Sabrina lives

My dog turned 14 last month. Still relatively healthy. Then last Friday she got up in the morning, jumped down form the chair where she sleeps at night and crashed on the floor. Her back legs had given way. "Oh no," I thought. My older dog had died just past his 15 year birthday with much the same problem.

But Sabrina's case was not quite so bad. She could stand, with effort, and even stumble forward a few steps before collapsing again. Peleg and I took her to the vet that afternoon. He prescribed a drug called MetaCam that Peleg and I had already had recommended to us by a friend when we told him of our dog's situation, and we had researched on the web. The vet gave Sabrina a shot of that while we were at the office and then we carried her home with a 30 day supply.

We set Sabrina up with a new bed on the bottom floor of the house so she wouldn't have to climb stairs or jump into a chair. She seemed confused and upset that day. Wouldn't eat. The next day we gave her the medicine and she ate a little when we supplemented her regular food with some chicken broth. And then slowly by slowly over the last week she's made nearly a full recovery. I carried her up the front steps to the street a couple of days ago and let her walk a little. Then yesterday we went for a longer walk and she went up and down the steps by herself. This morning as I was taking a shower in the upstairs bathroom she suddenly appeared at the door having climbed the stairs on her own. By the time I got out of the shower she had jumped into the chair where she used to sleep and was looking at me like nothing had happened.