Letters to the Editor
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My mother has Alzheimer's.
From what I have seen of this horrible disease, I hope if I get it that I can remember to euthanize myself.
This is crap that the dog's life is useless just because it seems to have a medical problem. Get the dog checked out. If it has a treatable medical problem then have it treated. LW, your grandmother gets pleasure from that damn dog. She loves that damn dog. That damn dog gives her life interest and makes her fear bearable. Respect the damn dog for doing what none of the rest of you can do for her. The tragedy of Alzheimer's is that the sufferers forget how to love, leaving everyone else behind. Leaving everyone else alone with just the endless, endless task of caretaking.
Sure you are angry. You have every right to be angry, but the problem is that you have no focus for your anger except the damn dog. What you really don't want to admit is that your grandmother has become a hellishly difficult person. You have all but lost her. It's not her fault. It's not your fault. It just is.
Get some help for your grandfather. He needs to be professionally treated for depression.
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One more thing
For the people who are suggesting altering the grandmother's behavior in any way: Just stop it! People with middle stage Alzheimer's cannot form new memories and thus cannot learn. They just can't. Please accept that. People trying to suggest the LW make changes in her grandmother's behavior don't understand that it will only results in angry emotional storms and change nothing.
If the dog cannot be medically treated or otherwise cared for, follow the vet's advice. Euthanizing at that point would be a kindness.
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letter writer: please read your own letter
Okay, let me see if I can parse what provoked the usually kind-to-a-fault Cary to hint that you should be shunned by all decent folk:
My ill grandmother has a dog which is her main source of pleasure in life. The dog drives us nuts and is losing it due to age. Grandmother also drives us nuts and is also losing it due to age. Can we please kill Grandma's dog?
Has it occurred to you (since it's very obvious to me) that your grandmother, who isn't COMPLETELY gone yet, may interpret your treatment of her dog as an indication of the way you'd like to treat her?
I don't buy Cary's response, since obviously those of us who aren't canvas-shoe-wearing vegans do kill animals for our convenience, all the time. But this dog isn't just a dog; he's something important to your grandmother, a part of herself, one of the few parts she has left. Your suggestion that she will forget the dog in a week seems poorly-thought-out to me. It's more likely that she'll spend the rest of her life wondering where her dog is, looking for it, calling for it.
That's not a nice thing to do to your grandmother.
Now, I'm not suggesting that you spend your time in the kitchen tripping over the dog. Nor that you spend every holiday screaming at grandma about how the dog needs to be shut out of the kitchen. This is a difficult situation and it needs to be handled creatively, and with kindness. Cook in your own home; carry and reheat. Or some variant. You're the one who doesn't have Alzheimer's. It's your responsibility to make this work.
Your grandfather needs help, not from his ill wife (whose illness makes her less and less able to be reasonable) but from you and the other family members, plus possibly hired help.
And next time you're wiping up hot dog pee, give thanks that it's not yet hot people pee.
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I love dogs but...
...kill it. The dog is broken. Worse, it's destabilizing this already dire situation. If the grandmother or grandfather dies as a result of this cockup, you won't be able to buy another one.
Put the dog out of its misery. Get a new pet that everyone can deal with. You'll add years of life to your family.
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Rambling onٍ
What kind of drivel was that? I pity anyone who actually turns to you for advice. In fact I pity anyone who actually read the whole article.
Another reason I will NEVER pay for Salon.
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I have a solution
Let Cary take care of the dog. He's so kind and understanding I'm sure he'd love to help out.
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new strategies
You really do need some professional help. An outsider who has seen the worst will give you some needed perspective.
They get in screaming fights with my grandmother about it. I know it sounds horrid, but when you combine the stress of caring for an Alzheimer's patient with the stress of caring for a dog who is similarly incapable and needy/whiny, it breaks down the patience and reserve of even the most saintly.
Well... it all depends on what you mean by horrid. Seen from one perspective, it's perfectly understandable. Watching a loved one disintegrate is hard to deal with. On another level, it makes as much sense as if I yelled at my cat for not taking out the trash. He isn't going to take out the trash, no matter how much I yell; he's a cat. Plus yelling is mean to him and bad for me.
Your grandmother isn't going to suddenly become reasonable about her dog; her brain is failing. She's not being difficult for the sake of being difficult, and yelling at her won't help.
You need some new strategies.
The new strategies are not going to come from your grandmother. Alzheimer's patients are often compared to children, but they're unlike children in one important respect: children learn new things all the time. Alzheimer's sufferers don't. It's the people who aren't ill who are going to have to adapt, because your grandmother can't.
The first thing that needs to change is that no one yells at her, no matter what. It doesn't have any possibility of accomplishing anything. She cannot learn from it and do better next time. You can see that screaming at a baby for failing to do something beyond a baby's abilities (no matter how frustrating babies can be) is abuse, right? The same is true of the elderly. You simply cannot take out your frustrations on those who can't help what they're doing.
The second thing that needs to happen is that all of you who care for grandmother need to sit down (with a pro if you can afford one) and redefine your expectations of what she is able to do. You mentioned that the dog is fat because she overfeeds it. This has crept up on you so gradually that you don't seem to realize she is no longer capable of being responsible for feeding the dog. The solution that will work for you will depend on your grandmother and her reactions, but I would start with taking all the dog food away and putting it where she can't get to it, having someone else feed the dog, and having that person write down when the dog is fed on the fridge next to a clock so that it's easy to calm her anxieties by saying, "Look, he was just fed!" Keeping him from eating people food is more challenging, but it's probably better to approach it by expressing concern for his health than by attacking him for begging.
The third thing that needs to happen is that your poor depressed grandpa needs some attention. Get him to a doctor pronto. Ask him what help he needs to make his life tolerable again.
I hate to keep comparing Alzheimer's patients to children, but really, some of the same strategies work for both. Keep a sense of humor. Refuse to allow conflicts to become pitched battles. If you can't back down for safety reasons, try distractions. Remember her limitations. Remember that she can't always control her own emotions or calm herself and that her reasoning ability, not just her memory, is probably impaired. Be the grownup.