it's not just because the puppy, but even before the puppy, I was like, they just really want to be with us, right?

So for me to make decisions to go somewhere where she's not with me for a length of time, I know affects her life. And, of course, I have a life, too. I have to go do stuff, but I don't have to keep the pace up that I normally do. And I have to tell you, I am not missing going on the road and going to trials. I'm really not.

I'm really enjoying being home. And there's other stuff that I'm able to, you know, you know, use my time doing. So that's just something else. Just that they help you kind of slow down and. And not rush through life. You know, you can stop and sniff a little longer, so I like that.

Melissa Breau: What a beautiful note to kind of end things on. Thank you all so much for coming on the podcast.

All: Oh, thanks. Thank you for having me. Yeah, thanks a lot. I'm looking forward to the conference. Oh, me too.

Melissa Breau: And thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week. Don't miss it. If you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available.

Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty free by bensound.com. The track featured here is called Buddy. Audio editing provided by Chris Lang. Thanks again for tuning in and happy training.

 Credits

Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by BenSound.com; the track featured here is called "Buddy." Audio editing provided by Chris Lang.

Thanks again for tuning in -- and happy training!