Lady's slowing down

LADY A FEW YEARS AGO...

Lately, Lady has been slowing down. Oh, she'll get up and move when I go past her. She might want to go out on her line; maybe she wants me to take her for a walk; or perhaps she hopes I'll take her for a drive (as I did today).

Otherwise, she sleeps most of the time. Or she lays quietly in the door of the living room. It's not unusual for a dog to do that, but she wasn't that way 10 or 12 years ago. Back then, she wanted to be outside and doing something, digging a hole, chasing squirrels or aggravating our collie Katie or our mutt Buddy.

Now, she walks slowly and carefully. The other day, she had trouble getting up the stairs from the basement. And recently she fell down trying to get in the car and wound up on her side in the floorboard.

It's no big surprise, if you figure her age. The day we got her — Oct. 1, 2002 — they said she was two years old. That's been nearly 14 years. If you count Oct. 1 as her birthday (and we do), she'll be 16 on Oct. 1 of this year.

She's still a pretty girl, and she's still interested in everything from walks to car rides to mechanical devices (she sniffs them, of course). But her time is getting shorter. And it haunts me.

Yesterday when I was returning her from the groomer's office, she was walking strangely before we got into the car. She was walking in a circle and lifting her front legs in a odd fashion, almost as though she were swimming. But when I opened the car door, she jumped right in and got in the seat as though nothing had happened.

NOTE: Lady passed on Sept. 17, 2016; that was just two weeks short of her unofficial 16th birthday. We got her Oct. 1, 2002. 

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