Lily’s big adventure

I think I’ve mentioned that my dog Lily has become very elderly. She’s 16 this summer. We have learned that dogs do get old-aged dementia. This has had some interesting side-effects. When she was young, Lily, like most American Eskimos, was really high strung and nervous. I couldn’t take her anywhere because she just had too much anxiety, barked at everything and snapped at people.

Well. Saturday, I took her to an outdoor SCA event. And she had a GREAT time. Apparently, she’s no longer aware enough to be nervous about anything. We went on a hike. She let people come up and cuddle her. She didn’t bark at all. She was so sweet. On the one hand this is absolutely bizarre, given what used to be normal for her. On the other, we had such a nice day together I’m just going to be grateful about it.

I absolutely loved walking around and having just about everyone look at her and say “Floof!”

She is still very floofy.

Adjusting my mindset about Lily and what she can do (like, the reason I brought her to the event is that she is no longer reliably house trained, alas) has been really hard. But I’m hoping we can get out more and have some fun while we can.