Old dog issues
Our good dog Wiley has been with us for the better part of 14 years.
He's got some regular old-dog things going on, behavior changes, achy joints, that sort of thing. He's mostly deaf and partly blind, too, although he mostly does well aside from occasionally startling (and so far he hasn't bitten anyone from being startled).
He's got some huge lipomas on his body... I've had several vets look at them, and they all more or less said the same thing: he's very old (he's at the higher end of the expected life span for both huskies and Australian shepherds), and at this point, surgery would probably be much more taxing on him than just living with them. They don't cause him pain... it's more disfiguring, and possibly impeding his mobility a bit, but it's hard to tell if that's joint pain or the lipomas displacing bones. Two are growing on either side of his chest, under his forelegs, and have grown under and forward, involving the chest wall... the surgery would be pretty invasive (not to mention expensive) and both vets expressed concern that he might not even survive the anesthesia.
He's on the raw-food diet too (if we gave him kibble, Bill's cat Cil would eat it instead of his meat, and start with the denuding behavior again), but he tends to either eat huge amounts, or just leave it alone for whole days at a time.
He wants to go outside in the snow, but once he gets settled, he starts yelping... not a pain yelp, just "hey, someone come hang out with me." He doesn't want to come back in, though, and it's getting harder and harder to coax him inside... he's rather stay out and bark, which I'm sure the neighbors love.
He also comes downstairs to the basement if anyone goes down there... but if one person comes back up the stairs, he stands at the bottom and barks constantly until someone comes to coax him up. I think we're going to start blocking the stairs so he doesn't go down there, but I suspect he'll bark until we let him down.
He's been waking up a couple times at night. He wants to go outside and wander, and he can take up to 20 minutes to do his business... if you call him in before he's done, he'll just wake you up again an hour later. It doesn't seem related to whether or not he's eaten or drank water, either... he just wakes up and can't go back to sleep, I think. It's not pain, either... we try giving him his pain pills before bedtime, and that doesn't seem to make a difference.
He still loves to go on walks, and most days we wind up at the dog park about half a mile away. He loves trotting around the other dogs, and mostly they know he's an old man and treat him accordingly... but he still gets bowled over by the occasional frisky group (and once got attacked by a bulldog). The problem is that he CONSTANTLY barks while we're there. He's excited, I get that, but it's getting really old and I worry about being a good dog park user... we're still pretty new, and trying to build good relationships with the neighbors around the area, and having one dog bark nonstop for 30-40 minutes can be annoying. He'll stop if I come up to him and hold his muzzle gently for a second, but after less than a minute, he starts again (and when I do it, he cringes and acts like I'm going to hit him, which I NEVER do, but I hate what it looks like to the other dog owners!).
I'm getting ready to go on this long road trip, and my father has told me that I shouldn't bring Wiley... that his own two new dogs are very territorial. It's also harder to find places to stay when he's with us (some KOAs and all Motel 6s take dogs, we've learned, but not all places have KOAs and some Motel 6s attract some rather unsavory clientele). And he's having a VERY hard time getting in and out of the van... we've tried different kinds of steps and stools, but he won't use them. He will only get in if the van is pulled up right against a curb (and even then it can take him several agonizingly long minutes to get in), and curbs are not always available everywhere we're staying. He definitely yelps a painful yelp if I try to help him into the van, and he's about 70 pounds... too low to the ground and too heavy for me to be lifting without wrecking my back.
I've looked into a couple of kinds of harnesses you can use to help dogs get up stairs and such, but none of them are supposed to be left on long-term, and I could see the putting-on-taking-off process having to happen a dozen times a day being a real pain for both us and Wiley.
He's on Dasuquin for his joints, and we give him Rimadyl for pain when he's having a hard time getting up or limping after a long walk (also a few times when he's fallen down the stairs... twice badly). Both of these are pricey, and Rimadyl has some potentially negative health issues with long-term use.
He also gets this thing once in a while, where he has a very hard time walking (but is not in pain) and seems drunk, won't eat, just lies down and acts like he wants to not move for a while. After talking with several vets, I still didn't know what was wrong. Finally I found some information on an inner ear problem that tends to hit older dogs, and now I'm certain that this is what's going on. It's happened three or four times (though not for a few months now), and it's likely that it will happen again and more frequently.
Clay's talking about moving out this summer, which would make me lose my child support from his dad, which means we wouldn't be able to stay in this house any longer. Finding a house with only a few stairs was hard enough... finding one with none feels insurmountable. And (lord forgive me, but I'm trying to be honest with you) if we were able to drop our requirement for a yard and no stairs, our housing options would open up tremendously; we could move closer to Bill's work, and afford a pretty nice place.
My sister, my dad, and several good friends have had elderly dogs who have reached a point where they all decided it was Time. I'm struggling with making this decision for Wiley. What's horrible is that I have to factor in things like my road trip (hiring dog walkers to let him out and exercise him while I'm gone, or figure out some way to take him with me), money (the dog walkers would be expensive, surgery would be REALLY expensive, raw food and his pills are expensive), and (please forgive me, but again with the honestly) my own irritation at having to be helping him up stairs and letting him out in the middle of the night.
I can tell Bill is pretty unhappy with how things are. I don't think he'll be very happy about having to feed and walk and coax him for while I'm gone, and Clay's gotten really distant and unhelpful lately... he never feeds or waters the animals, and when he's asked to walk the dog, he gets really angry. I'm definitely worried about leaving an infirm animal with two people who actively resent him, and I'm equally hesitant to ask them to take on a task they're both clearly reluctant to accept.
Boarding him while we're gone is out of the question (far too expensive, Wiley hates it, and last time he was kenneled, he had to have a bordatello shot that gave him a respiratory infection that lasted over three weeks). I don't know anyone here well enough to ask them to do it, like a friend did when we were getting ready to move from Davis (and he didn't have all these issues then). Taking him with me would be really hard on both of us.
When people I know are struggling with a sick animal, wondering whether it's time to euthanize, the pretty clear indicator has been when the animal stops eating. But while Wiley sometimes eschews his "regular" food (raw chicken parts) for days, he's always up for biscuits, broth, leftovers, eggs, and almost anything else that comes his way.
So it boils down to considering euthanasia for my own convenience, essentially, which makes me feel just horrible.
I have already arranged with a local vet to do a house visit for euthanasia, even in the middle of the night, if we have a crisis... he'd be too heavy for me to lift dead-weight from the floor if he were injured, and the thought of making his last hour even more agonizing by moving him is just too cruel.
It is horrific to consider putting him down while he's still mobile and eating? To do it while he's not in pain and terrified with some injury after falling down the stairs, or during some other crisis? It almost seems kinder... to do it before an emergency forces the decision. But what if... what if he'd have another year or two of happiness (or what passes for happiness for an old dog) if I only kept doing what I'm doing? Do I owe it to him, after the years he put in to protecting and playing with my kids?
ETA: Sir Terry Pratchett on the idea of jumping before being pushed: "I intend, before the endgame looms, to die sitting in a chair in my own garden with a glass of brandy in my hand and Thomas Tallis on the iPod. Oh, and since this is England, I had better add, "If wet, in the library". Who could say that this is bad?" In Wiley's case, it could be after downing a couple of cheeseburgers and a good romp at the dog park. But it would still be me pushing instead of some sort of organ failure or other injury, not him jumping of his own free will. And, being a dog, I suspect his sense of loyalty would keep him with us much longer beyond comfort or happiness if it were his choice alone.
I just wish there was a way to ask Wiley.
How do I solve this? What do I do? Help!
He's got some regular old-dog things going on, behavior changes, achy joints, that sort of thing. He's mostly deaf and partly blind, too, although he mostly does well aside from occasionally startling (and so far he hasn't bitten anyone from being startled).
He's got some huge lipomas on his body... I've had several vets look at them, and they all more or less said the same thing: he's very old (he's at the higher end of the expected life span for both huskies and Australian shepherds), and at this point, surgery would probably be much more taxing on him than just living with them. They don't cause him pain... it's more disfiguring, and possibly impeding his mobility a bit, but it's hard to tell if that's joint pain or the lipomas displacing bones. Two are growing on either side of his chest, under his forelegs, and have grown under and forward, involving the chest wall... the surgery would be pretty invasive (not to mention expensive) and both vets expressed concern that he might not even survive the anesthesia.
He's on the raw-food diet too (if we gave him kibble, Bill's cat Cil would eat it instead of his meat, and start with the denuding behavior again), but he tends to either eat huge amounts, or just leave it alone for whole days at a time.
He wants to go outside in the snow, but once he gets settled, he starts yelping... not a pain yelp, just "hey, someone come hang out with me." He doesn't want to come back in, though, and it's getting harder and harder to coax him inside... he's rather stay out and bark, which I'm sure the neighbors love.
He also comes downstairs to the basement if anyone goes down there... but if one person comes back up the stairs, he stands at the bottom and barks constantly until someone comes to coax him up. I think we're going to start blocking the stairs so he doesn't go down there, but I suspect he'll bark until we let him down.
He's been waking up a couple times at night. He wants to go outside and wander, and he can take up to 20 minutes to do his business... if you call him in before he's done, he'll just wake you up again an hour later. It doesn't seem related to whether or not he's eaten or drank water, either... he just wakes up and can't go back to sleep, I think. It's not pain, either... we try giving him his pain pills before bedtime, and that doesn't seem to make a difference.
He still loves to go on walks, and most days we wind up at the dog park about half a mile away. He loves trotting around the other dogs, and mostly they know he's an old man and treat him accordingly... but he still gets bowled over by the occasional frisky group (and once got attacked by a bulldog). The problem is that he CONSTANTLY barks while we're there. He's excited, I get that, but it's getting really old and I worry about being a good dog park user... we're still pretty new, and trying to build good relationships with the neighbors around the area, and having one dog bark nonstop for 30-40 minutes can be annoying. He'll stop if I come up to him and hold his muzzle gently for a second, but after less than a minute, he starts again (and when I do it, he cringes and acts like I'm going to hit him, which I NEVER do, but I hate what it looks like to the other dog owners!).
I'm getting ready to go on this long road trip, and my father has told me that I shouldn't bring Wiley... that his own two new dogs are very territorial. It's also harder to find places to stay when he's with us (some KOAs and all Motel 6s take dogs, we've learned, but not all places have KOAs and some Motel 6s attract some rather unsavory clientele). And he's having a VERY hard time getting in and out of the van... we've tried different kinds of steps and stools, but he won't use them. He will only get in if the van is pulled up right against a curb (and even then it can take him several agonizingly long minutes to get in), and curbs are not always available everywhere we're staying. He definitely yelps a painful yelp if I try to help him into the van, and he's about 70 pounds... too low to the ground and too heavy for me to be lifting without wrecking my back.
I've looked into a couple of kinds of harnesses you can use to help dogs get up stairs and such, but none of them are supposed to be left on long-term, and I could see the putting-on-taking-off process having to happen a dozen times a day being a real pain for both us and Wiley.
He's on Dasuquin for his joints, and we give him Rimadyl for pain when he's having a hard time getting up or limping after a long walk (also a few times when he's fallen down the stairs... twice badly). Both of these are pricey, and Rimadyl has some potentially negative health issues with long-term use.
He also gets this thing once in a while, where he has a very hard time walking (but is not in pain) and seems drunk, won't eat, just lies down and acts like he wants to not move for a while. After talking with several vets, I still didn't know what was wrong. Finally I found some information on an inner ear problem that tends to hit older dogs, and now I'm certain that this is what's going on. It's happened three or four times (though not for a few months now), and it's likely that it will happen again and more frequently.
Clay's talking about moving out this summer, which would make me lose my child support from his dad, which means we wouldn't be able to stay in this house any longer. Finding a house with only a few stairs was hard enough... finding one with none feels insurmountable. And (lord forgive me, but I'm trying to be honest with you) if we were able to drop our requirement for a yard and no stairs, our housing options would open up tremendously; we could move closer to Bill's work, and afford a pretty nice place.
My sister, my dad, and several good friends have had elderly dogs who have reached a point where they all decided it was Time. I'm struggling with making this decision for Wiley. What's horrible is that I have to factor in things like my road trip (hiring dog walkers to let him out and exercise him while I'm gone, or figure out some way to take him with me), money (the dog walkers would be expensive, surgery would be REALLY expensive, raw food and his pills are expensive), and (please forgive me, but again with the honestly) my own irritation at having to be helping him up stairs and letting him out in the middle of the night.
I can tell Bill is pretty unhappy with how things are. I don't think he'll be very happy about having to feed and walk and coax him for while I'm gone, and Clay's gotten really distant and unhelpful lately... he never feeds or waters the animals, and when he's asked to walk the dog, he gets really angry. I'm definitely worried about leaving an infirm animal with two people who actively resent him, and I'm equally hesitant to ask them to take on a task they're both clearly reluctant to accept.
Boarding him while we're gone is out of the question (far too expensive, Wiley hates it, and last time he was kenneled, he had to have a bordatello shot that gave him a respiratory infection that lasted over three weeks). I don't know anyone here well enough to ask them to do it, like a friend did when we were getting ready to move from Davis (and he didn't have all these issues then). Taking him with me would be really hard on both of us.
When people I know are struggling with a sick animal, wondering whether it's time to euthanize, the pretty clear indicator has been when the animal stops eating. But while Wiley sometimes eschews his "regular" food (raw chicken parts) for days, he's always up for biscuits, broth, leftovers, eggs, and almost anything else that comes his way.
So it boils down to considering euthanasia for my own convenience, essentially, which makes me feel just horrible.
I have already arranged with a local vet to do a house visit for euthanasia, even in the middle of the night, if we have a crisis... he'd be too heavy for me to lift dead-weight from the floor if he were injured, and the thought of making his last hour even more agonizing by moving him is just too cruel.
It is horrific to consider putting him down while he's still mobile and eating? To do it while he's not in pain and terrified with some injury after falling down the stairs, or during some other crisis? It almost seems kinder... to do it before an emergency forces the decision. But what if... what if he'd have another year or two of happiness (or what passes for happiness for an old dog) if I only kept doing what I'm doing? Do I owe it to him, after the years he put in to protecting and playing with my kids?
ETA: Sir Terry Pratchett on the idea of jumping before being pushed: "I intend, before the endgame looms, to die sitting in a chair in my own garden with a glass of brandy in my hand and Thomas Tallis on the iPod. Oh, and since this is England, I had better add, "If wet, in the library". Who could say that this is bad?" In Wiley's case, it could be after downing a couple of cheeseburgers and a good romp at the dog park. But it would still be me pushing instead of some sort of organ failure or other injury, not him jumping of his own free will. And, being a dog, I suspect his sense of loyalty would keep him with us much longer beyond comfort or happiness if it were his choice alone.
I just wish there was a way to ask Wiley.
How do I solve this? What do I do? Help!