Golden Mountain Dog Solutions

An old dog, just like us humans, will be a different animal from the one you knew in earlier life. Along with the greying muzzle, cloudy eyes, reduced hearing, slower movement, and tendency to sleep more, comes the potential for your dog to manifest symptoms that, misunderstood, can reduce both the quality and length of its life.

Much has been written about this subject that we won’t repeat here, preferring instead to focus on some age related issues that often go undiagnosed or are inappropriately treated. This article is the first in a series of illustrative stories involving first hand experience with dogs we have known.

Jasper was a beagle mutt who loved to hunt. He remained healthy as he aged but gradually became completely deaf in one ear. The effect of this became obvious when he was off-lead at a distance, and a recall command was given. He would prick up his ears and look in the direction he thought the call came from, but without functioning stereoscopic hearing the chance of his choice being accurate was roughly the same as winning the lottery. If he wasn’t looking at whoever was calling, their best choice at this point was to remain quiet as they circled around hm waving until they caught his attention, then call him again. Calling him while he was focusing in the wrong direction would ensure that Jasper would be in the next county before they caught up with him. Read the rest of this entry »

Anybody who follows the news out of Lunenburg County has no doubt heard about the travails of Marni Gent and her efforts to publicize the exceptionally high concentration of Lyme disease infected deer ticks in and around her community on Silver Point Road. For those of you who either don’t live in these parts, or are too poor to pay attention, we’ll try to bring you up to speed.

Diana and I first learned of the Lyme risk in and around the Town of Lunenburg over two years ago during a routine visit to our vet, Dr. Barry Falkenham at Seaside Animal Hospital. At that time he told us that pretty much any deer tick found inside of Lunenburg, and east through Garden Lots, Heckman’s Island, Blue Rocks, and the Stonehursts could be expected to be Lyme positive. This really didn’t surprise us considering the size of the deer herd that even back then was living within the inhabited zone that made them immune to any sort of hunting activity. Read the rest of this entry »

In late July of 2001 Cinders and I were on a training exercise in a rugged region at the far northern end of Lunenburg County (the picture at left was taken that day). In the course of the trip Cinders stepped into what appeared to be a mass of wet dead leaves filling a crack in the granite outcropping we were traversing only to find out that it was actually a mass of dead leaves floating at the top of a very deep puddle of water filling a gap in the outcropping. She plunged in head first and I grabbed her harness in time to help her out before the rest of her went in.

Her entire front end was coated in a brown mess of rotted leaves that I took her to a nearby clear running stream to wash off. Soon, with Cinders restored to her former beauty, fresh smelling and no worse for wear, we continued on with what was a very enjoyable day. Read the rest of this entry »