Meditations on a Senior Office Dog

July 9, 2026 Jason P. Hunt 340 Views 1 Comment

I think every dog has a story.

Alfie’s story intersects mine early in his life. The neighbor in our duplex decided to get a dog so she wouldn’t be lonely. But having never had a dog before, she hadn’t realized how much work it would be. Suddenly, this little Shih Tzu/Bichon mix was an inconvenience, and the neighbor (I can’t even remember her name now…) was ready to send him back to where he had been before. Only he’d been a hinderance and an inconvenience there, too.

So, of course we took him.

According to an old post on Facebook, it looks like we took him in sometime in 2012, and he was already (we guessed) two or three years old at the time. We never were able to determine for certain. Honestly, at first I didn’t want the dog. I knew my marriage was failing, and this would be just one more obligation to complicate things when the inevitable break-up happened.

But as dogs (and cats) are wont to do, Alfie grew on me, and by the time we were the only ones left in the house, we had a bond, one almost as strong as his bond with Chicken.

(He arrived at the house with a stuffed “rubber chicken” toy, and they were inseparable, so we never separated them.)

Alfie very quickly became part of the tribe, fitting in along with the rest of the animals we had, and over the years — as things go — he ended up being the last one around, and for a long while it was just the two of us. My marriage was over, and my son had been taken by his mother because it wasn’t a completely amicable split.

Which left me with the dog. Or left the dog with me.

The Shih Tzu and the Bichon are considered companion breeds, and Alfie has certainly been that. Most of the time, you’d find him curled up in his bed with Chicken near my desk while I worked. He became a fixture, and we settled into a routine that was only interrupted occasionally when he got loose and made his way across the State Line to Baskin-Robbins.

Back in those days, he loved car rides. He’d climb atop the back seat and lie down in the rear window area to look out around him as we travelled. Didn’t matter where we were going, if you said the word “car” he was at the front door standing on his hind legs and waving both front paws frantically in an attempt to communicate “now, please.”

And then we met the girl…

I started dating again just as a way to kill time, to have something to do. I wasn’t looking for anything serious, and so my online profile reflected that. Of course, I mentioned the dog and included a photo, along with my humble brag that I make a mean pizza. It was the combination of these two items that made Mindy look twice and decide to take a chance.

Once she was in my life, Alfie pretty much became her dog as much as he was mine. He even played nursemaid when Mindy was injured — more than once; some of you know the stories — and when we got married, she very quickly became his new person. That’s what happens when one of the humans awakens at an ungodly hour and feeds everyone breakfast.

As he got older, and as we began adopting other rescues, Alfie became known as “Senior Office Dog” and took his place on-camera during our live shows. Didn’t do much of course, because when you’re senior you pretty much sleep a lot, and that’s what he did. He even got his own show for a time, Daily Dose of Dog, with meditative music that played while viewers watched him sleep. We even jokingly threatened to set up an OnlyFans account for him (we didn’t).

And of course, with age came infirmity. First it was arthritis, then the cataracts, and eventually a touch of dementia. All of which caused him to start having anxiety to the point where he needed medication — wrapped in cheese, of course. It’s a rare thing for him to ever refuse cheese. As those things increased in severity, we knew over the past year or so, that the day was coming when we would have to make a decision.

Ironically, every time he came back from the groomers, he looked like he’d lost ten years, as his grey and silver had been trimmed back to solid black. He never looked old, until suddenly he did. It was in his gait, how he suddenly couldn’t walk very well and hardly ever in a straight line. His eyes were clouding over, most of his teeth were gone, and he had lost interest in Chicken. (That was heartbreaking for Mindy.)

We had also gotten to the point where he was “the sixteen-year-old dog with the twenty minute bladder” as I found myself on potty patrol most evenings between dinner and bedtime — and bedtime was earlier and earlier for the Old Man. He had his nest: my side of the bed, and for the last six months or so, I’ve been sleeping on the couch to keep him from being restless throughout the night, which happened more often than not whenever I moved him to his bed. It just became easier to let him have his spot.

And now it’s my spot again, and it feels a little strange. I have my evenings back, and it feels a little strange.

Oddly enough, on the other side of his passing, I find myself thinking about my own mortality more. Perhaps as I get older, more situations and events remind me that I’ve got more time behind me than in front of me, and I frequently catch myself contemplating the choices I’ve made in life and how they measure up to my relationship with God (short answer: not as good as I’d like).

It’s that concept of “forever” that catches me up short. We have a very finite amount of time here on Earth, and we spend a lot of that time bickering and fighting over inconsequential things with inconsequential people. As I near 60, I will very often move away from drama, especially the variety you find on the internet. Reality online is nothing like reality in the real world, but choices have consequences in both realms, and they all have an impact on the relationship one has with the Creator of the universe.

Scripture is pretty clear that there’s a distinction between man and animals. We both have spirit that gives us life, but only man has a soul that allows for free will. So I don’t expect to see Alfie or Peaches or Stubby or Dopey or Mozart running around in the afterlife. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. And that’s a hard idea that becomes more uncomfortable as I get closer to my own last days. Not because I’ll never see them again, but because I start to think about that “forever” element again, and I start to second-guess and criticize myself as I contemplate the afterlife.

Can I do better? Yes. Will I do better? I try. I still make some choices that aren’t the best ones, but more often than not I’m making the attempt to at least get some of it right. And in the meantime, we have these animals that give us opportunities to be better people, to put into practice that whole “be kind” concept. Because maybe by being kind to our pets, we can get into the habit of being kind to our fellow man. Because right now, we sure could use a lot more of that.