Winter can cruel to aging warm-blooded pets. The best arthritis advice I received was when my great vet told me, “Just get them through the winter.”
Wonderfulness via Ryan McGuire of Gratisography.com and tweaked by da-AL
Even in warmer climates like Southern California, winter is his busy time when it comes to pet owners frantic to relieve their pets of arthritis pain. “Even if it feels warm to us, they know it’s winter,” he said.
“Keep them warm,” was his advice. At all hours.
An electric blanket is perfect during the night. Toss it over your pet’s sleeping area. Make sure it’s the type that will stay on at a very low setting all night (don’t get the kind that switches off after only an hour).
Of the many remedies I explored to make my best friends comfortable, the electric blanket afforded them most dramatic relief.
How do your pets fare in winter?
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Any dog that lives long enough, according to my vet, will eventually get arthritis. Worse, when my dogs got it, they weren’t able to tolerate the pain medicines that were prescribed.
Exercise: Even the shortest of daily walks helped. In the d-o-g/g-o-d karma of dogs, walking benefited me as well.
Supplements – Glucosamine: An orthopedist explained that the sulfate formula (harder to find than the HCL kind) is best. I believe human supplements are held to higher standards than those for pets, so I bought the people kind. Within days, my dogs showed improvement.
Supplements – CBD Oil: Being in pain is stressful. My dogs would pant and pace when they were miserable. Within an hour of taking several drops of CBD oil on their tongues, they would become calm, yet neither disoriented nor beset with side effects.
What works for your dogs? Or doesn’t?
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As a novelist, tea is one of my best friends. If I want a boost, to warm my fingers as I write my books, something tasty and healthy yet free of calories (given how writing involves little physical energy), or during the moments I want to commune with others (making a story can be like cooking, the ingredients being actually living).
Tea is infinitely varied — hot or cold, fruity or robust, earthy or sweet, and on and on — there’s a tea for everyone. Blogger Rhiannon Brunner lives in Vienna, Austria. She’s written a pile of books about subjects that interest her in German, which she’s planning to soon translate into English.
What’s your favorite tea? Here she describes hers…
Author and blogger Rhiannon Brunner.
Benefits of Tea by Rhiannon Brunner
Tea offers extremely valuable properties. Many minor physical pains can be easily relieved with the right one.
If you take a look at my tea box, you will find some herbs that serve healing purposes. The classics (rosehip, chamomile, and fennel) are of course included. However, I would like to present here two varieties that I have long considered to be absolutely essential:
Damiana is a healthy and good tea.
Damiana
Damiana tea tastes like dried hay.
Its positive effects include stress relief (it makes one slightly euphoric), relief of menstrual pain, and it has anti-inflammatory properties.
Many people find it helps relieve stomach problems, acts as an aphrodisiac, aids sleep, and strengthens the heart and general circulation.
Bitter gourd is another great tea.
Bitter Gourd
If you don’t like the bitter taste, sweeten it with honey, because it tastes really bitter!
Above all, diabetics and health-conscious people enjoy its positive effects. If you want to lose weight, you are well advised to use it, since the usual diet does not need to be changed at all.
I have experienced this on my own body — although I did not even intend to. It includes saponins, which helps the body to break down dangerous abdominal fat (visceral fat). Bitter gourd helps to get rid of the type of fat that not even the most restrictive diets can get to. To check the results, I asked a couple of friends to drink the tea as well. Their results were like mine.
Bitter gourd is rich in iron, calcium, phosphorus, copper, potassium and the vitamins A, B1, B2, and C. Therefore, it is optimally suited for a health-conscious lifestyle.
Caution is advised only for pregnant women and people with low blood pressure.
My personal favorite way to take bitter gourd is this one, Trà Khổ Qua. It is a combination that also contains Reishi mushrooms, which makes the bitter gourd less bitter, as well as additionally healthy.
I highly recommend anyone to engage in tea and be open to a variety of impressions.
Good tea is like a beloved friend.And so — let me say — it is tea time.
This morning I stayed in bed till late. I was awake, but I didn’t want to get up to a house without Pierre in it.
Yesterday I had to put my dog down. Such a gentle euphemism for murder. To put one to sleep. My dear, dear dog-man trusted me, yet I tricked him. First by lulling him into thinking it was a normal day by asking my husband to roast a chicken at home that delighted his nose and soothed his belly. But afterward a vet arrived. She knotted a tourniquet at his rear thigh, shaved an area below it, and injected a sedative. His fitful gasping evened, his pain-blinded stare softened. Amid caresses and loving murmurs, the vet administered a second shot to finish him off.
My dear Pierre at 9 months old.
But Pierre lingered within his peaceful half-sleep. So another shave. Then a third shot to a different leg. That one finally killed him.
Nicer ways exist to frame this, but my heart won’t listen to the many fine arguments for how, whether, and when.
No, I don’t know of a better way to have done it. When his kidneys began to fail, and arthritis increasingly ravaged his days and nights, I promised us two things; he’d never take another trembling ride to a vet, and he’d never be wet again (he was a Labrador mix one-of-a-kind who hated water).
Fortunately, we could afford to have a vet to visit our home for those final injections. Fortunately, I could be with Pierre, my sweetest, most uncomplicated of friendships and loves. Fortunately, he’d lived a good long life, as dog lives go.
Pierre at 8 weeks old.
All the same, this was the awfullest decision I hope ever to make.
Life is beautiful, merciless, humbling.
Pierre (right) with his twin sister.
As much as our recent time together — these months of arranging throw rugs, moving furniture, closing doors so he wouldn’t get tangled among legs or be locked into rooms or slip and not be able to get back up, all which upset him to no end — these months of his hobbled struggle to follow me everywhere and to share walks with his sisters even though he’d fall within a few steps from home — this stoic period when, despite his waning appetite, he’d eat all that my family hand fed him while I experimented with healing remedies and weight gaining foods — this era when we set ramps and nudged him up and I learned the trick to gathering his 55 pounds into my arms to navigate down — these weeks of carrying him outside to pee in the middle of the night because the shame of soiling his diapers showed naked in his eyes (debilitated kidneys need volumes more water to compensate)…
Pierre (right) in better times.
and even though yesterday was the worst, today not a whole lot better…
I am thankful for every moment we shared. Hopefully, he knew he was loved…
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Our best friends are those who cheer us through our ups and cheer us up through our downs.
Mr. Gentleman Dog is aging. Growing older is a gift, but it extracts a price. For some of us, the cost is higher than for others.
In Mr. Gentleman Dog’s case, arthritis is wearing away his hips. And his kidneys don’t work as well. Rather than soil stuff, several times a night he rouses himself to ask to go out into the cold and pee.
But every day, he still has plenty of moments that he enjoys. He still loves treats, short walks, and cuddles.
And he loves the warmth of friendship…
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Happiness Between Tails by da-AL 