Are You Gonna Waste Your Time Thinking

...how you've grown up or how you've missed out.

Meet Clover

Savenger.

Hates Cats.

Anxious.

Bed Hog.

In 2006, this one came into our lives from the SPCA of Durham.  

The info card said she was approximately 3 years old. 

Fast Forward 1 year, through a stint of heart worm and some other bad luck, our vet takes an x-ray of her.  The x-ray included shots of her spine which showed major degeneration - the spine was fusing together.  The vet told us this is not something that occurs in young dogs.  

New approximate age: 8 years old.

Know what sucks?  Adopting a dog and not having ANY CLUE how long that dog will be in your lives.  I know this is the chance you take when adopting any animal but it still is hard to find out that the dog you thought was a young thing still is now past middle age.  Tends to make one grumpy.

Fast Forward to 2011.  Clover's approximate age:  11.  

New fun things that have come with her old age:  peeing in the house, acting scared/worried, not knowing where she is, not coming when called.  We did some research, talked to some vets and found she may have canine dementia.

Of course she does.

To tackle the big problem - peeing in the house (namely on the couch and on the bed) we have given her a plethora of dog beds to lay in on the floor.  She finds the crate with the dog bed in it to be a nice safe haven, but her favorite place in the world is to be snuggled up on a couch.  Since we took that away from her, she decided she would show us.  If she can't be on the human chairs and she doesn't want to be in the dog beds, she'll take over the human blanket basket.  

No one ever said she wasn't smart.

 (don't mind the shelf on the floor, it might be there a while until we find a place for it)

Oh...you see me.  

Now you see me caring.

We laughed so hard when we caught her in this position.  It was too much to make her get off of the stack of blankets.  We figure if she has to try that hard to find a comfy spot that isn't a couch, maybe this time we'll allow it....as long as she didn't pee on it.

Dog:        1

Human:   0