We had our puppy, Tucker, castrated two weeks ago. There is, of course, a moral to this story.

Being a typical guy, I had mixed feelings about castrating Tucker. I mean, I really like my puppy, a tail-wagging bernadoodle who is so happy when he sees me that he wags not just his tail, but his whole backside, almost twerking with excitement. But since we aren’t going to breed him, and since we don’t want him running around with just any of these mangy dogs in heat like some canine Don Juan (hormones, it is true, make males of all species do some pretty stupid things — or so I’m told), we had his testicles cut off.

I’m told that “fixing” our dog is the “humane” thing to do. (Is it politically correct to impose humane-ness on canines?) And I admit that I do get embarrassed whenever we would go to a party with Tucker, and before we left, Tucker would try to hump every person he met. Still, I wonder if I’m depriving my goofy Tucker of some of the intimate pleasures that this life has to offer.

After his surgery, the vet, who was wonderful and caring, told us not to let him run around for a week. In order to calm his hyperactive puppy spirit (and prevent the sutures from breaking open), she prescribed sedatives as well as NSAIDS for pain.

Now, like other people our age, when my wife and I wake up, we make coffee and open our pill boxes and take our pills. Me? I just slam them down. But my wife is more strategic, carefully putting her pills on the counter and taking them with a glass of water. Well, after I took mine, I got out Tucker’s pills and put them on the counter while I went to the fridge to get a tasty meatball in which to disguise the medications. Tucker’s pills were, unfortunately, similar in shape and color to what my wife takes and … well, you can guess what happened: she accidentally took the dog’s pills.

The excellent people at the Poison Control Center said that no, I wasn’t murdering my wife, and that, yes, she would be a little sleepy, but after all, she would be fine. Relieved, of course, I joked with her, telling her to “sit” and offering a cookie and telling her other things we are trying to teach our dog. We were having a small party later that day, and I joked that I hoped, now that she was taking dog medicine, she wouldn’t start greeting our friends like a dog, and start sniffing their butts. (She didn’t think that was very funny.)

I would, of course, have gone on to tease her more about confusing her medications, but then, well, that would be hypocritical. Some months ago, I found myself feeling extremely sleepy every day from Monday through Wednesday. I remember telling my colleague at work that my head just didn’t feel right and I could barely stay awake. I wondered if I had sleep apnea. The next morning, just as I was opening my pill box to take my morning pill, I noticed that the shape looked different from the usual pill. So I searched the medicine cabinet and realized that the meds I put in my pill box was not MY medicine but rather a sleeping pill. I was glad that I didn’t have sleep apnea but felt stupid for taking the wrong medicine.

I only take two pills each day, one for migraines and one for cholesterol. I know the pharmacology and pharmakokinetics of each medication, the clearance through the body, the half life and toxicity. The moral of this story: If I can screw up my medications (and my wife’s) so easily, just think how easy it would be for someone 20 years my senior and taking 15 pills to make mistakes with their own.