Glacier

Lately we've had a bit of news with Glacier. For a few months she had been nibbling at her food, and not really scarfing it down like she used to. She might eat in the morning, and then might not eat again until the next day. Of course any kind of table scraps she'd gobble up immediately, but as far as dog food went...she just seemed bored. So I thought what we needed was a simple change of dog food, or maybe move to a senior formula. She is going to be 10 in August so I thought that made sense. Anyway, a few weeks ago I took her to the vet for her routine checkup and I told the vet about the food issue. She seemed a lot more alarmed than I was, and she wanted to do a blood test because she said the food issue wasn't normal. Well, the results came back the next day and the vet said she had "Pancreatitis," (inflammation of the pancreas.) In a nutshell she told me that it was either related to food fats, or worse...cancer. It kind of hit me suddenly. I wasn't expecting anything like that, but knowing her age I've been on the lookout for any signs of her nearing the end. So we switched to a low-fat formula of dog food to see what would happen. The good news is her levels went down from 1900 to 600. So it was just the fat content of her dog food and not cancer. Whew! The other good news is the vet told me that Glacier is in great shape for a dog her age. She said on average you can expect a dog of her size to reach 11 or 12, but she thinks Glacier might push it to 14 or 15. Makes sense to me. She still runs around the yard chasing balls like she's a puppy. For most of her life Glacier has been very healthy. Only once have we ever had an issue, and that was a non-cancerous tumor we had to have removed from her side. That was about 5 years ago I think. But other than that she's always been healthy and very active. Of course anything could happen the next few years, but at least the outlook is favorable for the near future. She's more neurotic than ever...but at least she's healthy. HA!