Everything She Needs

The Mrs. is on her way to California for a high school reunion and a visit with her sister. With me still not gainfully employed in any meaningful way (there is work, but not consistent and not full-time), it was impractical for me to accompany her. And of course the other creature in the room, literally, is our elderly dog. She is approaching 14 and, while she is still in good health for a dog of that age, she requires a lot of attention and care.

She needs a pain pill three times a day, stuffed into a blob of tuna to make it enticing enough. Lately she's been ambivalent about eating the tuna, which means it and the pill often end up having to be thrown away. (After a couple of hours inside the tuna, the pill turns to mush and can't be reused.) Fortunately the medication is inexpensive, and we finally got smart enough to ask for the largest quantity we could legally purchase from the vet at one time. Also, she graciously prefers the cheaper light tuna to the solid white kind, and the light tuna is easier to pack into blobs.

She needs to go out four times a day at roughly six to seven hour intervals (though the "last call" walk at night tends to be only about four hours after the previous one). For the past three years I've been handling all of these except the morning excursion, but for the next week I have to do that one too. The need to relieve herself tends to be most urgent in the mornings, so I have to be able to get up, get dressed, and get her out of the house quickly. Whenever we go out, she needs to be assisted and supported going down and up the ramp we had built for her last year. She has spazzed out a couple of times and ended up falling off of it, resulting in minor injuries, and holding her while she traverses the ramp is the best way to avoid any more incidents.

She gets a blend of dry dog food and cooked food, along with "toppings" of chicken broth, plain yogurt, and ricotta cheese. It takes several minutes to assemble this concoction, and she eats twice each evening, about three hours apart, in order to accommodate the slower metabolism of an older dog. She still has a good appetite but on recent occasions has not been eating much of her "first dinner" for unknown reasons. After a couple of hours have passed, she's much more obviously hungry and consumes her "second dinner" rapidly.

To hire someone to meet all these needs at the appropriate times would likely cost us at least $50 per day. In our current situation there's no way that could happen, and even so it would be a lot to ask of someone. She's our dog, and at this point in her life she needs us more than ever, so we have to make sure she gets everything she needs.