Dog Years

Why Don’t I Know the Things You Know?

Rigby has a particular look that only happens on the Kenai River Flats, which is how I know it is his favorite place. He lights up there more than anywhere else. When Steve and I tuck into a blind or kneel down in our waders because ducks are flying, Rigby scans the sky, and when he recognizes a group of teal or a pair of mallards, his body spasms as if he has just caught sight of a miracle. He whips his head around and looks right smack into my eyes. His bright gold eyes – eyes as luminous as a thousand sunrises – make the briefest contact with mine before going back to the sky.

Sometimes Rigby sees the ducks first, and sometimes Steve or I see them first, kneel and say “Ducks.” Always, Rigby can tell the difference between the flight of seagulls and even snipe and the way ducks fly – their wingbeats like working heartbeats, quicker than a bird that swims across the sky in slow drafts (gulls) or darts in acrobatic and sometimes symbiotic drifts (snipe). All migrating waterfowl fly like they are going somewhere on purpose, and Rigby can spot it just as well as we can.

When the thought occurs to me that Rigby is 35 years old in human years – going by the idea that one dog year is the equivalent of seven human years or some other more modern equation – I struggle with believing the math and the assumptions behind it. Even with more scientific calculations – ones that talk about collecting genes and the evolution of the mammal from rodent-sized to fang bearing – that may be more precise, I still get the sense that I am measuring imaginary flowers in the air. I cannot make sense of computing animal years in terms of human years any better than I can lately accept that I am 47 years old. The whole concept of why the number we could come up with could possibly mean anything eludes me.

Even if I pick a number, I try to find a way not to believe it. My resistance may be because I prefer an equation that gives a little more joy than a dreaded countdown. What if, I wonder, dog years are worth more, not less, than the human. In unmeasured quality, one look – like the vision of love at first sight – might be worth more than 10,000 drives to work that leave you wondering what happened along the road. If the dog to human year ratio is 7:1, maybe the dog to human quality ratio is 1:7. If I was good at math, I could tell you the positive and the negative somehow cancel each other out, but I’m not, so I say it just feels like they might be the same thing only reversed.

The math may not work, but the idea is that it may be possible for a dog’s life to expand time rather than represent a fraction of our time. In any case, if you are like me and have seven dogs, one year is seven dog years.

In recent weeks, Rigby has changed from a dog who anxiously awaits breakfast to one who has moved his entire around-the-clock operation into the kitchen. Where he once sat next to the counter with his eyes fixed on whatever dish remained to be dispensed, he now camps out there. He even takes his naps in the kitchen, as if he has a sacred mandate to guard the source of all foods and snacks as well as be first in line when they are handed out. His excessive appetite – a side effect of medication – has made him obsessively hungry.

Since I have lived with a large variety of Labs and English setters, it has become clear to me how much more the Labs prize food than the setters. While the Labs often put food first, the setters have placed food somewhere below running wild and free in the mountains, a sincere show of affection, and the flight of a dragonfly at the corner of their vision. Labs have typically tried to catch in the air any object thrown toward their mouths without question. While the setters pick through their food and set outside the dish any items they do not prefer to eat.

Winchester was our first setter and, technically, the father – I use that term loosely, knowing it typically implies more than just biology when applied to humans and Winchester would certainly never win Father of the Year, but as it happened, he is related by ancestry, on the male side, to the five setters who are now twelve years old. This is due to a single interaction he had with Parker, who shortly afterward delivered her only litter of pups in our living room.

Although both Winchester and Parker have since passed away, they also passed on certain traits involving food.

Winchester cared little about eating and seemed only to eat what was absolutely necessary and only when there wasn’t anything better to do – he never took a treat in the field. He was looking for birds. If you made him stop for a break and offered him water or a snack, he looked at you as if you were either insane or an idiot.

Parker could tell you how she felt about food in one story that she quite possibly passed on to her children. She might say:

“Mom was standing in the kitchen making mac and cheese with ham. The three Labs were sitting close to her with drool hanging off their sloppy jowls. Mom cut up pieces of ham just for us. She threw one in the air and Cheyenne – the most shameless – caught it before it landed. Jack, another brown dog, missed catching his, but then ate it off the floor. Gunner also caught his. Then mom handed out ham to the five puppies – she always calls them ‘the puppies’ because that is their group name since they were born. Then she walked all the way outside on the porch to give Winchester a ham, and he didn’t even want it. When she got back inside, I sat up so she would notice me. When she finally did, she threw a piece of ham right at my face. It hit me in the forehead. I don’t know why mom was throwing ham at me. Maybe she is upset because I did something and I’ll never know what it was.”

I read somewhere that setters are the aristocrats of the bird dog world. They must never be shouted at or given a harsh word. You should not make commands like “Come!” which can sound overly harsh but should instead say, “Come along little darling.” The same advice could go for any of the neurotic breeds. What I read about Labs was that they are “genetically hungry,” and that humans have been considered in terms of dogs, to be “the Labradors of the primate world.” My experience makes no argument to the contrary.

Rigby turned out to be what dog trainer friends have called “food driven.” After he started taking prescription drugs, his natural hunger only intensified. He went from someone who loves food, to being something of a food-a-holic. He was doing things I had never seen him even attempt. The first was counter shopping. I think he would have tried this before if he had the physical capacity for it, but Rigby is a very large front-heavy English Lab, known to “walrus” himself onto furniture.

There is no other way to describe how he gets up on the couch but to say it is the way a walrus would do it. I have not found a word that uniquely describes how a walrus moves from a lower level to a higher one. Rigby swings slightly for momentum to gain a bit of upper body leverage, usually his elbows make it on the first pass. After that, he rolls from side to side, inching his way up until he can pull up his feet. His whole body is involved in the maneuver. He wouldn’t win any agility competitions.

Because his considerable bulk and locomotion style resembling that of his aquatic spirit mammal, I have affectionally called him “the Walrus” or my flippered buffalo. A setter could launch onto the counter the way a cat might do it, but for Rigby, it would be a personal record, lifetime achievement, and marvel of the civilized and domestic worlds combined.

The day before his appointment, Steve and I took Rigby to the Flats. It was the middle of the day, after most of the morning duck hunters had cleared out and the ducks along with them. Steve carried a shotgun, but we didn’t have decoys or a plan to set up anywhere for hours. Our purpose was to take Rigby to his favorite place to do his favorite thing (duck hunting). If he showed any signs that he didn’t have the energy, we would head back. We didn’t want him to try to retrieve any birds that would cause him to have to go into the deep mud of a slough or the outgoing tide. We ought not to have worried.

He ran ahead of us, swashing through grass and jumped a flock of teal that all flew away well out of the range of a shotgun. A lone widgeon remained, and it was clear this bird had been wounded and would not likely survive. Steve shot the widgeon and Rigby ran out to retrieve the bird. For the first time in his life, despite all his previous retrieves, it occurred to Rigby that a duck was food. It seemed that this realization came just as I was trying to take the widgeon from him and he tugged back. Our eyes locked in one of those numinous moments of connection when two species regard each other from opposing positions.

At his appointment with the vet oncologist, I reported on Rigby’s intense appetite. While we waited for his bloodwork results, I gave the uncharacteristic examples of extreme hunger: his post in the kitchen, the counter shopping feat, and the attempt to eat a duck on the retrieve. Just as I was wrapping up my case, we got the results. My fears that he was suffering from an insatiable appetite were replaced with tremendous relief. The bloodwork showed Rigby was responding well to treatment and going into remission.

I don’t know when the idea that a dog’s age can be determined in human years originated, but it might have stayed with us because there is some solace in measuring. This measuring might be considered a human weakness, since we do it in terms of what we already know.

What I have yet to figure out is infinite. (That’s a lot of dog years).

Rigby on the Kenai River Flats, September 20, 2025

“It’s up to us to save the world for tomorrow: it’s up to you and me”

Jane Goodall

(April 3, 1934 – October 1, 2025)