Zara update 12/29/2023

End of the year! Zara is doing ok, she has noticeably declined since the beginning of the year but that's not entirely unexpected given that she's 11.

She's less playful, and doesn't often bring tennis balls back when you throw them. She will play for a little bit (a couple of tosses) and then stop playing. She still gets excited to go out for walks so we've been doing walks and trying to do weekly 2 mile hikes.

As always Zara is difficult to put weight on and she's still stubborn and very sweet.

We re-evaluated her quality of life, and it has definitely declined since last time. But still not in the "bad quality of life", and she still seems to want to be here. Mostly eats her food, enjoys spending time with us. I will need to start looking into end of life care/euthanasia for her though so I know what's available before we need it. She is a wildcard though and has bounced back before, we never thought she'd make it this far but she is still here and still pretty mobile. Sometimes I think she won't be with us much longer, and sometimes I think she has another couple years. It's hard to tell with her.

Onto more positive updates, she has been eating ~2 to 3 meals a day for me and weight gain meatballs. Although since she just spent Christmas with my sister, Zara has probably lost some more weight.  We are going to try to up it to 3 meals a day if she will cooperate. We've been doing 2 laps when walking and taking her out 4x a day which helps with the incontinence at least a bit. And she got a bath yesterday! Zara has been very good about getting baths at petfood express self service bath.

Since she didn't spend Christmas with us, we'll be giving her presents and treats today :)

Here are some cute photos: