Friday, March 13, 2015

My Canine Nursing Home

Having five dogs is time consuming when it comes to their care and attention, having five old dogs constitutes a 24 hour canine nursing home!

I am quite a dog lover as you might have guessed. Four canines are mine and one belongs to my mother in law, who lives with us.

They are all starting to have health issues. Two of them arthritis, one going blind, and two with heart issues. Veterinarian bills have gotten so that I can scarcely get them groomed anymore due to the costs of medicines, tests, and office visits.

I have no regrets and certainly don't begrudge my crew their care, but at the same time, I know that as I get older and the dogs leave me for doggie heaven, I will have to not replace them. I can see maybe having ONE dog in the future but that would be our financial limit.

I do wish Vets would help dog owners to own dogs with a little less expense involved. I mean most of my dogs are rescues, wouldn't a "group discount" be in order? I realize that they have to make their money but there might be fewer dogs in the shelters if it didn't cost so much for their care.

In the morning it takes me about 30 minutes to feed all the dogs and give each one of them their medicines for the morning. The evening routine is similar.

Cruiser, one who has heart failure had one of his seizures this morning. Thankfully he seems to have improved a bit. He has had only 2 in the last month and he seemed to recover quicker this morning.

My mother in law's dog Jake (who is not pictured below) was taken to be groomed yesterday and after Mom in law returned with him he was too weak to walk or eat. We were concerned at first that he might have had a stroke but after thinking about it we came to the conclusion that all the standing involved for grooming and toenail clipping was too much for him. He is 15 years old and normally spends most of his day on the dog bed anyway. He did eat part of his food this morning and we were able to get him up and outside to go to the bathroom but I will call the Vet and let them know what is going on in case he doesn't continue to improve.

Pictured here are me and my crew. Chase, my Lab is 15, the black Pomeranian is Kona and is also 15, Cruiser, the blonde Pomeranian and the Tri-color Pomeranian named Ceilidh are each 9 years old and the cat (who so far has no issues) , is named Mags and is about 13 years old.

1 comment:

  1. Our cat (actually she was Mom's cat) is winding down her affairs, as I said on FACEBOOK. She was diagnosed with an aggressive feline cancer a year ago. The vet said we were only buying time with the surgery, but it bought her some good months during which you would have never dreamed she was sick. But now, it's apparent that her time is short. I don't think she's in pain, but she's more interested in sleeping than eating or playing.

    ReplyDelete

Meal Plan

  I had a calm and pleasant Mother's Day yesterday. I hope you all did as well. I started the day making oatmeal cookies with cranberrie...