Good News For Belle!

This is Belle. We don't have a TON of pictures of Belle. She follows the belief system of indigenous people around the world: she thinks the camera will steal her soul. She's verrrrry skittish about photo ops. That sounds believable enough. What is UNBELIEVABLE is that she's been my sidekick since the end of my freshman year in college. Actually, to me the most unbelievable part of that is how many years that's been! She's technically around 80! I would like to look that good at 80. (I like to tell people it's because she gets up every day and does yoga...) Lately we've been having some problems with Belle. The dog that used to "hold it" for 12 or 14 hrs if I had a bad day at work has been having accidents like crazy. She's been salivating like mad. She's got a weird odor.. that's very strong.. and she's NEVER had an odor. All of these things were becoming bigger and bigger problems and I really feared the worst. That odor was what we feared was 'the smell of death'... it was THAT bad! Today, my mother-in-law came over to help me take Belle to the vet since I still can't lift that much weight. After they ran tons of tests it appears that she's got some dental work to have done. There wasn't anything that screamed teeth needed to be removed, but they definitely require cleaning to stop that smell... and hopefully they will then be able to identify any underlying oral issues. All this is pending blood work to make sure that she can handle this at her age... and that there isn't another thing going on that we don't know. That will solve the salivation and the odor. We had x-rays done and it seems that her toiletting issues are actually being caused by her arthritis. Her poor hips are a mess... they said they were shocked she was active as she is. The vet said she's one TOUGH dog... of course, she's MY dog.. so we knew that! :o) The good news is that with some super duper vitamins/supplements and a dose of anti-inflammitory a day she should be MUCH improved! Yes, the news was expensive...but you can't put a price on the health of a roommate who has asked so little and loved so much for so long!