My little angel, Ashley, just passed away in June, and that was just one month before we would have celebrated her seventeenth birthday. If you look in my profile, you can see an album of her when she was fifteen and sixteen. My avatar picture was when she was fifteen. I had Ashley since she was a baby, and I wouldn't have thought it was possible, but I loved her even more when she got older. She was still very active up until a couple of days before she died, and we walked together every day for a couple of miles weather permitting. I carried her a lot at first, because I was being very protective, but she was happier when she was walking. Gradually, we increased it until she was walking at least a mile at a time. If I would have let her, she would have walked more because she loved the walks. Although her doctor felt it was not necessary, I took her there and had her checked out every couple of months and more often when necessary. We wanted to make sure that we were doing everything possible to keep her healthy and to catch anything early. She acted like a puppy her whole life, but she just slowed down a bit and got tired more easily. Her doctor was amazed at how well she was doing a week before she died. Her heart and lungs were strong, and she was a happy little girl. She did develop doggy Alzheimer's the last year of her life. I started to notice some strange behaviors, and I thought it was a normal part of aging that we couldn't help. I didn't even mention it to her doctor, even though we had been there several times in the previous six months (she was having problems with her stomach and she was getting gas pockets). When her anxiety increased, I told her doctor about the symptoms I was seeing and we put her on Anipryl. It really helped a lot with the anxiety. I don't know if she knew we were her mommy and daddy, but she knew we loved her and she was so loving and responsive with us. She felt very safe as long as she was with us. She needed a lot of care just to keep her safe and feeling secure and to prevent her from getting stuck in corners, but her doctor assured us that she had an excellent quality of life. She caught a stomach virus and her temperature dropped four months before she died, and our doctor wasn't there at the practice that day. When the other doctor brought her back to her after doing xrays and saw how responsive she was when she saw me, he told me that he was sure that she was going to pull through. We would not have given up that time with her for anything, and she was worth every bit of care and lost sleep. I could not recommend a senior baby more. |