Aging Gracefully
Your dog, that is. Not you.
We have a house of senior dogs. At 14, 12 ½, and 10 years old – and a 3 year old, the whippersnapper – our house is beginning to revolve around the oldsters. Having an older dog changes the way you budget, live, and well, love.
Dogs are living longer now, thanks to advances in veterinary medicine, accessible veterinary care, and dog health insurance. Like people, as dogs age, they typically need more care. Young dogs are healthy for the most part and need to be seen by a veterinarian usually only for their yearly veterinary exam; generally they’re not suffering from anything other than excess energy and boundless enthusiasm (that you sometimes wish your veterinarian could prescribe a pill for!).
Just like people generally are fairly healthy until our senior years, dogs don’t need the veterinarian until they start to develop age-related issues such as lumps and bumps, arthritis, back and neck pain, cancer, heart disease, liver and kidney disease, diabetes, weakness, and yes, even senility and dementia. Our older dogs are also starting to show some losses in both hearing and vision.
|
