Piper

We weren't too sure what to expect with moving Piper to the new house. She lost most of her sight and hearing at the old place, but could still rely on muscle memory or something to navigate the place without too much trouble. There was some stiffness there too, but pretty minor. Since we've moved the stiffness has gotten worse and she spends almost all of her days sleeping. Her sight and hearing are bad enough that she bumps into things a lot, and even at the whistle pitches she can hear, she often misinterprets where it's coming from. We've been pretty lucky that she's only had two accidents in the house. On top of that her joints have been giving her enough trouble that we recently had to elevate her food bowl, since she was having trouble with what appeared to be her front legs and bending over to it. This weekend I opened a can of food, Piper sniffed at it, and then wandered off and went to sleep. She eventually came back around and nibbled a little bit, but left it alone for the most part. Since then she's been erratic with how much and when she eats. Today we stopped giving her the canned food and switched over to tasty things like eggs and pork chops and steak. Her current condition, coupled with diabetes, this is not sustainable. The last time I took her to the vet was over two years ago, when she had started losing weight. At that time the vet suggested we keep an eye on her, and that when her quality of life started to decline, then we could make a decision. We've decided to get ahead of impending, potentially painful, health issues and have scheduled a vet to come out to the house on Thursday evening. Carrie got Piper in October of 2001. She went through obedience training and came out the other end one super well-behaved. She was my companion on more desert walks than I can count. When she was diagnosed at 7 with diabetes in 2008 we were told the average lifespan after that was 3-5 years. She's beat that handily. We even credit that diagnosis and the proceeding management with (in a small way) preparing us for kids. She would have turned 14 sometime in August. Piper's been the best dog I've ever known and I'm going to miss her a ton.