She is elderly and relatively frail as a result. When we pick her up we can feel her bones protruding, there's a dearth of fat in her fleshly covering. Some of her front teeth are gone now, as she verges on her 19th year.

Her hearing is badly compromised. She hears only too well on the upper sound register; sharp sounds startle her to the point of panic.

Her eyesight at close range is problematical, although her peripheral vision remains fairly sound. Something like my own vision, as it happens. We've got to be careful around her, not to startle her by sudden movements. Else she scrambles in a desperate bid to escape what she feels may be a violent encounter with an immovable object. Though she has been known to walk into doors and walls.

We must now ensure that the stairs leading down to the basement are shut off from entry for her. She has blundered into the entry that was once so familiar to her and fallen down those stairs, at least to the point where they turn and there's a platform, halfway down. She has far less balance than she once had and now no longer runs up the stairs to the second floor; we carry her up to bed.

Although she considers the sofas to be her place for rest she no longer leaps up to them as she has done so easily up to the last few months. She lingers before them, and we lift her. And she sometimes forgets space parameters, scrubs about to get herself comfortable before lying down and tips herself over the edge of the sofa onto the floor.

All these distressing changes alert us to her advanced age and a future we would far prefer not to linger on. This week she's been behaving strangely again as she does from time to time; more skittish than ever, disinterested in her food, forgetting her toilet hygiene, and being unwilling to walk much on our daily routine in our nearby ravine.

It was time for her monthly anti-biotic regimen meant to forestall the appearance of mouth-and-gum-related infections and it appears that the drug administered twice a day is having its effect. Finally, she has expressed some interest in her food. Last night, while entirely ignoring her own canine kibble dressed up with cooked chicken and chicken soup, she did deign to eat mashed potato and grilled hamburger. She is quite canny about food, far preferring table food to canine kibble.

At breakfast this morning she refused her kibble and waited until a breakfast egg was prepared for her. After eating the egg she advanced to the kibble and gave us a few grateful moments.