Adventures with Astrid and Creepy Company

Between the excessive heat as well as Astrid's arthritis and recurring vestibular disease issues, the old gal doesn't go for many true walks these days.

When it was still somewhat cool out, she'd happily choose to go for slightly longer walks with the whole family on weekends. These days, though, we often just go down the street, she does her business, and then we go home. If it's early morning and not too hot yet, sometimes she'll choose to go a full block, but that's very rare on these hot days. And that's fine with me. I'm also not a fan of summer heat, and I just want Astrid to be as comfortable and safe as possible.

Astrid has her annual exam in a couple of weeks. She did have a 6-month check in January, when her bloodwork overall looked really good, so we'll soon see if that's still holding steady. At 12 years old, Astrid is finally showing her age, which is more than fair. She's a big old girl at 85 lbs, which makes things like arthritis a bit more troublesome at times. Her pain meds help her feel comfortable, though, and there are days when she tries to go for little runs in the back yard and she tries some of her youthful habits, with mixed results.

Somewhere around the end of last year, Astrid had some sort of mild bout of "old dog vestibular disease", which causes things like a head tilt and loss of balance. One of my childhood dogs had two severe bouts of this, and though Astrid's didn't have a severe, acute flare of it like my childhood dog, her symptoms do recur or flare here and there. Astrid has a permanent head tilt to the right that is often noticeable, as well as some imbalance that makes the big girl not so graceful on her feet. These symptoms aren't themselves painful for Astrid. They just make her a bit, well, clumsy. She also started having occasional strabismus affecting her right eye, causing it to sometimes stare outward even when her left eye is looking forward. It tends to occur when she's having a rougher vestibular day and is turning or looking a certain way. It only lasts a couple or a few seconds, and getting her to focus on me usually corrects it. Her vet said that this can indeed be caused by vestibular disease, and that since Astrid has been having mild symptoms for at least 6 months now, he's comfortable saying that the strabismus, head tilt, and clumsiness are very likely just residual effects of her of having vestibular disease.

One thing that always amazes me is that, in 12 years, there has never a been a single day when Astrid feels sick to the point where she won't eat her favorite foods. The same childhood dog I mentioned above was incredibly food oriented and would eat anything and everything, but she also regularly got what her vet called "gut rot" and would stop eating. Though Astrid has always been a picky eater, she has favorite foods that she will always eat, like chicken and peanut butter. If she ever stopped eating those, we'd know something was truly wrong. In 12 years, though, she's never once had even part of a day when she wouldn't eat her favorite foods. She's had lots of other health issues over the years, including cancer and a torn ligament, but somehow never an upset stomach.

Anyway. Have I rambled long enough? Yeah? Well, Astrid and all of us here wish you a wonderful Wednesday! If you're in a heat wave like we are, we hope you're staying cool.

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Spooky Doodle of the Day

We'll still sharing our new series of spooky summertime doodles. Today, we of course have Astrid's drawing, in which she has some creepy company.

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Tip of the Day

We're continuing with our pet parenting hack tips. So, yesterday we mentioned wrapping sisal rope around furniture legs in order to create money-saving scratching posts that also save you extra floor space. That's not the only way furniture can be used to create something special for your kitty, though. We all know that cats love cozy places to relax, including, of course, hammocks. If you yet again want to save money and floor space, you can suspend a hammock from beneath an end table or other similar piece of furniture. You would start with some cloth, which could be securely attached to or tied around the legs of the table. You could use velcro, some safely tied rope, or even just the corners of the cloth to suspend the hammock. In this way, you could create a cheap, easy, space-saving DIY hammock in which your kitty could snooze.