Hey everyone! I know it has been a long time. Busy, lazy, just couldn't think of anything, etc...
Lilly my dog will be 14 this year and over the past few months we have noticed some changes in her behavior. First is that her leg that she had surgery on in 2012 is bugging her more frequently. She limps almost every day and she has a much harder time getting up the stairs and up from a nap also.
We've also noticed that she is losing her hearing. She uses this to her advantage when she is outside and getting into trouble (by barking at the neighbor dogs)...it is easy to not come when called if she can't hear. sigh!
As part of her hearing loss she has started following me around. Wherever I am, she has to follow. If I leave while she is napping she goes into panic mode searching for where I might have run off to. That brings us to yesterday...
Yesterday was laundry day. When I got to the first load to be dried I discovered that the drum belt on my dryer had broke...so no dryer. That meant that I needed to hang all of our clothes to dry. After living here for almost 15 years we've had dryer issues before so I have back up ready...and I use it for other purposes. One of my drying areas is in my basement. There are 4 support poles that I have drying lines tied to. So I took my first load to the basement to dry there. and Lilly followed.
Lilly likes the basement. It is nice and cool and there are lots of things to snoopervise there as she isn't allowed there on a regular basis. The problem of course is climbing the stairs back to the main floor. She made it fairly easily.
For my second load I had several sweaters so I wanted them to hang outside as long as possible...we were expecting bad weather after noon. So I grabbed a clothes rack that I have and set up outside to hang the clothes...Lilly followed.
For my final load I was in the laundry room putting everything on hangers to join the 2nd load on the outdoor rack. But I had gotten up for it while Lilly was asleep. She woke, didn't see me and started searching. I could hear her (her nails need trimming) and I tried to holler to let her know where I was. But she didn't hear me and she went down the stairs to the basement. Poor puppy!
Over the course of the day she went downstairs 3 times. After that I just started blocking the stairs to keep her from going down. She didn't seem all that bothered by it.
A few days ago Lilly woke from her nap and for some odd reason didn't notice that I was right here at my computer (just like when she fell asleep) and she started searching the house for me. When she couldn't find me anywhere she tried to determine if I was upstairs (she isn't allowed up there) and I was watching her from my chair here. I think she felt rather silly. Poor puppy!
