Tessa woke up the other morning listing. She’s like a ship that’s lost it’s ballast – leaning to one side, head cocked in what should be a cute sort of tilt. Only it’s not cute, not at all. She’s having a hard time negotiating stairs and any kind of uneven ground. She’s barrel rolled herself a few times going down the outside steps, and we’re not even taking a chance when it comes to the basement stairs.

The veterinarian isn’t 100% sure what the problem is. It’s not her ears – they’re fine, thankfully. Tessa has been spared the ear problems which plague so many French Bulldogs. She certainly has bad teeth – she always has. One or two of her back molars need to come out, and she’s on antibiotics to clear up any lingering infection before we tackle this. I’m hesitant about putting her under anesthetic  for anything less than a life threatening condition, but bad teeth can cause all sorts of issues in a senior dog, and I guess we need to take the plunge and have them extracted.

Mostly, though, Dr. Boyd believes Tessa has had something commonly called “idiopathic neuropathy” – idiopathic being a fancy word “designating a disease having no known cause”, and neuropathy being “any diseased condition of the nervous system”. So, idiopathic neuropathy, meaning “We don’t know what it is, or what caused it, but it has something to with the nervous system”.

I’m consoling myself with the studies which seem to indicate that the majority of cases of idiopathic neuropathy just disappear, as mysteriously as they came. Already after a few short days, Tessa seems more steady on her feet.  All of this, of course, is a symptom of the greater truth, that my dog is aging. And, like of all of us who are aging, she’s become plagued with mystery ailments. A hip that clicks, hearing that’s failing, a bit more wobbly on her pins that she was in her youth.  I know it’s all to be expected, but none of it makes me happy.

Still, Tessa’s a remarkable healthy dog for both her breed and her age. Infirmity doesn’t stop her from occasionally charging and rolling the cat, or from staking out her claim when the puppies get too close to  her pillow. She still rules the house, with a little bit of help from me when it’s called for.

She’s also looking forward to making it to the Nationals in Minnesota in 2008, as am I.

Carol

One of the best things about having moved from downtown Toronto to our property near Mount Forest is the backyard.

Our acreage is actually an east west stretching pie shape. Our technical ‘backyard’ isn’t really huge – in fact, we can easily see our property line from our deck, or our pool. What’s behind that property line, however, makes it all worth while.

Behind us lies an old access road – one of what are called, in this area, ‘Heritage Roads’. It was the moving of this Heritage Road that actually carved out the piece of property we now live on, and the original road borders us to the south. It’s been declared by our township a protected road, due to its being Heritage designated. The property to the south of the road itself is owned by our neighbor, who has designated it as protected woodland. This leaves us with the perfect combination – a road which is really just a tree shaded pathway, ambling through woods and past streams, for almost three miles. For the dogs, its heaven.

Walking the dogs in the city required a car. Frenchies – or mine, at least – aren’t great fans of the structured sidewalk meander. They prefer parks, and for parks, we had to drive, or use the tiny and perilously close to the road school yard near our house. Taking the dogs to the off leash park required loading them up, driving, finding parking, and then hoping we didn’t run into any out of control off leash (and unusually un neutered) dogs while we were there. More and more often, it seemed we were having issues with this – dogs whose owners were unable or unwilling to control them, putting our dogs at risk. In one memorable case, a huge Lab mix attacked and rolled Ellie, while his owner cavalierly yelled that he was “Just playing”. Incidents like this started to make the park less and less appealing.

Now, we walk the dogs every night. Each dogs sets it own pace, walking as far ahead as they’re comfortable, running when the mood strikes them, poking noses into bushes and grass, chasing frogs, sniffing deer tracks on the trail, and, in one case, flushing a covey of pheasants.

It sure beats the sidewalk.

Continue to view a video of the dogs on their walk yesterday. Better yet, view it here – the quality is much, much better.

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