An Old Dog Teaches Some New Tricks

“Hilarious” is not a term that can generally be applied to self-help books. Unless, of course, it’s a self-help book by Dave Barry ’69. In Lessons From Lucy: The Simple Joys of an Old, Happy Dog, Barry takes some wise cues from his beloved dog about how to live a better life, offering thoughts about letting go of anger, having more fun, not letting your happiness depend on things, making new friends (and keeping the ones you have), and the importance of paying attention to the people you love, “Not later. Right now.” Here’s an excerpt from the book.

We think Lucy is beautiful, inside and out. Especially inside. I don’t want to sound all Californian here, but there’s something spiritual about dogs. If you’ve ever had a dog, you know what I mean; you can see it when you look into their eyes. Dogs aren’t people, but they’re not mollusks, either. Lucy is somebody. Lucy has feelings, moods, attitudes. She can be excited, sad, scared, lonely, interested, bored, angry, playful, willful.

But mostly she’s happy. She sleeps more than she used to, and she moves a little slower, but her capacity for joy, her enthusiasm for life, does not seem to have diminished with age. Michelle and I often marvel at Lucy’s ability to be happy, especially compared with our own. We know, when we stop to look at the big picture, that we should be happy, too: we’re very fortunate people leading very good lives. But we hardly ever stop to look at the big picture. We’re almost always looking at the little picture, which is a random collage of pesky chores, obligations and annoyances—dead-lines, bills, doctor appointments, grocery lists, the insanely complex carpool schedule, the leak in the roof, the car with a tire that’s losing air (not to be confused with the car that needs an oil change), the odor in the kitchen that we hope will go away on its own and not turn out to be a deceased rat in the wall like last time, and on and on. When we think about bigger things, they’re usually things that worry us—disease, aging, death, politics, the economy, terrorism, the decline of the once-great American newspaper industry into a big frantic Twitter account.

So we spend a lot of time thinking about things that make us stressed and/or unhappy. Whereas Lucy never thinks about any of these things. Sometimes when I’m working I’ll pause from tapping on my keyboard and look at her, sprawled on the floor at my feet, emitting extravagant dog snores and the occasional dog fart, not concerned in the least about her career, or the future, or who the president is, as long as he doesn’t try to give her a bath.

I envy Lucy’s ability to not worry about things. I once got a letter from the Internal Revenue Service stating that I was going to be audited and would be required to produce basically all my financial documents dating back to middle school. I totally freaked out. This letter was all I thought about for weeks. Whereas Lucy, if she got exactly the same letter, would react by sniffing it to determine whether it had been peed on by another dog, in which case she would also pee on it. That would be the extent of her concern. If the IRS sent armed agents to arrest her for noncompliance, she would be thrilled to have company. She would greet the agents joyfully at the door and sniff them and lick them and go get her squeaky toy so she could play the game where she runs around squeaking her toy as you try without success to take it from her. If the agents took her to prison, she would go happily. She would enjoy the car ride; she would enthusiastically greet and lick the prison guards; she would vigorously inhale the exciting new pee aromas of her fellow inmates.

She would not dwell on the fact that she was in prison. She would accept her new situation, whether it lasted a day or the rest of her life. She would find a way to make the best of it.

That’s what Lucy does: she makes the best of things. She’s way better at this than I am. I know much more than she does, but she knows something I don’t: how to be happy.

And that’s the idea behind Lessons from Lucy. This book represents my attempt to understand how Lucy manages to be so happy, and to figure out whether I can use any of her methods to make my own life happier. Because—not to get too dramatic—I don’t have that much time left. I turned seventy, which means I’m the same age as Lucy is in dog years. She and I are definitely getting up there. If our lives were football games, we’d be at the two-minute warning in the fourth quarter. If our lives were movie credits, we’d be way down at the bottom, past the assistant gerbil wrangler. If our lives were Cheez-It bags, we’d be at the stage where you hold the bag up and tilt it into your mouth to get the last crumbs.

In other words: The End Is in Sight. Whatever time I have left, I want it to be as happy as possible. And I’m hoping Lucy, who is aging so joyfully, can teach me how. Obviously I’m not saying I should behave exactly like her. For example, it would probably be a mistake for me to lick an IRS agent. (Although for the record I definitely would, if it would help.) But I really do want to learn what Lucy can teach me. However much time I have left, I want to make the best of it. I want to age joyfully, too.

From LESSONS FROM LUCY: The Simple Joys of an Old, Happy Dog by Dave Barry. Copyright © 2019 by Dave Barry. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Watch Dave Barry’s appearance at Alumni Weekend 2019 at hav.to/alumniweekend.