More changes

One of the hardest things for me as Alex my Airedale aged, was when she finally resisted going upstairs to sleep with me.  She just couldn't make it, and was too heavy for me to carry.  I remember sitting on the bottom of the steps, crying with her in my arms.  After 13 or so years of her beside me, she needed to sleep alone.

While Murphy hasn't resisted going up the stairs, and she isn't too heavy for me to help her, several nights ago, she slid off my bed and went back down stairs.  I retrieved her, and she did the same thing.  I left her down stairs, waking frequently to listen for her bark.  By the time I came down, she was snoring on her bed.  Saturday night, I decided to see if she really wanted to stay downstairs, so I didn't even encourage her to come up.  Sometime around 1 AM I heard her shake (the only advantage of leaving on the rabies jewelry), but she didn't bark at the bottom of the stairs, and again, when I came down in the morning, she was sound asleep on her bed.  

It's not that it is warmer down stairs at night.  But it must be part of her aging, that she just doesn't want to go up those stairs.

It's harder, I think, on me than her.

Murphy's day.