I don’t know if it was the weather (muggy and overcast) or lack of rest (waking at 2:00 a.m. and not going back to sleep), but over the weekend I was useless. I couldn’t move myself to do the simplest task. Anything requiring actual thought was out of the question.<\/p>\n
Then yesterday morning it was as if somebody hit a switch. I zipped, roared, zoomed, and accomplished stuff all day.<\/p>\n
So much for energetic days, though. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Last night Robbie woke me at 12:15. And 1:15. And again at 2:45 — panting loudly in my ear and with his front feet on the bed next to my pillow, asking to be lifted onto the mattress. And stubborn boy, he wouldn’t budge when I told him, “NO!” and “Go to bed.” The first two times I got up, gave him a chance to go outside (which he didn’t want to do), then led him back to his own blankets. After the third, I put him outside for the rest of the night.<\/p>\n
Today I’m a slug again, though I’m forcing myself to at least attempt productivity.<\/p>\n
—–<\/p>\n
Those Robbie interludes were worrisome. Unless he’s suffering digestive disturbances (which he wasn’t), Robbie has always been a champion sleeper. Very sedentary boy. Being king of the house, he has the privilege of sleeping on the couch — though these days he needs me to lift him there — and has always considered that his domain.<\/p>\n
About a week and a half ago, that abruptly changed. Suddenly, he wants nothing to do with the couch. He’ll lie on a blanket at the foot of the couch, but if I boost him up, he’ll jump right off.<\/p>\n
I’ve also awakened three times to find him sleeping on the hard, cold kitchen floor. Trying to keep cool, perhaps? But he’s also trembling. And no matter the weather, I’ve never, ever known luxury-loving Robbie to choose a hard floor over something soft.<\/p>\n
Both the floor-sleeping and the attempts to get in bed with me in the middle of the night look like fear. I’ve seen him behave like that only when someone’s shooting off fireworks or guns nearby.<\/p>\n
But there’s not a sound or a threat anywhere.<\/p>\n
Time to pull his crate out of storage and let him spend his nights in that, it seems. But the behavior’s still disturbingly mysterious. I see a consultation with furrydoc in the near future.<\/p>\n
—–<\/p>\n
Robbie turned 13 this summer. In the last year he’s gone almost entirely deaf. His thick body and short legs have never exactly made him Mr. Speedy, but now, with bad knees, he has to be boosted into the car for his rides and (more recently) he struggles with stairs and sometimes appears to cross his hind legs as he walks. On woods walks, he trails 50 yards back most of the time. But he seems content to mosey, so I just turn occasionally to check on him. As often as not he’s stopping to smell the flowers.<\/p>\n
Or pee on them.<\/p>\n
He’s gotten more lovable as he’s aged. He always adored people (especially strange men), but for most of his life his attitude toward other dogs was bully first and ask questions later. Now, he’s filled with goodwill toward all creatures.<\/p>\n
He’s still hungry for any food he can get his mouth on and seems well and happy. But the recent changes — especially the suddenness of several of them — are heartbreaking. And there are some tentative signs that even if he’s physically okay, but for the ears and the knees, he’s losing his marbles. And he didn’t have that many to lose in the first place. (An intellectual giant of dogdom he was not, even at his best.)<\/p>\n
Hope my baby boy still has a couple of good years in him. But I worry. I do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I don’t know if it was the weather (muggy and overcast) or lack of rest (waking at 2:00 a.m. and not going back to sleep), but over the weekend I was useless. I couldn’t move myself to do the simplest task. Anything requiring actual thought was out of the question. Then yesterday morning it was as if somebody hit a switch. I zipped, roared, zoomed, and accomplished stuff all day. So much for energetic days, though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dogs-and-cats","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17918\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}