Immediately on return from our New Hampshire vacation we initiated a round of oral antibiotic treatment for Button. Right on time, as the schedule demands; the proactive 'pulse protocol', one week of antibiotic and one month off, to be resumed the following month.

Following hard on the heels, as it happened, with the summer-monthly administration of Heartworm medication. She'd had her every-three-year-shot for rabies a month earlier.

We pump up our little canine companions with so many chemicals, so much medication of one kind or another, it's amazing they survive the ongoing onslaught. In Button's case, closing in on 19 years of age, it's a matter of retaining her life. A reasonable prospect, since she still manages to get pleasure from her life with us.

A lot of confusion has entered her life with the loss of her hearing and her eyesight, but contentment and pleasure remains.

Not, however, when she suffers those bouts of illness as a result of gum infections. We'd been so careful and meticulous about brushing her teeth regularly when she was younger. In the last few years she has gradually lost some of her teeth, and those that remain are not in perfect shape.

Which the veterinarian tells us is common enough, particularly among small dogs. She is too old for surgery; though we do have the option of having them all removed.

The next-best course is less invasive than surgery, administering these once-monthly, week-long courses of oral anti-biotics. The thing of it is, we'd given her the week's therapy, and then witnessed unmistakable symptoms that despite having done so, her mouth had become infected again, causing her discomfort.

We felt we had little choice, despite less than a week having passed, than to once again administer a week's course of antibiotics.

Failing its success, we'll return with her to the veterinarian. There are other types of antibiotics that can be used, we know, in case her system no longer responds to this one, which may have lost its efficacy for her.