It hasn't been one of those sterling days.

Willow's appetite has been iffy since yesterday. She didn't want dry dog food yesterday morning, so I gave her half a container of wet. She polished that off while I proceeded to decorate the tree, but as the day progressed she got more and more restless. I was so happy when she finally went in her crate to sleep for a little while. At supper we tried all sorts of things to get her to eat, but she refused everything, and wouldn't even take her pill via the Pill Pocket, which previously had been like doggie catnip.

This morning we put out more wet dog food, she ate some, then promptly threw up, and started wandering up and down, from her crate to her bed in front of the fireplace and back again, over and over.

We had to go to a memorial service for Juanita's mother this afternoon. We stayed for the service, and long after that only long enough to say hello to everyone and give Juanita a card and a little gift, since we'd called the vet and asked to bring Willow in. After the service we ran home, changed out of her good togs, got Willow, and drive out to Dunwoody. We dropped her off and went to Barnes & Noble, a tricky proposition since we had to skirt Perimeter Mall on a Saturday before Christmas.

While we were still wandering around the bookstore, the vet called and said at the minimum she probably had a urinary tract infection, as there was blood in her urine. They'd taken blood as well and were going to send it to the lab, and we could take her home if we liked as long as we stayed with her. So we picked up groceries at Kroger on the way back and then went to the vet's office.

The vet described her as "puny." Well, yes, she's been puny for a while. I noticed when I gave her her bath before vacation that I could feel her spine like dinosaur bones under her back. That's why I made sure to bring wet dog food to mix with the dry on vacation, because she never eats well on vacation, and she licked her bowl clean every night, and she was fine when we got home. After the last blood test she had for the Cushing's, though, she didn't seem as perky, and that eight straight days of rain made her stiff as well. We made sure to give her extra time to get up and down the stairs to go outside, and made sure she was dried off when she came in and it was raining. I mean, they've taken at least two blood tests since she became "puny." Didn't they notice?

Anyway, the vet also said that she notices signs of senility in her, but we already have seen that.  Sometimes she doesn't seem to know where she is all the time. The vet says she is also hyper reflexive and flinches at movement. I'm not sure what that means, if anything. And she suspects Willow might be in pain from arthritis, too.

So they sent us home with a broad-spectrum antibiotic which we pretty much had to put down her throat along with her Cushing's pill. She wanders back and forth from her crate to her bed and back again, and can't get comfortable. It's almost like it's not comfortable for her to put her head down. I've tried putting extra padding on the bed, letting her get up in the chair where she's been so happy—nothing. The poor dog is so unhappy.

And so are we.

Labels: dogs, illness

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:51:00 PM

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