State of the Pook
Aug. 17th, 2011 02:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vom_marloweWe went to the vet for the Pook's checkup today. He adores his vet and his vet adores him and it's an adoration love fest of scritches and cookies and wagging tails.
I talked to her about a couple of issues. The Pook is eleven, which is pretty old for a dog of his type. Although we don't know his exact origins, he's pretty clearly a working line German Shepherd mix (his coloring, for one thing, comes nearly exclusively in those lines--he's a bicolor, not a black and tan). They have less tendency to hip displasia than their other shepherd cousins, and this fortunately has absolutely been the case for him. He's avoided most other large-dog issues.
The vet said that she normally sees cancer appear earlier, at around 8 or 9, if it's going to, and that while we might need to think about arthritis medicine in another year or two, at the moment he's ridiculously healthy for his age and has passed most of the genetic-caused diseases on by. She said that of course, he'll be winding down in a few years, and we'll need to watch for old-age caused heart troubles and the such, but that these are, by and large, quieter ways to go.
Which is a comfort. (I know that sounds a bit....morbid, but what I want most is for him to have a long, joyful life and a quiet end where he knows he's adored.)
My grand old gentleman is still practicing CONSTANT VIGILANCE! and continues to do his usual utterly eccentric things like refusing walkies sometimes and rolling in dead things and throwing himself in my path if I begin to fall (he seems to feel it is better for me to fall on him than for me to fall on the ground, dear sweet silly Pookie).
I've got a new book and we've been doing new tricks and games from it, and he's very cheered about it all. Yesterday he barked me out of bed to get started again. Hilarious and more effective than coffee.
Here he is with a sleepy ear cocked up.
I talked to her about a couple of issues. The Pook is eleven, which is pretty old for a dog of his type. Although we don't know his exact origins, he's pretty clearly a working line German Shepherd mix (his coloring, for one thing, comes nearly exclusively in those lines--he's a bicolor, not a black and tan). They have less tendency to hip displasia than their other shepherd cousins, and this fortunately has absolutely been the case for him. He's avoided most other large-dog issues.
The vet said that she normally sees cancer appear earlier, at around 8 or 9, if it's going to, and that while we might need to think about arthritis medicine in another year or two, at the moment he's ridiculously healthy for his age and has passed most of the genetic-caused diseases on by. She said that of course, he'll be winding down in a few years, and we'll need to watch for old-age caused heart troubles and the such, but that these are, by and large, quieter ways to go.
Which is a comfort. (I know that sounds a bit....morbid, but what I want most is for him to have a long, joyful life and a quiet end where he knows he's adored.)
My grand old gentleman is still practicing CONSTANT VIGILANCE! and continues to do his usual utterly eccentric things like refusing walkies sometimes and rolling in dead things and throwing himself in my path if I begin to fall (he seems to feel it is better for me to fall on him than for me to fall on the ground, dear sweet silly Pookie).
I've got a new book and we've been doing new tricks and games from it, and he's very cheered about it all. Yesterday he barked me out of bed to get started again. Hilarious and more effective than coffee.
Here he is with a sleepy ear cocked up.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-17 07:55 pm (UTC)He sounds like an incredibly sweet guy. I'm glad he's mostly passed problems by -- the vet sounds about right, given my parents' experiences with their dogs (Airedales, nice, solid, medium-sized dogs) over the past 30+ years. Healthy at 11 is excellent.
I think the only time one of their older boys ended up with something after age 11 was when Piper developed problems peeing, which turned out to be a very slow-moving prostate cancer (fun fact to know and tell: so far, the only mammalian species we know of that develop prostate cancer are humans and dogs). My parents treated him with doxycycline and he lived another two years pretty comfortably, which is a win in my book.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-18 01:07 am (UTC)And I did not know that about prostates! Learn something new every day.