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Thursday, March 10, 2011

It's No Fun Getting Old...

I never thought that my lifestyle would create such a path on meeting some many interesting people. This week has been no exception....
One of our geriatric furry family member just turned 14 yrs old in February. In dog years, Lucy is 91 and still thriving, until this harsh winter brought out the worst in her arthritic body. The ice patches around the farm did not help either. With a little bit of anti inflammatory, some new raw diet and homeopathic remedies, it was a start on making our precious Lucy feel a bit better.

We have been studying the "raw" diet for our dogs. It has many benefits for our canine family members so the thought was to try our "inside" gang on this new meal plan. With the help from my sister in law and our employee, who were both feeding raw diet to their dogs, we saw long term goals and decided to contact an expert. Sheila is an experienced raw diet guru, and owns "My Dog's Best Friend". She was knowledgeable and fairly inexpensive having raw diet at about $1.40 a pound. Dogs should eat between 2-3% of their body weight. Sheila did tell us that our dogs may turn their noses up at the food at first. Our first feeding, everyone was interested in the meal prep...even devoured the main course. In the past, we would have to call the dogs for their dinner time...Spy our Border Collie is not food intense...until the raw diet.

We have a total of 6 dogs...yes 6 dogs. Three of our dogs live inside and are considered pets. The other 3 dogs (also considered pets) but are of a working breed and live with the alpacas. The outside gang are Livestock Guardian Dogs (LGDs) as they protect our herd of alpacas. This is a breed called Maremma which is an Italian breed, looking like a big white fluffy polar bear. Vito is a 7 year old Maremma (seen infront of Garth in the photo below). Seven is fairly young for a dog, but Vito is considered a geriatric dog as well. We met Colleen Cochrane thru networking. Colleen is considered a "dog whisperer" and has the ability to communicate with animals. She is a very unique and special lady who earns the respect from my animals very quickly. Colleen has an energy about her, that the dogs just seem to gravitate to. With her wisdom and holistic approach (along with my vet) we are working on arthritic issues that Vito has been experiencing. He is much happier these days and has gone back to working full time in the barn yard.

We still were looking for something else for our ol' gal Lucy Goosey. She had begun favouring her leg and we were worried that she may loose muscle tone in her right rear leg. The stars have been lining up for us this past month as we found this interesting business in a little town of Gore's Landing, just 45 minutes east of us. Shari's Quest is enhancing lives of animals and their humans. Shari as I have learned, offers massage and hydrotherapy service for horses and dogs to aid in healing of soft tissue injuries or post surgery. To aid in relief of muscle stiffness in athletic and older animals. A perfect solution for our Lucy, some hydrotherapy as she is an avid swimmer....that is in a lake.Add Image

When I spoke with Shari to set up our first session, she explained the process on how our dog would react...but being the mama of Lucy, I thought I knew how my dog would react. Little did I realize that Lucy behaved exactly as Shari predicted.

Our first session was this evening....a little bit of coaxing, some treats and a long ramp, Lucy had her first therapy session. It was great watching her swim in the mineral pool with her therapist, but she just was not sure about the whole adventure. But Shari was awesome. Very calm, very relaxed, which helped our precious Lucy settle down and get to work. Water splashed everywhere and our therapist just smiled. It was a great outing, and for the short period we were at our session, Lucy's session equaled about a 2-3 km walk. Not bad for an old gal.

Lucy seems to be tired this evening, but we will see what tomorrow brings or at least the day after that. We look forward to our next session and helping Lucy get back on all fours.

To learn more about Shari's Quest, visit her on line at www.sharisquest.ca

If you are interested in any information about any of the above people we have met this past few weeks, please email me at alpacas@xplornet.com.

We have some amazing people in our communities, those who are passionate about what they do.

Thank you Sheila, Colleen and Shari....the world is a better place for our furry family members when age is creeping up on them.

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