Celie sits on her new orthopedic doggie bed in her new doggie jacket, 7 December 2013 [Photo credit: Cathie Bird]
This year I've had to make some major adjustments in our household to help out Miss Celie, my Walker hound. She's about 11 years old now, and for the past year or so has been bothered occassionally by arthritis in one hip. This summer I noticed that she seemed less and less comfortable lying on her sleeping pad. After seeing an orthopedic bed that a neighbor had gotten for his older dog, I decided to see if Celie would do better if she had one. I got her one with four inches of memory foam and she immediately abandoned all other dog beds she'd been using.
A much younger Celie on the run. [Photo credit: Cathie Bird]
In the past few weeks I've had to make some more adjustments after she was diagnosed with diabetes. In addition to giving her insulin, and changing food for both dogs to a no-corn-wheat-or-soy kibble with higher-fiber, I had to get her the coat that she's modeling in the photo. She lost quite a bit of weight before we got a diagnosis and started treatment, and this left her with even less insulation than her natural short-haired-southern-hound-dog coat provided.
In the past she has been able to stay pretty warm on winter holler walks just by moving fast. Now her age and combination of ailments is at least temporarily making it hard for her to stay warm if it's down in the 40's. The day we were out and I heard her teeth chattering -- the first time I've ever heard any animal's teeth chatter -- I decided we needed to try a coat or sweater.
The coat arrived yesterday. I tried it on her last night just to make sure it was a good fit. I left it on her awhile, but she wouldn't go through the dog door with it on, so I decided to wait for daylight to continue acclimatizing her to the coat. Today's temps have been in the forties. She came in after playing outside for awhile around noon, and was shivering, so I gave both dogs their midday snack and slipped the coat on Celie.
She eventually decided it was okay to lie down on her bed with her coat on, or move around the house. When Shadow heard something outside a few minutes later and rushed through the dog door to check it out, Celie followed him. She has now been in and out at least twice, and seems to be okay with the coat. Later today or tomorrow, we'll do a holler walk and see how that goes.
Celie with her new little brother, Shadow, in early summer 2009 [Photo credit: Cathie Bird]
Celie is doing a lot better, but still seems a little low on energy. This coming week, I'll leave her with the vet all day so they can check her blood sugar levels throughout the day and see what treatment adjustments are needed.
A note of interest (at least to me!) in closing this post: I often use the Zemanta app that TypePad provides for locating related links and posts. It uses words that appear in my post to do this. Nearly all the suggested links that popped up are related to The Color Purple and Miss Celie, one of the fims main characters. This movie is on my top ten favorite movies of all time list, and I named my dog Miss Celie because she had clearly been abused by someone and was extremely shy and submissive when I first took her in. I hoped the name -- and the images I held in my mind -- would help her heal and to find and express herself a little more courageously, just as Miss Celie does in Alice Walker's awesome novel (and Spielberg's movie version of it).
I think it worked.
