He doesn’t zip up and down the stairs. He can’t go on long walks. And he’d prefer a nap to a game of fetch. But as Anupama Srini will have you know, there’s no expiry date when it comes to love. “He’s our first senior dog,” she says of Sprite, a 10-year-old German Shepherd she adopted six months ago.
She observes that it’s always the old cats and dogs that get overlooked in adoption drives, though they are as deserving of a family. “Adopting him was an on-the-spot decision,” she recalls.
She brought home Sprite, a retired police dog, who was later found to have the wisdom of an old man and the optimism of a puppy. She calls him a ‘grateful presence’ and likens him to an 80-year-old relative who asks for nothing and yet finds endless ways to tell her he appreciates her. While he was initially upset and disoriented after coming to his new owner’s house, it took fewer than 10 days for him to realise that this was home.
“One evening, he started following me around,” says Srini, mimicking the ‘tip, tip’ sound of his fingernails on the floor as he crept up behind her. She recalls turning around and gently asking ‘what?’ to which Sprite responded by making puppy eyes, saying nothing. “He wasn’t asking for food,” she says. “He was asking ‘Are you my human?’ I petted him and said, ‘Yes, I am your human!’”
Srini shrugs off the misconceptions people have about adopting aged animals, mostly relating to the fear of the animal not bonding with an owner who didn’t raise him from birth.
“We project our own human misconceptions onto animals,” she laughs. “Once you establish trust, age doesn’t matter.” She adds that it is deeply satisfying to provide a safe haven for an older animal, knowing that they only have a few years left in this world.
She speaks of Sprite’s gentle nature, and of how he is as welcoming of human visitors as he is of her younger rescues, though he politely declines their invitations to play high-energy games. He does however make the time to do something nice for no reason, every once in a while.
“If you’re sitting on a chair, he puts his head between your knees and looks up,” she says. “He’s not asking for anything, he’s just saying thank you. Those moments are really special.”
Srini believes that people can easily make space for dogs in their homes and in their hearts. And while she finds that awareness of senior pet adoption is increasing, she feels there’s still a long way to go. “But change always happens gradually,” she says, mirroring the old canine’s wisdom and hope — for after all, she is his human.
