As some of you may know, our dog Roland is old. OLD. We did the math this summer and realized that he is 11, and for a 110 lb dog whose first five years were filled with starvation and abandonment, that is a very advanced age. Until this summer he has been quite spry, wih arthritic episodes only showing up after strenuous hiking. However, over the summer things took a turn for the worse. I don't know if he had a bad reaction to the fleas (I'm *almost* ready to talk about it), or the heat, or his food, but he broke out in massive sores just as we left town for two weeks. As soon as we got back, I started transitioning him to a raw diet of meat from our local farmer's market. With just 1/3 of his food replaced with meat, I saw an immediate improvement in his skin. Over the past month I have completed his transition so that he is currently getting raw meat, an egg, a handful of shredded vegetables and a spoon of metamucil 5 nights a week. On the 6th day he gets a big meaty bone, and on the 7th day he fasts (Roland loves the fast day, really he does). Why Metamucil you ask? Well, we hit a minor bump in our transition away from commercial dog food where in the dog stopped pooping. As if this weren't bad enough, it was rapidly accompanied by symptoms of hind limb discomfort (laying down, dragging his butt on walks, refusing to move). Tonight it seemed like he was incapable of using his back legs a couple times. As responsible pet owners we turned to our veterinary handbook. Sure enough, under impacted anal glands, the book said that swollen and infect glands could lead to hind limb paralysis. As soon as Tyson read the phrase will need to manually evacuate the dog's anal glands, he handed the book to me and said, "This is one of those times when he is your dog". One bath and exciting adventure later (thank the heavens for latex gloves) my bathroom now pleasantly smells of gingebread candle and anal juice. Don't you wish you had a dog?
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