Warm!

The weather has been very warm this week! I don't enjoy the heat, but we bought a little sprinkler/splash pad for Ben and it's made being outside a whole lot more tolerable! Ben loves it! We also set up a little pool, but I've taken it down since his interest in it seemed to be mostly in either drinking out of it like Trudi, or in holding the wall down and making a little waterfall with all the water running out of the pool....

Running around this little sprinkler pad kept Ben well entertained while I hung out laundry. Then he opened the sandbox and after coating himself like a Shake & Bake chicken he tried to haul all of the sand onto the sprinkler pad - probably trying to make his own beach. Never a dull moment!

I had a scare with Trudi yesterday. I was chatting though the fence with our neighbour behind us (who works with Boxer rescue) and she noticed that Trudi tripped and fell a few times while on her way over to join us. At first I thought she was just being clumsy, but when I watched her it seemed that her hind end was giving out on her. My heart dropped. That was just the way "the beginning of the end" was for Teddy, our last dog. I considered that perhaps she was having a stroke. My neighbour suggested that the heat could be affecting her, but I was skeptical it as she'd been inside in the a/c on from time to time through the morning. She didn't seem to be in pain and had no other symptoms - no frothing, no excessive panting, no fear, nothing out of the ordinary - except her weak hind end.

I asked my friends on the Airedale list for advice and received many responses - although it could be many things, one lister pointed out that an older dog's kidneys have trouble keeping up and in the heat, the dog could be dehydrated. Even if she was drinking water it probably wasn't enough and her electrolytes were probably out of whack.

I was immensely relieved and grateful to see Trudi's coordination and strength return again later in the afternoon with no evidence of the scare she gave us earlier! You can bet I'll be keeping a very close eye on her this summer!

"As a mother, my job is to take care of what is possible and trust God with the impossible."

Ruth Bell Graham