Loving my Oldies

You and J-J are going great guns.

Ha!! Already he knows that everything that is yours is his

Just so so happy for you all. He looks absolutely beautiful, with a naughty spark in his eye? Many many great times ahead.

Well, I am far as could be from an expert, but I’m with @persephone. She is gorgeous and that first photo is a cracker Many of us have rescue dogs and enjoying pondering not only their breeds or mix of breeds, but also their stories.

Photo ??

I hope you and your vets can find and answer so you can treat and help Jax. I have an elderly Pom x Corgi who has dynamic airways disease which was diagnosed a couple of years ago. But he (Bunter) doesn’t get exhausted in the way you describe Jax. He has a dreadful cough and sometimes it is so damned harsh and strong that I wonder he doesn’t cough up his insides . He lies around most of the time (he is 17), but when he went to the vet the other day he was as bright as a button and we went for a little walk down the street. He does puff quite heavily, though, and a few weeks ago in the wee small hours he was breathing so heavily, I was contemplating taking him to emergency. We’ve been using a puffer on him for sometime now and have tried heaps of meds and combinations of meds, but we are now down to just ABs (injection every fortnight as he has become difficult to medicate), Codeine three times a day, Pred every second day and the puffer three times daily. Good luck. I hope you can find Jax some relief.

What a beautiful boy he was and always will be in your heart. Deepest sympathies, @stellnme. Basil. You’ll never be forgotten.

This sort in of thing makes me a bit cross, really. I am sure they are out there, but I don’t know of any rescuers who “vilify or discourage” responsible breeding. There are irresponsible rescue organisations and people, just as there are irresponsible and unethical breeders breeding dogs who can hardly breathe, GSD who can hardly walk, Westies whose skin conditions ensure a life of misery, etc etc etc. I don’t know who this Beret Walsh is, but she needs to take off the blinkers.

LOVE LOVE LOVE icon needed, @koalathebear. Many of “my” adopting families kept in touch as well. It is just so gratifying to know how much the dogs are loved and, in some cases, how they have changed the lives of their families.

That’s what I feel is way to go, @Tassie. Day by day, really. She has eaten well today, but each time I pick her up, she feels lighter , so I think it will be a case of lots of smoochies and cuddles.

Hope she gets better soon.

She is now on the deck eating dinner with Tamar swapping bowls

I’ll look that up, thank you, PK. However, I do contemplate the quality of life issue daily and that is what is at the heart of the quandary. Jeune has always been a funny little girl (funny as in odd and different). She has always been fiercely stubborn, has never played with toys, out on walks when we had them, if left to her own devices, she could have taken an hour to go 20 metres or even less because she would fasten on one spot and sniff and sniff and sniff. I once tried to time her as to how long she would stand sniffing at one little patch. She won and I had to drag her to continue the walk . This was always the pattern of our walks . . . . . . So, maybe she is quite content in just snoozing the days away?? She has been in my life for over 16 years, 3 years old when I adopted her. I made a mistake in my post above. She saw the vet on 11 Dec not 17 Dec, so it is just over a week before we see her again and I will ask for some more guidance then.

A wonderful series of photographs .... just beautiful.

I decided to take a look at the topics I’ve created regarding my dogs and that great mystery, EATING, and came across this one started a year ago. 2019 has been a very very very long year in terms of trying to manage to give all my very elderly dogs the best lives I can. Despite all the supplementary feeding she is getting, Jeune continues to lose weight and I am very very conflicted, because, depending on what illness or age a dog has, it can be very difficult to make the decision as to what is in the best interests of the dog (or any other pet). When I got up this morning, Jeune was out on the deck in the sunshine. As I watched she had a couple of little episodes of throwing up something that is very rare considering her age and her cancer. She is drinking a lot these days and I wonder if that is because of all the extras she is getting such as lots of Nutrigel and Anitone (I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten who recommended that). When I checked on her again, she was just lying down on the deck, which I’ve never seen before except when she lies on the top step in the sunshine. After her meds, she had about 25mls of Recovery, Bone Broth and Nutrigel and ate a tiny bit of breakfast. Her #2s are normal and I have only once seen her straining and that was some weeks ago. So for a very elderly dog with cancer (not in pain and taking Piroxicam), is she okay considering these things? I just don’t know what to do. I cannot see it in her eyes that she is ready to go and, yesterday, after I gave her a bath, she was racing around the house and deck like a youngster, but today she is very tired and is so thin. If someone picked her up in the street, they would think she’d been deliberately starved. I last took her to the vet on 17 December and the vet said to see her in a month’s time. Well, this is just a bit of a ramble because I don’t really know whether I keep on doing what I’m doing until Jeune is half the weight she should be. She still makes her way downstairs and has a little potter around, but mostly she just does her business, stands around for a while and then comes back upstairs by herself or waits for me to carry her. (I should add, that she has always done this, even when she was young and healthy. She would just stand in the sun for ages. I’d take a bed down for her, but, nope: she just wanted to stand there soaking up the rays.) A little anecdote from many many years ago. A woman with terminal cancer was being interviewed about the refusal of the Australian government to allow a particular drug into Australia because they weren’t satisfied that enough testing had been done to prove or otherwise its efficacy or safety. That woman was relatively young, she was standing at her front fence talking to the interviewer and she didn’t look too bad, just quite pale. It was later reported that she had died the following day. The point of this story is that although she was “well” enough to stand up and talk to reporters, she was actually just hours away from death.