S6-EP2: Rona Maynard on How Adopting a Rescue Mutt When She Was 65 Made Her a Better Person

An interview with writer Rona Maynard about her new book. This is Season 6 of my [B]OLD AGE podcast. Thank you for listening! I interview authors, experts, and exceptional individuals to reveal the truths about [b]oldly entering old age in a society that (generally) devalues old people. I also invite my husband on as a frequent guest. He’s a retired physician with a very dry sense of humor and he makes me laugh. You can find over 100 previous episodes on Apple podcasts or on my website.

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Behind The Scenes

🎙️ Don’t miss the accompanying essay: Behind the Scenes with Rona Maynard

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Show Notes

Today, Debbie talks with Rona Maynard, an author, writer, and former VIP, as she puts it. When she left Canada's leading magazine for women as editor-in-chief, she began looking for her next big project. Around this time, her husband suggested getting a dog. She resisted for several years, then relented. When she was 65, they adopted Casey, a two-year-old rescue mutt with an appealing personality.

He left dog hairs everywhere and peed on her favorite chair the day they brought him home. But the result was an unexpected next new thing, a gradual transformation  of how she is approaching life, and a lovely new book, a memoir, titled Starter Dog.

Of course, the book is not just about her dog. Rona is an extraordinary writer so it is  the woven story of her life as a young woman and a young wife, her ambitions, her relationship to food (and Casey’s), getting older, and how - with Casey leading the way through her Toronto neighborhood - she began to soften and notice more. In the book she illuminates how taking Casey for daily walks ultimately made her a better person. She pulls the past and present together, and, engagingly, includes quotations from two of Debbie's favorite poets: Emily Dickinson and Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Rona learns how to be kind (kindness was not stressed when she was growing up in a household full of ambition), how to befriend strangers and the homeless, how to appreciate the details of changing seasons and the outdoors (after working at a desk for so many years), how to be more patient, and how to live in the moment.

Because of course while she was growing old - eight years pass - her dog was growing older. Casey is now 10, while Rona's in her mid-70s, and he’s teaching her how to embrace old age. Just take it one walk, one squirrel, one bowl of dog food (two if you’re lucky), and one day at a time.

Mentioned in this episode or useful:

• Starter Dog: My Path to Joy, Belonging and Loving This World by Rona Maynard (ECW Press, 2023)

• My Mother's Daughter: a Memoir  by Rona Maynard (McClelland & Stewart, 2009)

• RonaMaynard.com

• Rona's new Substack newsletter: Amazement Seeker

• Poet Emily Dickinson

• Poet Gerard Manley Hopkins

Our Media Partners:

• CoGenerate (formerly Encore.org)

• MEA and with thanks to Chip Conley

• Next For Me (former media partner and in memory of Jeff Tidwell)

How to Support this podcast:

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Credits:

• Host: Debbie Weil

• Producer: Far Out Media

• Music: Lakeside Path by Duck Lake