wow I haven't updated this thread for a while.
Tilley is now 11 and bit, we have had some wonderful times with her, and age is showing.
Over the last few years we have had great success with a drug called librela. First few years on it she turned into a right mountain goat and was back to her normal youthful self.
Even after having upped the monthly dose, the benefits are less and less. Until about 2 months ago where no benefit was seen at all. Sadly dogs get "immune" to librela after a while.
Over the last year she become more interested in just sleeping on my lap and hiding her head when sleeping, a sign that she is in pain and not well. Than going out for a walk.
She's done extremely well for a dog that the vets were talking about, because of her arthritis, wouldn't be walking when she was 7-8. As her favourite vet says - she should be crawling in here, after having seen x-rays of her joints, she is so very stoic.
(oh yes she even became Danish and a EU citizen)
The last 3-4 months she's really struggling getting into the motorhome and often her back end collapses when she goes to toilet.
3 months ago she helped us catching and saving a young stray podenco dog who we spotted living in a forest in southern Spain. The plan was to rescue the dog and let a local shelter, that Peli had contacted, take her in.
At first these shelters weren't too keen on getting another dog and tried to pass us over to another shelter. But with Peli's persistence and stubbornness, she found a lady with remote control traps and on the second day of trying we caught her.
After 11 days of trying to befriend her enough to catch her, we couldn't leave her at the shelter, so Tilley now got a sister.
Click over here to meet Miss Moneypenny aka Penny :
https://www.instagram.com/pennyvanlifepodencaShe got that name because she was found not far from Coín, she's small and "copper" coloured. We think that she is now about a year old now.
The Podencos are known as the forgotten breed. While walking her in Spain, sometimes we could see from the locals a dislike and a "why do have this, a rat, as your pet". Even when Spain got soo many pet stores, vets and people owning dogs. Though these are dogs of other breeds, like Huskies, Border collies and Labradors.
I could go into details about how cruel especially the hunters and farmers are towards the Podencos. Let's just say, if you think something horrible and I can tell you a real story that is worse.
Nearly 100,000 dogs get dumped each year, especially when the hunting season ends in February, most of these are Podencos and Galgos. The shelter we volunteered at last crimbo, had 40+ dogs come in on one day, just after the season ended, I soon lost count how many came in the following days/weeks and still the dogs comes in, in boxes, dumped outside the gates in the middle of the night, found in bins, roaming the streets.
Most of these many rescue centers in Spain has been set up foreigners, Brits and Dutch mainly. All are full to the brim. The lady who helped up with a shelter place for Penny, got 40 in her own home, because the shelter she volunteers with is full.
Tilley accepts Penny most of the time and we need to do some management to make it work in the motorhome. Lucky I've taken up running and Penny is bred to run for hours and hours. So we can give Tilley some alone time and then a few hours of a puppy sleeping when back from a run
Sadly we are thinking about the last days with Tilley. We got a place where we will hole up near Peli's mum where she will have 3 acres to wander around on, she loved it there last year. No lead, loads of smelly stuff, chickens, grass, great views and plenty of people who would give her treats and belly rubs.
We would like to take her to Lewis as there's a beach she loved to run free on. But I don't think there's time for that.
Even if I'm happy to help and lift Tilley when needed. I just can't handle watching Tilley wobble, staggering and falling over when her back end just gives up.
More drugs and painkillers could probably extend her life. Operation I'm not sure as it's both hips and her knees and we have already seen, 10 years ago, how bad her elbows are with arthritis.
If it is all broken and worn out, is it really worth to send her through a set of x-rays, then an operation or operations and then a recovery.
We know some of the painkillers she has a bad reaction to and and we don't want her to have that on top of all this and she is already old. And the time she has left, is it really fair for her to endure even more pain.
There's a point where you need to figure out are you doing it for the dog or are you doing it for yourself.
She has also lost some of that wonderful spark in her eyes. She really looks tired.
At the moment she's having more better days than bad days (just). But it's time to think about saying goodbye.
Feck me this is hard, these mutts do hit you in the feels, don't they?
