Back to real life

Now that our Lep trekking is over, it's back to real life. Thursday and Friday I shaved our 2 long haired dogs (a real chop job!). I did Bear on Thursday and on Friday morning he came down the stairs yelping. He's been having some problems with his hips for about a year but this is the worst it's been. Last night he couldn't even get up the stairs to go to bed. I'm giving him baby aspirin occasionally but it doesn't seem to be helping this time I guess a visit to the vet is in our near future.

I hate having such a geriatric population of animals. Mitzi is 14 and has a compressed disk in her back. She's actually been doing very well though and hasn't had a spell with in in over a year. To actually see her you'd never know she's that old since she still bounces around like a puppy. Ruby is 12 and our sickest. She has Cushing's disease, a severe heart murmur and now has several tumors.

Bear and Jasper are 10 and littermates. Both of them have been relatively healthy until this problem with Bear's hips. Shadow is our youngest dog at 6 but since he's a large dog, his life span is shorter and he's considered geriatric already.

Then there are the cats. Smoke is 13, Splash and Killer are 11, and Puff is 4. Thank goodness no major health problems with any of them yet. Smoke had a bout with an ear infection a couple of months ago that was very dramatic but not too serious. We had thought that he was having seizures but as it turns out they were actually dizzy spells from the ear infections.

It's really depressing seeing them age this way. I've had most of them either from a very young age (Ruby was 4 weeks old and Puff was 3 weeks old) or from birth (Bear and Jasper are Ruby's puppies)and it's so hard to see them get old and fragile when it seems like yesterday they were chewing my shoes, or shredding my curtains.