a worrying time and grass eating

Bette Davis is supposed to have said, 'Old age ain't for sissies.' Or, as I've heard it often said here in Australia, old age ain't for wimps!

I agree, in terms of my own life, not that I yet consider myself old... But I'm sure not young.

And in terms of of dog ownership, a beloved dog getting older can be stressful. It's been about six weeks since I blogged, and the hiatus has been mainly because Penny's been plagued by one problem after another and I kept waiting for her to be back to her usual energetic self.

Well, perhaps that will happen, but if I keep waiting it might be another six weeks, so I thought I'd write about what's been going on.

To sum it all up, she had an x-ray to check what was the cause of her ongoing limp, and to our surprise and that of our vet, it turned out her right leg has a completely torn cruciate ligament. We'd both thought it would be her lower spine that was the problem. The x-ray didn't specifically show the tear, but the specialist felt sure it was the problem.

To a certain extent, a torn cruciate ligament is an easier problem to deal with, given that she had cruciate surgery in September 2010 and made a good recovery.

But the x-ray showed some 'spots' in her body and so we arranged for a CT scan, which showed some issues in her liver, upper spine and her lung. The surgeon says they might be just part of the ageing process and we could keep an eye on them. But he won't do the cruciate surgery until he feels he's checked that out. So we'll have another CT scan in a week's time. That's three weeks after the original one. He's looking to see if any of them have changed in that short time.

It's been hot weather, so it's not too hard to convince Penny that she should rest and take life easy. We started her on pain relief - anti-inflammatories - but after a while her bowels seemed upset, so we've taken her off the tablets and put her on a bland diet.

We're obsessing about her poos. I'm sure anyone who has a dog understands this obsession. Her  gut is settling, we think. But yesterday she - as usual - grabbed something from the front garden and it must have been bad, or maybe it had something on it that bit her, and she rushed around eating grass for what seemed like ages.

Her appetite is good and she poos regularly, so we're just watching and waiting. But this afternoon, she vomited up this:

What a mystery. How could a bunch of grass sit in her digestive system and come back up, when all the other food is passing through normally?

It's not the first time she's used grass to self-medicate. She has always done that. But usually it comes out the other end. I just checked my past blog entries for ones that focus on grass-eating and there are ten! Sometimes she's pooed out the grass, sometimes she's vomited it up, and sometimes she even ate grass after vomiting something revolting she'd snatched as we walked.

In the midst of all this stress, it's kind of amusing to re-read my old post about how silly I was to buy pet grass. That pot of grass has turned out to be wonderful, given that it's hot and dry here in Melbourne and most of the grass in our garden is dying off. (I let weedy grass grow in the garden for Penny's sake.) The one little pot has multiplied into a big bunch of luscious leaves. You can see it in the background of this photo of our back patio, which has been spread with mulch to encourage her to wee and poo there, seeing she can't get down the back steps. (She refuses to toilet anywhere but the back yard, though, so we have to take her the long way around the house. Sigh...)

hot summers and dry grass

It has continued hot here, unseasonably warm for the beginning of autumn, so we're still tending to go out walking early in the day. Penny feels the heat, so she was glad to find a big puddle on the grass at one of our regular parks this morning.

It was interesting to see that she put her belly into the water but didn't roll over. I think she cools herself through her belly and her paws.

The water sits on the top of the grass when the groundsmen water, and I think it's because the topsoil was removed when a water harvesting system was built under the ground in this area. 

We often see lines of disturbed soil across the playing fields, and one groundsman told us it's so that the water might penetrate to lower levels. You can see that the grass grows in lines around these spots.

Some areas have to get special attention.

Thank goodness for all the hard work the turf specialists put in. Otherwise the whole area would look like this part that isn't maintained.

Pretty dry and hot here these days

Penny has her walks at the crack of dawn these days. (Well, we try to get back home before 9 am, which is the time we have to slop some sun protection on the humans.)

Yesterday we went to Rosanna, and walked in the cool of the morning, but it was still nice to have a drink to rehydrate ourselves. I was struck by the difference between the 'landscape' around the tap, where dogs spill water (messy drinkers, all of them!) and the surrounds where the poor soil gets no water.

It's a great example of the difference sufficient water makes to the plants.

Penny camouflaged

Penny was almost invisible recently, after she frolicked in a mud puddle, enjoying the rare experience of rain, and then rolled in the dry dirt where there used to be grass.

And now she's at it again, blending in to the indigenous grasses of another park.

Isn't it lovely to see how the native grasses can cope with the current dry weather? Thank goodness for the people who work so hard to put in appropriate plants that can support wildlife. (Volunteers, for the most part.)

It's hard to keep non-native grassed areas alive now, with such a lack of moisture, and you can see in the next photo what a difference it makes if the area is watered. The more distant part has received water, in order that sporting events can go ahead.

I used to be critical of the use of water on sporting grounds, until I went to a talk recently about how decisions are made when allocating our precious water resources. The speaker told us that in the awful Millennium Drought, suicide rates soared in many towns when sports grounds were allowed to go to ruin, and when consequently sports events were discontinued. The psychological value of such community events is incalculable.

I sure hope we're not creeping into another drought...

Penny's eating grass

Poor Penny is probably not feeling too well, to judge by the amount of grass she ate today. She has always been a grass-eater, but today's grazing took more of her time than usual.

I'm hoping it's not a side-effect of the Doxycycline she was prescribed for her symptoms accompanying her cough, because she still has the cough and there are a few days to go.

On the other hand, it may be an unwanted effect of the Previcox she's taking as pain relief after her surgery last Thursday. I'll ring the vet hospital tomorrow and ask if it seems reasonable to stop giving her this drug, seeing she seems to be comfortable and the wound is healing well. I notice that vomiting is a common side effect.

I guess it's one advantage of having an 'edible forest garden', which involves having lots of plants and not fussing too much about so-called 'weeds' - there is plenty of grass for Penny to graze.

I have in the past tried to see which grasses Penny likes to eat when she's not well, sometimes without much success, but this time I definitely saw her trying out panic veldt grass, because when she came inside she had a seed stalk stuck in her teeth, lol. (Apologies for the blurry photo.)

Here's hoping she feels much better tomorrow.

dogs eating grass

Penny eats a little bit of grass most days - which I hope isn't a sign of an unsettled stomach - and sometimes I've thought she was having a nibble of a plant we call 'bamboo', even though it's not. It's arundo donax.

For a while we thought maybe she was licking drops of water off it.

























Well, yesterday I think I definitely saw her chew on it. And here's the photo I took:



In the past, I've seen her eat other types of grass, but I'm surprised that she would nibble on such a tough grass.

a dog learns to toilet in a new place...maybe

I've always thought that, at a pinch, I would move heaven and earth to help Penny. Well, yesterday I started on the earth-moving. We have a set of stairs to reach the backyard and Penny's supposed to rest, so we thought we'd set up a toileting area on the back patio. Some phone calls to 'instant turf' companies ended in success, so off I went to collect one roll of turf, and we set up a nice little miniature garden for Penny's use.

But the patio is out of bounds for toileting, as she well knows. So nothing happened. I collected a little pile of poo and put it on the new grass. Nothing happened and it was back to lugging 17 kilos of dog up and down the steps. (I'm NOT young!)



'What do you mean, have a wee?' her body language said.



A wiser friend suggested we collect a patch of grass where Penny had already peed. So I carried her down once again and, of course, now that we were in the correct place, she urinated on command. (Good girl!)

Next job was to lug her back up the steps, close the gate to the patio and go down to do some digging.




'What are you doing down there and why can't I come and help? I'm a good digger.'



Okay... so carry the little patch of planet earth to the patio and insert it into the patch of turf.



And Bob's your uncle!

Oh, as to moving Heaven AND Earth? We're petitioning Heaven that Penny won't need surgery!