Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness

The dog trainers (highly recommended btw: we spoke to them on Zoom so you can consult them from anywhere; very understanding of queer/poly/neurodivergent households) that we spoke to two years ago when we first really struggled to manage Gary's Canine Cognitive Decline (doggy dementia, I usually call it) told us a ton of useful things that we use and talk about all the time.

The one I'm thinking of now is the stress bucket. It's a metaphor about a bucket with a little hole in the bottom. Stress fills up the bucket. The little hole gradually empties it. We learned about what things are good for emptying it quicker (things like the dog getting to sniff, lick, or chew) and also how long the effects of an overflowing stress bucket can hang around. I was stunned by, and still often think about, hearing that the physical products of stress can stay in a dog's body for up to 72 hours. This definitely helps make sense of Gary.

This among many other things we were told and encouraged to try have helped us manage Gary's stress pretty well. He's gone back to being pretty unbothered about fireworks or thunderstorms (if not quite the dog that I could absolutely rely on sleeping through both, he's a lot closer to that than I ever thought he'd be again. He's better around other dogs, not always lunging at them barking at the top of his lungs (admittedly his cataracts might be helping with him not noticing them...silver lining!). And he's even gotten okay at what used to be a guaranteed trigger situation that meant diffrentcolours had to basically ask permission to come downstairs in his own house -- again "only sometimes" is more progress than I'd let myself hope for! (You absolutely can teach an old dog new tricks.)

So with all the work that's gone into that on the part of all three humans, all the habits and routines and skills we've developed until they feel instinctual, it's hard to feel like I'm abandoning all that now.

We took Gary back to the vet this morning (ugh how was that this morning; it feels like years ago) and his eye is better for three days of eyedrops, two kinds that between them he needs five times a day, but he still needs them. My heart sank a little. I wasn't really expecting we'd be done, but I was hoping.

We go back to the vet in nine days. Keeping this up for three times as long felt insurmountable when the no-nonsense vet told me this morning that this is what we're doing.

But we did it today. We'll keep doing it. If the drops don't work they'll have to do a procedure that involves sedating him and that's worrisome at his age (seventeen!). I'll do anything I can to avoid that.

Today, Gary is apparently done allowing his eyedrops to be administered by mother_bones just asking him nicely or doing it stealthily, so twice each me or D had to wrestle him.

I don't blame him. I know his stress is accumulating faster than we can get rid of it with the usual methods.

I think his humans could say the same.