A lifetime of habit and a neurotic stubbornness add up to an existential dilemma when old age creeps inexorably into the picture. And the picture is this: our little poodle now in her 20th year is resistant to adapting to her frailties and limitations and adopt alternate strategies for comfort and self-reliance.

She will sleep and feel comfortable only where she has been accustomed in the past to sleeping and being comfortable. In the past she was fully capable of herself deciding when she would leap to the places she preferred, and finally relax fully and fall asleep. She is no longer capable of leaping anywhere; although she does retain the ability to leap down, not upward. Even that is fraught with difficulties since she can no longer see and must depend on her faltering memory to inform her where it is safe to leap down. Because she has had so many falls, having lost her spatial memory of what was once so familiar and sight-aided, we have taken to placing restraints in front of the two places she prefers to sleep upon, the family room sofa and the loveseat in our bedroom; the former during the day, the latter at night.

We have also had to barricade the stairs with small swinging doors to keep her from falling headlong down them, as she has done in the past, before those doors were erected. At night a temporary 'gate' has been placed at our bedroom door leading to the hall that leads inevitably to the second-floor stairway.

Left to her own devices, unable to leap to her desired resting place, she paces restlessly, without stopping for anything. She will pace this way all through the first floor of the house, from room to room, occasionally stumbling into immovable objects,sometimes actually crashing her head against door jambs, table legs, and becoming confused and 'stuck' into small corners, forgetting how to extricate herself until finally she manages to back off. She also has developed a tendency to circle back into those corners before finally emerging.

When she has paced for what we feel have been more than sufficient hours, we simply pick her up and place her on the sofa downstairs where she finally relaxes, settles down and falls to sleep.

Earlier this week, my husband, whose extended prostate causes him to get up frequently during the night to the bathroom, was groggy enough that he headed for the doorway to the hall rather than the doorway to the en suite bathroom, fell over the temporary gate and crashed to the floor. In the process bruising his left upper thigh, and straining his shoulder.

At my insistence we have now permanently removed that gate as redundant. And his shoulder is gradually healing.