Am I too old to get a dog?

To get a dog or not to get a dog, that is the question.

Researchers say I should: Having a pet, which I define as a dog, will lower my cholesterol and blood pressure, protect me against touch deprivation and loneliness, keep me active, and reduce the odds of dementia.

If only it were that simple. These benefits accrue if I’m a “senior,” or “elderly,” and we can talk about the negative impact of those labels on my blood pressure another time. A dog also requires effort on my part, with no days off, and that’s where things get muddy.

At the moment, I can walk a dog eight blocks to the beach, trot along the sand, and toss its favorite toy a pathetic distance — which is far enough because it’s the effort that counts with a dog. They accept us for who we are, another plus.

But things change — and if I’m old enough to qualify for canine benefits, I’m old enough to stop cold at two intertwined questions on the rescue-dog adoption application: How old am I, and who will take care of the dog if something happens to me, either physically or financially? A 30-year-old answers those questions, too, but I have friends with a pacemaker, a stent or three, a hip that might need replacement. All of us are preoccupied with underwriting our later years. Commitment looks different at our age.

Still, I love dogs and they like me. So I asked my daughter if she would step in if I was suddenly not quite me, and she said yes, as I knew she would. That obstacle eliminated, I started scrolling through rescue-dog sites, a daunting exercise given the number of available dogs, but one that added a new reason in the plus column, the opportunity to give one of these dogs a home.

Do I want a puppy I have to carry around or stay home with until she’s had all of her shots? That was a relatively easy call, as much as puppies tug at my heartstrings. If one of the advantages of having a dog is being physically and socially active, I do not want to spend a month or more avoiding other dogs until mine is fully vaccinated. I’ve had three puppies in my life and adored each one, but this felt like too much to take on.

And I won’t let myself take the 11-year-old dog whose ailing owner just surrendered her, harsh as that makes me sound. I’ve experienced the end of a dog’s life, and at one point dispensed meds and gave injections to four very old pets. If I take on a roommate, I’d like it to be one who has at least as much energy as I do; a mismatch wouldn’t be fair to either of us.

Nor do I want to foster, because I can’t handle sequential breakups, and a successful foster dog is meant to move on to a forever home.

If I get a dog, it will be because I find a medium-to-large one, a couple of years old, possibly jet black — not because I care what color the dog is but because rescue sites agree that a large black dog is the least popular adoption candidate, probably because they don’t photograph as well as more colorful pups do.

Weeks pass, and I continue to narrow my field of candidates, which is, after all, a soft way of saying “no.” I make situational excuses. I’m about to leave town, can’t look now; looming deadline, can’t look now; my knee’s a little sore, can’t look now. The horizon is clouded with conditional doubt about the future: What if, what if, what if.

There it is. “What if” has its place in a reasonable life, especially an older one. It’s the reason I don’t take up a new sport that involves speed and momentum, much as I’d like to know how it feels to ski down even a small hill. We decide what’s outside our comfort sphere as we age.

The key is not to overdo it, though, because “what if” is no way to live. It’s shrinkage. It’s how we end up on the couch, checked out, to be blunt, until we check out. The “yes” of a dog requires a more active joy in being alive: Rather than grumble when my daughter’s visiting dog wants to take a walk at dawn, I haul myself out of bed so we’re outdoors when the sun starts to tint the clouds.

I now know that dawn is vastly underrated, thanks to a dog. When I get back home from the trip I’m on, I may well take a chance on getting one of my own. I hope I do.