2 Generations 1 Mic
Explore the journey of an intergenerational and intercultural couple navigating life, love, and the unique challenges of a 25-year age gap. At 36 and 61, they bring together two different generations, cultures, perspectives, and life experiences, while making it work.
2 Generations 1 Mic
Life with Senior Dogs
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The episode dives into the heartwarming experience of living with senior dogs and the lessons learned along the way. Featuring Emma, Bonito, and Apple, the hosts share personal stories, insights on care, and an urgent plea to adopt senior pets, emphasizing the joys and challenges of this rewarding journey.
• Highlighting the love for senior dogs
• Personal stories about adopting Emma, Bonito, and Apple
• Discussing challenges faced with aging pets
• Tips on nutrition for senior dogs
• Importance of adopting and rescuing older dogs
• Sharing a humorous travel adventure with the dogs
• Call to action: adopting senior dogs as a rewarding experience
Living With Senior Dogs
Speaker 1Here we are again in another episode of Two Generations , One Mic . I am Andy , with my husband Mark , and today's episode we're going to talk about a really I mean , if you guys don't like dogs , don't watch this , but we're going to talk about what is it to live with senior dogs and dogs in general . But our dogs are seniors , so really old seniors . So today's episode is about that .
Speaker 2So technically they're all through rescues different times . Everybody asks if they're like . Everybody thinks the baby is like the baby of them . But so we have Emma , which we will show you here . Emma is 15 years old . She was a rescue from Mexico City when she was a baby that you rescued her .
Speaker 1I rescued her when she was two months old .
Speaker 2Yeah , I met her . I don't know how many years later , but I remember the first time she just looked at me .
Speaker 1Three years . She was three when she was three .
Speaker 2I met her for the first time when she was three and she just sat there on the bed looking at me and growling at me like what are your intentions with my mother ? I into my mother .
Speaker 1I know she was Emma . I gotta tell you , babe , and I'm sorry , but Emma is the love of my life . You're not the love of my life .
Speaker 2Emma is .
Speaker 1Emma is just the most precious miniature schnauzer . I mean , her soul is just so kind . And when she was a baby I used to have another dog when I was little , a dog I grew up with and Emma would get up on the table , grab fruit from the table , grab one for the older doggie and then one for her , and I was like precious angel . And , if you remember , emma has never destroyed one single toy .
Speaker 2No , we still have her toy , that's Garfield that she's had , and Vodka the cow , which is a cow from that chain of restaurants that does the spicy chicken sandwiches yeah . So we have that that she's played with forever , and we actually had to keep it away from the little one who's the destroyer of all toys . So we have those put up so that no one can get there and destroy them . But Emma's always had such personality and she's not only an amazing soul but she's very judgmental .
Speaker 1Yeah .
Speaker 2And she can look at you with such judgment , like all the time , like you see pictures of her , like when we're leaving the house and she's like staring just barely , peeking around the corner house and she's like staring just barely , peeking around the corner , like where the hell you think you're going ?
Speaker 1I know she's , she's , she's , she doesn't bite she judges , oh , extremely .
Speaker 2Yeah , we were in when we lived in new york city . We had a three-bedroom place and we very with we have three puppies around . It's like having three toddlers all the time I don't tell that story .
Speaker 1That's very private jesus christ .
Speaker 2So we went , uh , we had a , we had our guest room there that we would have our let's call it adult private time , and so we decided to sneak in there and have some adult private time , so you know , and we shut the door behind us and all that stuff . And then so we come out and Emma's just looking at us . She's just staring at us like and she literally looks and shakes her head like sinners . I'm going to tell Grandma .
Speaker 1Yeah , like I don't know , like maybe this is not for people that don't have dogs . They're like they don't understand . But when you have dogs it's not like you can have intercourse in front of them , right , like it's something very intercourse , very appropriate .
Speaker 2Funny , you say coitus .
Speaker 1Coitus , yeah , I mean . Well , fine , I'll say it how the kids say it . Now , how do they say it when you hook up ? I ?
Speaker 2don't know .
Speaker 1I don't know what the kids say , I don't know what the kids say nowadays , but when you have dogs it's not like you don't feel comfortable doing anything in front of them .
Speaker 2Right , because they're judging you .
Speaker 1But I don't know if it's just us or all the dogs in the land are the same , but it's just weird and they don't let you do anything because they're there , they want I don't know , especially ours . We have three .
Speaker 2And they're always on top of us .
Speaker 1Yeah , they're always like very attached .
Speaker 2Mostly on me . All three of them like to lay on top of me at the same time , all the time .
Speaker 1They're very attached and the older they get , the more attached they get . So it's very . It's not easy to have private time when you have doggies Because , like you said , it's like having toddlers .
Speaker 2Well , that was Emma . So we also have our actually our last rescue . But the second in line in age is Bonito . And Bonito is 14 years old and he is from a little small city outside of Madrid and his story is his human mother got him when her husband passed away as a baby .
Speaker 2So this poor puppy knew nothing about anything other than life with an elderly Spanish woman who never probably watched TV because he barks at the TV like he doesn't understand what it is and just basically went to the bars with him . He went with her every night to the bars , so he's very comfortable in a bar and when we're in Spain he starts barking at 7 o'clock we call it bar o'clock . Bonito's like let's go to the bar , let's go to the bar because he likes to go and he sits on the chair at the bar and just likes to look at everything and everybody and gets his little snackies and stuff and everybody loves him and he's great . But so Bonito , that's his life . In a very sheltered small city outside of Madrid . He lived and he was with his human mother for 10 years and unfortunately she died of COVID and when she died her kids , her adult kids , were assholes . They barely fed poor Bonito would go over and beat him because he peed in the house . They never went over to take him outside hardly .
Speaker 1Yeah , so basically they abandoned him in the apartment for like two months or so .
Speaker 2And then they end up selling the apartment and threw him in the streets to die . That's what they chose to do to that baby , and you found out about the story .
Speaker 1Yeah . So I was helping a friend , our friend Margarita . I was helping her to find a dog because she wanted to adopt a dog and we already had two dogs , right we ? We never thought , oh man , we need a third dog . It just wasn't , we weren't looking for it . But then I was helping her and , oh my gosh , I was doing the the little scroll down the screen and I just saw a picture of Bonito , like in a little like like a , like a little jacket and a little bow tie . I was like I read his story and is this senior dog ? He's 10 years old already .
Speaker 1Nobody wants to adopt a senior dog , which they're the most amazing dogs . If you can give the chance to a senior dog , please do it . I know you , everybody says , oh , but it's not going to last as long it can . I mean , you never know that with a little puppy either . But if you can give a senior dog the opportunity to absolutely die in a warm bed , just do it , because it's very rewarding . They're very low maintenance , low energy . Well , I don't know about low maintenance , but low energy .
Speaker 2Bonito's , not low energy .
Speaker 1He's like he's five . Well , because he's a Spaniard and like Spaniards are like they live until 150 probably , like they're old people in the streets all the time . But it was the story of him and I remember we were at the restaurant having dinner with our friends and I remember we were at the restaurant having dinner with our friends and I was like baby , look at this angel . And you're like baby , we cannot have one more . I was like but please , look at him . And then you look at him , it's a precious boy . And you're like fine , reach out to them , see what they say . And next thing , we knew we drove to the middle of nowhere , like the GPS didn't even work on the car .
Speaker 1Yeah , way outside Our phones , we didn't have any signal . And we got to this place where they had a goat outside and a thousand cats because it's this like animal rescue and we took our other two puppies and we said , well , let's take them and if they get along fine , then we'll give it a shot to bonito . And it was almost christmas time four years ago and I remember like when he came out , they were , they were carrying him and he had the most beautiful face . I was like , oh , it just felt like I don't know I . It just felt like I don't know I . Just I just felt like that was my boy and I never wanted to have a male dog .
Speaker 2Honestly , Well , I don't like male dogs . Yeah , and I know it's your boy , but the way he looks at me .
Speaker 1He bonded with me immediately .
Speaker 2And seriously look at these eyes . How could you not want to have this boy and give him the best life for the rest of his life ? He is just my shadow . I can't go anywhere , anywhere in the house , without him right behind me all the time , always laying by me , always touching me , always freaked out if I'm not around , so he has to be there next to me . So he's quite the great addition to the family . And then we have the little troublemaker .
Speaker 1Little Apple . So with Apple we called her Apple , because we were actually in New York when we were at a bar at that time .
Speaker 1We were living in Dallas and then we were at the bar in New York and we saw this friend of ours posted this picture of she was . It was back in the day where everybody was doing like catching Pokemons or anything . So the pokemon thing , the app , sent her to a dumpster behind her office building where she was working . She didn't find any pokemons , but she found this little baby , puppy , baby yorkie , covered in in paint and like all dirty and it was Apple . Like somebody threw her in a dumpster .
Speaker 2Yeah , probably a breeder , and we're not fans of breeders for profit when it comes to puppies which is illegal in Spain , by the way . They should do the same thing in the US . You're not allowed to breed puppies for profit .
Speaker 1Well , people will still do it . I just think it's lazy . Yeah , but Apple had a little problem .
Speaker 2That's lazy , yeah , but the apple had a little problem . That's why she had a little problem with her leg . We thought like a little limp that she had and they probably thought we can't make money off her , let's throw her away . And they threw her in a dumpster and she was so skinny and so frail and eating grass and leaves and she was just a mess and we got her .
Speaker 1We told your friend like , hold her , we're coming back and we'll adopt her . And I remember when she came back , the first thing , like she started running and she had her little , we called her her boba leg and it was just like so funny I don't know , it was just like a little boba she has and she uses that to blackmail us now . No , not like how do you say it nowadays ? She ?
Speaker 2does ? She Makes us feel sorry for her .
Speaker 1Yeah , like I have a bubble , but anyway . So Apple is now 10 .
Speaker 2Yeah , she's technically a senior too , almost .
Speaker 1Yeah . So we have our 15-year-old Emma , our 14-year-old Bonito and our 10-year-old Apple , and it's even when we still see them like , oh , it's our puppies . We have to start thinking sometimes that any day now could be the day that Emma is not going to be there .
Speaker 2Yeah , Emma is really , even though she's only one year older than Bonito , she , it really has taken a turn on her , the age , and so she's getting really senile . She forgets where she's at , she wakes up in the middle of the night . She doesn't know where she's at . Half the time We'll catch her just walking , and just she notices herself now more . She stares at the mirror and like inches away from the mirror just staring at herself or a reflection off of our wine fridge or anything . It's a reflection that shoots back . But the sadder parts is when you see her and she's just stuck in a corner , or she's literally just standing there one foot in our water bowl and doesn't realize it . She's just standing there in the water .
Speaker 2And so it's like she gets lost . But then we think , you know , she has good days and bad days , and on days that she's not having a good day , it's very obvious and it's very sad and it hurts our heart . But then , just as we think , oh my gosh , this is going to be it . And then next thing I know she's running down the hallway , galloping past them and doing it she does parkour , you call it parkour , we call it parkour .
Speaker 2She's running , jumps and bounces off , everything she does like a parkour and you're like where did this energy come from ?
Speaker 1I know she does that and honestly , again , like when she was 10 years old I mean , schnauzers don't live that long right , and like 13 years old are the average but now she's 15 and turning 16 this year and again she sees perfectly . She's deaf now , but she's fine
Caring for Older Dogs
Speaker 1. And Bonito , again , like he's also deaf , right , the 14-year-old . You have to deal with that when older dogs I think they lost their hearing about at 12 , when they were 12 . But that doesn't stop you , like , having a deaf dog is not that bad , honestly , it's like the normal dog . You just have to tap on them when you want to grab their attention . Because even us , we still forget and we try to yell at them . But I mean , I guess it's just they . We're used to yell at them like hey bonito , emma , and they're not turning around .
Speaker 2They're not going to turn around , right , yeah , they don't hear us , so we startle them when we come up behind them . But it's funny because even though they've only been together for four years , they act like an old married couple all the time . They'll cuddle , they'll kiss on each other , then they'll be fight .
Speaker 2Then they fight with each other like an old married couple , and the little one gets in the middle of it and like hey , stop it , stop it , stop it , stop it . She starts biting the both of them . Like stop it , stop it , she'll start Stop fighting , stop fighting . And she tries to . And the little ones like also , it warms my heart that , like when Emma's having a problem at night or something , and we're thinking OK , the little one wakes up and comes in like right in her face , checking on her , making sure she's .
Speaker 2OK looking at if she's OK , always worrying about what's going on with Emma because she's been there since she was a baby .
Speaker 1Yeah , she grew up with her . Yeah , yeah .
Speaker 2She used to play with them all the time and Emma can't really play anymore and she can't run around with her anymore . But Bonito will start , who never had any siblings , actually started playing this year with Apple and it's funny to watch them run around and play a little bit and Emma can't get really involved .
Speaker 1And what I've noticed , honestly and I talked to our vet about this is like , sadly , we didn't have Bonito since he was a baby and good food is really important for them to actually get older , and in a good way to get older , Because I see doggies all the time that are 10 , 12 , and they're like you can tell they're not good but feeding them , for example , we've always given them good food , good brand food or , honestly , if you cannot afford to buy good brand food , you can actually give them chicken and rice . I think that's a great thing for them to eat , like chicken rice , pasta with chicken , Like they need the three things right Potatoes , carrots , celery , parsley is really good , cilantro is really good .
Speaker 2I make a broth for them . I make their stock about every four or five days . I get chicken like chicken thighs or chicken legs , because it has a bone in it . It's more flavor and there's no salt , no garlic or onion , because that's not good for them . It's poisonous for puppies , but I mix celery in there and cilantro and parsley fresh chopped in there with some turmeric , which is also very good for puppies . So I put turmeric in there and then you take the skin off .
Speaker 1Yeah , because it's a lot of fat .
Speaker 2And then , yeah , you just slow boil the chicken and then we use that chicken and we mix it with their dry food . That's a really good dry food that we got . You know , it's not , it's not low-quality food , it's good-quality food .
Speaker 1Yeah . So for the older dogs and again , like I think this is important , if you have a younger dog , start giving them carrots like cooked carrots or raw carrots , if they like them every day . Because we've noticed Emma for being 15 , her eyes are perfect . She has a little bit of gray here and there , but she's perfectly fine and even the vet is like wow , she's like like her eyes are like from a six , seven-year-old Apple , which is 10 , her eyes are crystal clear , like everybody thinks she's still a puppy because I mean , you'll see her eyes in a picture . She is absolutely perfectly fine . She's overweight because she eats a lot . She's a little chubby .
Speaker 2Yeah , her eyes can spot a snacky on the floor .
Speaker 1I know From 100 overweight because she eats a lot . She's a little chubby , yeah , her eyes can spot a snacky on the floor from 100 yards away , but that's very important . So give your dogs . Start giving them like carrots as soon as you can , and again , raw or cooked , they're great . Cucumber is also great for them , like watermelon without the seeds . Blueberries we used to play with Apple when she was little . We used to play with her with the blueberries and she will chase them and she absolutely loves them . Emma not so much . She only kind of like tolerates them , so it was not easy to give it to her . But and bonito , I don't know , sometimes he does . But try to find like really good food that your puppy will like instead of buying them uh , like store-bought treats that are not good for them because they have a lot of like fat and carbs and everything . Try to give them like fruits and vegetables that are good for them that you can actually treat them like sweet potato right , cook sweet potato , they love it .
Speaker 2Yeah , I do sweet potatoes in the air fryer for them all the time .
Speaker 1Yeah , you can give it to them as a treat and that's great . But going back to the food part , I think is , if you cannot really afford like a good brand food by like at the store , right , like make a good broth for them , like with chicken feet , for example , you can make a broth . Don't give them a chicken feet that are cooked already , because they can choke .
Speaker 1The bones are not great for them , but the bone broth is great for them . And rice , like rice , is very cheap and rice is good for them . And rice with some chicken , some chicken .
Speaker 2But again plain , no salt no garlic , no onion , none of those .
Speaker 1When they're older . You got to realize when the dogs are older and our vet told us like they cannot process protein as much so you have to go a little bit higher on the rice and the , the pasta , and not so much on the , on the chicken and the , the beef and everything , because , again , like they , their , their organism cannot process it as as good as they used to be . But I think having older dogs is very rewarding , waking every day with them and seeing them that they still love you , and even with those little gray eyes that Bonito has now and he still tries to see you , and the obsession he has with you . I hate it . I hate that he's so obsessed with him . All my dogs are obsessed with my husband and that's not fair because I adopted them . I was the one that said I'm going to get this puppy and all this puppy .
Speaker 1So now what we need to do is keep adopting puppies until we find one that actually is obsessed with me .
Speaker 2We actually took them on a great vacation this past summer . We were like , let's take a driving vacation , a mini vacation , just to give them a treat that we can all remember that we did , and so when we were in Spain , we just took our car and we drove down to southern Spain , right on the coast between southern Spain and Portugal , and we stayed at an Airbnb that took puppies and we just let them go with us and we said , oh , this is going to be great , we're going to go to the beach , it'll be awesome and we'll take this thing . And it was the middle of summer , august was hot , and we didn't— ?
Speaker 1Well , we did that one day in the morning and it was great .
Speaker 2Yeah , but this was the afternoon . We didn't think that through that , the sun had been out all day , and so we , literally here are the three of us , and we're going across the beach , and this is not a close beach , right .
Speaker 1It's like what is it like ? Probably like half a mile from the deck to the actual ocean .
Speaker 2Right and we were walking . We started walking and we started getting into that sand . That's been sitting there in that sun all day it was so hot and we were walking and we were like okay , let's go , let's keep going , let's keep going . And by the time we got about halfway there , you started to scream .
Speaker 1I was like abort , abort , retreat , retreat , mission failed .
Rescuing Puppies and Older Dogs
Speaker 2Mission failed . At that point we had already picked up all three puppies . We have them in our arms because we want their paws to be burned . So we're carrying the puppies , all three of them . We're carrying them . We're halfway to the waters . We had to decide do we go back the other direction or we keep going toward the water ?
Speaker 1And that was like . But . And our feet were burning so bad . Yeah , like running in sand , like into the sand and on the sand , is so complicated , and carrying two dogs is even more complicated . I was like , oh my gosh , I don't know what to do at this point . We just kept going all the way to the water . We got to the water .
Speaker 2We're like oh , thank God , the water . And then we put the puppies down in the water and they were like what's this Saltwater they didn't like , they didn't really care for it too much .
Speaker 1I know , but it was so hot .
Speaker 2Well , it's the sun . I didn't know it either . We just took off and that's what ended up happening . I know it was a great little vacation . We ended up also at this amazing restaurant where they again let puppies in , which they do a lot in Europe . So we just sat in this beautiful restaurant that was right on the ocean and you could see the beach . It was gorgeous . Oh , that was in Portugal .
Speaker 1That was the most beautiful In Portugal yeah , yeah , that was so on the beach right , it was right there by the beach . Yeah , that was really really nice .
Speaker 2Yeah , we have a great picture of that , yeah .
Speaker 1And I don't know how long they're going to last , but we are absolutely going to keep trying to do the best we can . And again , please , people , people , give an older dog the opportunity . It's very rewarding . Again , we never thought bonito when we adopted him at 10 , he was going to be already 14 right because you've had older dogs . Well , other dogs in your life , right 12 ? Is the oldest exactly so bonito and mr , way past that age . And again you see this boy , and the boy is just . Everybody thinks he's like five .
Speaker 2Yeah , it's definitely rewarding . It's going to be heartbreaking when that time comes for all of them , but it's definitely rewarding . So , as we say all the time adopt , don't shop , and rescue , because it's very important .
Speaker 1And we need to stop this breeder for profit thing .
Speaker 2It's got to go . But please like , subscribe and follow us . If you have any comments , questions , we'll be happy to answer them . We can point you in the direction of shelters if you want to learn more about how to adopt puppies and rescue babies .
Speaker 1And that's how I end up with other dogs . There you go , I'll help you , and then I get one for myself .
