The Hard Phase - by the Lady

Living with 2 senior dogs has reminded me that we aren't good at talking about the challenges of the golden years (of people or dogs if we are honest). We talk about some about the grief when a beloved pet goes to the rainbow bridge, we talk about the challenges of having a puppy but we don't talk talk a lot about living with senior dogs.

While I don't want to dwell on the negative (and to be frank we still have a lot of golden in our days), this phase, especially with our girl, is hard. There are parts of it I hate and I do want to reflect on these, because I wonder if the silence and the difficulty of it all is one of the reasons senior dogs are "dumped" so often. 

Here is a sample night from last week. At 11:30 pm, our girl had an upset stomach on the bedroom floor. I took her out, while Man cleaned. Then I washed the floor. The same thing happened around 2 and around 6. Each time, she made it to about the bedroom door, so it would have been impossible for me to get her outside in time. Some nights, she doesn't make it off her bed. Those thankfully are easier to clean up as we have her sleep on a towel. Almost every day or night we have some sort of accident to clean up. 

I still surprise my people by doing things like this

The Man and I spend a lot of time trying to figure out what may have upset her stomach, what the patterns are etc. etc.. She is on a probiotic to help. We are trying to be very mindful of what she eats, however, there is the balance between giving her a great chapter, and the inconvenience of being up in the night, dealing with accidents. We do both work full time and sleep can be important. 

The other loss for me, and the thing that is driving me to want another dog, is the walk. We don't walk far these days. Now that it is cold and the snow is deep, the walks are even shorter.  Some mornings at say 5 am, in the dark, I am less sad about this, but as I write this and look at the beautiful snow and plan to snowshoe later today, I am sad I will do this alone as neither can physically do the deep snow. 

The cost of their medical care is also high. We chose to give them Librela (as it is very helpful for them) and we are extremely fortunate to be in the position to do so. I feel for people who can't support their pets in this way. However, it is a cost. 

While this chapter is hard, I know in my heart I will do it again and have no regrets with the choices I have made that have led me to this moment.  We still have love and adventure and some of the lost habits (counter-surfing, decrease in anxiety) are welcome. Life most of life, it is beautiful and ugly at the same time. 

Thanks for listening friends.

The Lady

The Great Slowdown

First from yesterday - Lady was just texting the vet because there was an issue with our upcoming appointments and she had 'bullied' the receptionist to put us in the same appointment. Also, they are friends so they were just catching up! We are both a-okay!

Also Blogger would not let Lady comment yesterday. She tried all the things (which includes screaming HBO words). We did visit you all. Hi!

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Hailey is the oldest dog we have had at age 11.5. (Loki died at 8 and Gemi at 6). While she is in good health and young at heart, she is starting to slow down.

She is living her best life and is loving her runs through the fields. Yamini asked if we have to worry about ticks and the answer is yes we do. They are on meds for them and we do a daily tick check. 

One day last week, Callie joined us in the field. Her kids left the door open and when she saw us she came running. We offered to bring her back after our walk. 

For the first time Hailey had a great up run with Callie.

She was all happy until Miss Callie caught her.

In her youth she was always the fastest. Now mY girl is slowing down. On one hand, this breaks my heart, but on the other it makes me happy because she is listening more and can have more freedom. For now we will just love her and let her live her best life. 

Tasty Tuesday - Emma and Lee

What does a girl need to do to get on her blog?

For the most part Emma has continued to do well with her house training but there have been a few exceptions. First, last week when I had the plague (or really bad cold or flu thingy) I knew the dogs were not getting enough exercise. However, I did not have the strength to provide it. I also needed them to be quiet so I could rest. I gave them each a hoof (which allows for hours and hours of content chewing by all parties). The problem being that each hoof was filled with treat that had wheat. The next day Emma had a bit of a set back. On the plus side, it did help confirm my belief she should be wheat free.

Something looks good over here.

Then we made the startling discovery that Emma has been getting into the cat area. Here, not only is she eating the cat's food but she is enjoy the smorgasbord that is the litter. We are monitoring her to prevent this from happening. 

While I do love Emma, I am looking forward to being a 2 dog house as of the weekend:)  The house may seem boring then, but that is what I want!

Note from Hailey: Dear Blogville, my Lady is very mean since she got over the plague and has not been letting me blog or visit blogs as often as I want. She says the next 2 weeks will be "bumpy" as she has 2 big work projects, but she hopes to find some time to let us visit you all. 

Let's just have a little taste over here . . . I can't be being bad as Lady is taking pictures and not scolding! 

Living with an anxious dog

Hailey had an anxiety problem. She is not our first dog to have one. Our Gemi suffered from anxiety. She chewed walls when she was young and we went out. When Loki was dying she developed obsessive drinking and peeing (by obsessive I mean my 15 lb pup was putting back 8 cups of water a day). Her hair fell out she was so stressed.  There was something about Gemi's anxiety that made it seem smaller, maybe because she was smaller.

Hailey is another story. Her anxiety causes me anxiety. Her destruction knows no bounds. [I do count myself lucky that she has left the furniture alone]. Part of the problem we have dealing with this is we don't always know what is going to set it off. We do know thunder is a big cause and change. However, she can go weeks without any incidents of destruction and then one day you come home and she has destroyed something. This makes it frustrating at times.

One thing that does set her off is having people in the house. But again it is not consistent. We can have guests she doesn't know and after her first few minutes of barking be fine. [We have friends and family she is not anxious with when they visit]. We can have others that even with her thunder shirt or leash she won't settle. It is worse with little kids who run around. She stands and barks and barks and barks, which can upset the kids and make it hard for the adults to visit. We end up feeling embarrassed because she won't stop barking and sorry for her, because she is stressed and everyone gives their attention to our calm Phod. 

 Here are some of the things we have tried that have not been as helpful as we would have liked:

One of the 2 crates she destroyed

- crate training. This had been my dream, but after she destroyed the second crate (the one no dog was suppose to be able to get out of), we realized that wasn't working. 

-medication. That experiment was taken on semi-reluctantly after she ate the wall and  failed big time as the drugs seemed to act as speed and made her crazy hyper (and made her pee all over the floor).  Our Vet said we could try other drugs, but since (knock on wood) her anxiety hasn't been as bad (meaning we still have all our walls), we aren't actively exploring this.

Things that may help:

-exercise, especially when she is going to be alone. I try and tire her out with a big walk/run before we go out.

-routine: Walks same time, feeding schedule the same, just consistency in our in and out. She gets the "guilt greenie" every time we both leave the house.

-Phod - I think except the week they ate all the tupperware, not being alone helps her.

-Free access to only part of the house. They have access to the upstairs hallway and kitchen/dining room (which is a HUGE space - probably about 1000 square feet) while we are out. So it is like being crated, without being crated.

-Thunder shirt, aka the hug. While she still appears anxious while wearing it, she is not as frantic. She tends to just sit (which reduces destruction).
-Mental challenges: working on new tricks/doing training more often.
-Cleaning the environment (making sure the counters are free of the things she may be tempted to destroy)

While her anxiety can be stressful for the whole pack (and has us all practice the virtue of patience), we truly love our challenging girl. We will continue to work to find ways to help her be more relaxed. Maybe one day our girl will overcome it.