Bouncer is getting so much older. I notice her back legs seem to be weaker every day and she sometimes has a problem getting up from a lying down position (oh how I understand that!) She also has a serious kidney problem. She needs to pee so often and she's just like an old lady (in human years she'd be about 107 years old!) who can't hold her urine until she gets to the bathroom. It's too bad you can't teach dogs Kegels!
She will hobble into my office on her way out the dog door, but she can't quite make it so she pees on the floor. Ned has set up puddle pads in my office and they are used every day, but she also pees dozens of times out in the back yard. If she comes into the family room the wrong way and is headed toward the glass door instead of my office, she pees on the rug. Ned got the name on of a kind of vacuum cleaner which, I think, is designed to clean up animals accidents. It takes him a long time to get the pee spot vacuumed up, but when he gets it finished there is no sign of the stain and no odor.
And then there is Bubba. Bubba is a sweet dog, and as I have said many times, is definitely a lap dog. He had his routine during the day of whose lap he is going to be in (or near...when Walt is reading the paper, Bubba gets on the couch right next to him to sleep)
But as affectionate as he seems to be, he's got this growling thing. You can be petting him and he seems to be enjoying it and then suddenly he starts growling. If you remove your hand, he stops growling and if you go back to petting him again or even just touching his body, he starts growling again. I haven't figured out why. It doesn't seem like he's in pain or anything. But it's not just the petting, it's your body touching his body. If I don't touch him, but my arm is along side his body, he growls. He can be growling and wagging his tail at the same time. Last night he was growling because his body was touching my body and when I went to get out of the chair, which involved actually moving my arm, he bit me. He's six years old and obviously something happened to him in his first six years that makes this growling necessary.
But when he's not growling and is affectionate, he's great. And he's such fun because he's the first dog we've had in years who actually plays with toys.
He and Bouncer haven't actually become friends, but they have reached the point where they can walk together up and down the stairs, and around the yard, but then...like the growling, suddenly Bubba will growl continuously if Bouncer is in the same room, though before he might have been sniffing noses with him.
Dogs are so weird.
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