pet connection

“No meds.”

I re-read what I’d written in the instructions a few weeks ago to the house/pet sitter. No medications are given. The mere thought made my head swirl. All I could think about was the chart I used to tape to the kitchen counter with the demanding and constantly changing meds schedule I had for two  geriatric dogs. Fred and Clint were medical train wrecks, really, but most of the med changes were for Clint, my toy poodle from Katrina. The chart listed morning, noon, dinner, and bedtime.

I could have kept one dog’s schedule in my head, but not both of them. The chart changed at least once every week or every other week and I’d scratch things out with a pencil or a red pen. We’d try this, and then try that, alter a dosage, eliminate a med, or change the timing. Both of them had dry eye and needed ointment, although Clint’s was more severe, so he had tacrolimus while Fred had cyclosporine (or as I used to say, tacrolimu$ and cyclo$porine). Every once in a while I’d type and print a clean new chart, and it would stay clean for a week or so. I didn’t really need the chart after Clint died, but I kept it up for the six months afterwards during which Fred was still alive.

After there weren’t any geriatrics around, there was no need for medication for the past year and a half. Ginger has a mild case of inflammatory bowel disease that is kept under control with food from the veterinarian. and Dodger doesn’t need a darn thing except heartworm preventive. Dickens has had some struvite crystals, but as with Ginger, a specific diet is all that’s needed to manage it.

At least that’s the way it was until last week. Ginger turned 13 in early April, just days after being attacked at the dog park. Since her birthday, she’s been limping a bit and slowing down, and then a bit more, and then once or twice she couldn’t get into the back seat of the car by herself. Then she needed help getting on the couch. I assumed it was arthritis. We went to the vet, who found a spot of inflammation on her spine. There is no way to know if it was from the attack when she was rolled on her back or if it would have happened now anyway. After a few days on a veterinary NSAID designed for arthritis (Previcox), Ginger is walking like herself again, running at the dog park, and getting on the couch.

I love better living through chemistry if it can be accomplished without side effects, but it means regular blood work to make sure she can handle an NSAID long-term. It means she’s really a geriatric and we’ve just jumped onto the Yellow Brick Road of Old Age. Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.

I hadn’t even really noticed how easy life was during that small but bright window of time where dispensing multiple meds four times a day wasn’t necessary. That window has shut with the arthritis meds, and as I gird myself for the next couple of years I remind myself that this time there will only be one geriatric and I won’t need a chart, at least as long as I don’t buckle under and bring home some ancient little one in need of some TLC. Ginger is the healthiest dog I’ve ever had, and I’ve long thought she’d get to be the oldest one. She may well be the oldest, which for me would mean past 15.5, and my hope is that she needs a minimum of medication along the way. My goal for her is that she never needs her own chart taped to the kitchen cabinet.

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