Let's Just Chat Today: Dog Parent Problems

Real talk. I've been working on a really long blog post all day. It's not 5pm the night before I usually post them. I'm really not feeling it for this week. It's been a tough week, and I'd rather just sit and chat about our dog parent problems with you today. Is that okay? Can we do that? Great! Grab a cup of coffee. I've certainly got one ready, and let's just chat.

When Life Hands You Dogs

Disclaimer to all real human parents: I love y'all. I get that dog parenting and human parenting is not the same. You've been dealt the harder cards for sure. Breastfeeding, crying and screaming through the night, sleeplessness that can't be caught up on, and the list goes onward. But there are still challenges that come with being a dog parent, especially of an older dog. The following will be about my little family with my two dogs and zero kids. Please don't tell me how much harder it is to be a human parent. I already know. I've been told. That doesn't change that my present circumstances are also tough in their own way.If you've been around here for awhile, you know that we have two dogs that we adopted last October and again a few days later. We love them. They're our babies. Dog parenting this week has been tough or ruff, as we'll put it. She started having seizures back in December. I've been fairly quiet about it online. I don't really know how to talk about it. It's changed our whole life. We've got to have at least one of us home twice a day at specific times to dispense medicines. It makes traveling hard. It makes plans with friends hard. Our date nights are even juggled around those medication times.

Dog Parent Problems

It's been doable. Until last weekend. I spent a good majority of last Monday at the vet trying to see if Oakley was okay. She'd been acting weird. She's running into things, having a lot more accidents, losing her balance more often, her appetite waned, and she was generally a bit out of it. We knew that all of this could be a side effect with her medication. All her tests came back normal. Together with our vet, we decided to lessen the dosage and see if we could keep both seizures and side effects away.That brings us to today. Last Friday, we lowered the dosage of her seizure medicine. This way, we could monitor her over the weekend. There have been zero seizures - which is awesome news. Instead, we're still dealing with incontinence issues. Her water bowl has been knocked down too many times to count. Countless loads of laundry have been done, consisting of only towels used from accidents or to clean up water. She's sitting down on top of her sister. Scout is the best way to sit down, at least she's decided that it is. That is, unless you're just falling into a sitting position because that's quite fun too. She's been banging around walking head first into things that she knows are there.We have a feeling that her vision has gotten a lot worse over the past few weeks. Our suspicion is that now she is now mostly blind, instead of just partially. She's also an old dog. We don't know what this means for our lives. Tensions have risen over the past few days as we both feel like helpless dog parents. We don't know what to do. We're at a crossroads on how to help her and not lose our minds.

While Writing...

In the midst of writing this, I've had to get up and rescue Oakley from falling and being trapped behind a broken table that's turned upside down because of a broken leg. (We're waiting to get it fixed but the shop we wanted to get it fixed in is waiting for repairs from Harvey.) She got stuck behind my desk where she had an accident and fell in it (I'm writing from the couch currently). I got to clean that up and her. Started the laundry, because it needed to happen anyway, plus smells. I also rescued her twice from falling in our backyard. Once, her sister came and got me. The other time, I was already out there having a discussion with her sister about barking. She got trapped both behind the desk and the table yet again for a second time. At that point, I got her on a leash attached to me until I finished this with the promise of her walk, which is still her favorite thing. For the record, our little chat here has taken just over an hour.