All's Still Fucked Up on the Western Front

The latest update from the sick dog front continues the trend of the news getting better. We're still not out of the woods and things are certainly looking bad but if DefCon Five is a tear-stained drive to the vet to be there in time for the final rest we're back down to about DefCon Three or so. Or, in other words where we were before I woke up this morning. Things are tense but nothing awful is going to happen immediately.

As we were beginning to suspect, it's something with the spinal column. Basically, the dog is old and arthritic and her spine is tightening up and preventing her from walking. Could be bacterial, could be related to the spinal disks, could be a lot of things but it's fairly widespread and debilitating even though our dog doesn't seem to be in any apparent distress at the moment. She just can't walk and is, instead, lying down and resting. Corrective surgery hasn't been ruled out although at her age it might not even be the best course of action. Instead, we're going to get her on some pills for a week or so and watch what happens. The problem there is she's been having stomach problems and was already on medication for that so who knows? But, at this point, I'll take a dog with irritible bowels over one who can't stand.

She's also, apparently, gone blind. Bumped into a wall at the vets and they did a penlight test or something with no response. But as my mother said, for a dog that's not such a big deal. Their main sense is smell and she's knows my mothers house well enough to get around. Although maybe this does explain why she was so afraid, so pathetically timid, with the new steps I installed about a month or so ago. We thought she was just unused to them but maybe it was she couldn't see them and we'd destroyed her sense of what should be there.

Either way, still grim but we're through the thick of the woods and now it's time to get back to something approaching normal.