{"id":36253,"date":"2025-04-26T10:21:56","date_gmt":"2025-04-26T17:21:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=36253"},"modified":"2025-04-26T10:21:56","modified_gmt":"2025-04-26T17:21:56","slug":"decision-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=36253","title":{"rendered":"Decision Time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"IMG_4187\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/halfmind\/54476583447\/in\/datetaken-public\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/54476583447_8d79219d66_n.jpg\" alt=\"IMG_4187\" width=\"320\" height=\"320\" \/><\/a>I caught Mister B half in and half out of his doggie bed yesterday and took a photo. Which at first I thought funny but now think disturbing.<\/p>\n<p>He likes to lay in the warm rays coming through the patio door every morning. I think what happened here was that he started moving his head as the sunlight shifted, then fell asleep. It can&#8217;t have been comfortable, but he didn&#8217;t seem to mind. So &#8230; let sleeping dogs lie, right?<\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;s wasting away, as you can see in the photo. Still eating well, still front &amp; center at feeding time, still pooping well &#8230; but it&#8217;s as if his body has stopped absorbing nutrition. Up to now we&#8217;ve told each other he doesn&#8217;t seem to be feeling any pain, but then again dogs try not to show it when they are. And he has a hard time getting around. He totters around as if he&#8217;s on peg legs, and sometimes his rear limbs splay to either side and he needs help standing back up.<\/p>\n<p>For the past month I&#8217;ve been plagued with constant arthritic pain in my shoulders, wrists, and hands. It&#8217;s hard to lift my arms, and because my hands are swollen my grip is weak &#8230; I have to use both of them to sip from my coffee cup, like old man Trump. The pain is particularly bad at night, and I&#8217;m not getting much sleep. After an especially rough night tossing and turning I don&#8217;t look much different than Mister B in this photo, save for being better padded. Knowing how I&#8217;ve been feeling lately, I wonder if our old boy is hurting too.<\/p>\n<p>Is it time? I fear it is. Donna spent a girls&#8217; night in Phoenix with her friend Millie and drives home this morning. We&#8217;ll have The Talk later today.<\/p>\n<p>Well, that&#8217;s a bummer, innit? I&#8217;ll stop here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is it time? I fear it is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,2],"tags":[4720],"class_list":["post-36253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-critters","category-personal","tag-olddogs"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36253"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36258,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36253\/revisions\/36258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}