Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Poor Douglas

One of the gifts that I got for Christmas was a new manual can opener. It's something that I'd asked for and something that I've been wanting for a long time. We got an electric can opener as a wedding gift and I triumphantly threw the old manual can opener away. It was one of those ancient metal ones like your mom had. Old and dirty and hard to use. But, not being a fan of counter clutter, I have the electric one stowed in a cabinet and sometimes, it just seems like such a huge burden to take it out of the cabinet, use it and put it away- just to open a can of tuna!

So, tonight, I used to new manual for the first time and it's amazing. I don't know how they did it, but they must have discovered a new law of physics or something, because it's like effortless. So smooth. No imprints in my fingers or inflammation of the carpal tunnel.

This is similar to my hair dryer discovery of two years ago in which the purchase of a new hair dryer took half an hour off the time it takes me to get ready in the morning.

In other news, our little Douglas hasn't been feeling well. It started Saturday when Paul took him and Duke over to a friend's house to play in the yard and Douglas didn't seem to feel much like playing. The spent the rest of the day sleeping on the couch next to the space heater. Sunday, his tail was tucked WAY under and he stopped trying to walk up or down the stairs or to jump up on the couch. He mostly just laid around and slept. Yesterday, his tail was so firmly tucked between his legs, that when you pulled it out and then let it go, it snapped back into place like a rubber band.

We suspected, based on his lack of movement and the stiffness in his waddle, that it was arthritis in his legs, since such things can be exacerbated by humidity and it's been raining nonstop since Thursday. He also had a huge sloppy incident of diarrhea yesterday.

So, after getting approval from the rescue yesterday, I took him to the vet this morning. She said that it seemed to be lower back pain and that it was pretty common in beagles. She gave him an anti-inflammatory shot and some pain pills to take home, His tail is now pointed straight down, rather than tucked under, so his tailometer is telling me that he's feeling a little better.

The vet agreed with me that Doug is older than three. She said that she'd say 5 +. I think we're going to need to rewrite poor Doug's online dating profile now that we know that he's old, blind and arthritic.

1 comment:

Anny said...

Oh poor Douglas! Its so hard to own a pet and be unable to have them tell you exactly what's wrong :(

Congrats on the can opener revelation though. Now you can garage sale the electric one!