Question:
My 18 yr old dog is going downhill fairly quickly.It's her mind, not her body, and it's pretty painful to watch in a dog asalert and engaged as she's always been. She's been having moments whereshe becomes confused and panics in her confusion. What's interesting isthat she can no longer triangulate on sound - she hears it, but can't tellthe direction. So calling to her to get her through those "I'm LOST!!"moments doesn't help, actually makes her fear worse.

Concurrently, she's developed separation anxiety, pretty common in seniordogs as they become uncomfortable. She expresses it with licking to thepoint of really nasty granulomas.

We're never really ready for this, are we?

Answer: we're not, and yes, it is pretty painful to watch. I, too,have an 18-yr-old dog (miniature/toy poodle) who's loosing more grounddaily, it seems. And hers is mental too, physically she's fine--thevet is astounded that she's doing so well for her age. I call her mylittle energizer bunny dog--she just keeps going, and going, andgoing!But mentally, yes, her dementia, while it seems better some days thanothers, is bad. Plus she has many, many accidents in the house. She'snot incontinent, exactly, but as soon as she gets out of bed, she goespotty. That's getting pretty tiresome, and pretty embarrassing ifcompany's over! Misty has been blind from cataracts for about 4 years,and deaf for a couple, so she gets really confused and fearful. Ican't take her for walks, because it scares her too much. So prettymuch all she does is sleep, eat, and potty! I've always said that Iwon't put her down as long as she's not in pain. But there comes apoint when you wonder: what about the quality of her life? On theother hand, there are a few times when she's rollling around in herbed, all happy and wagging her tail, when she slmost seems like Mistyagain. It's so hard to know what to do.We had to put down our standard poodle, Coco, 2 years ago at age 15.In his case, the deterioration was physical, and he was in a lot ofpain, so there was no question as to the right thing to do.