drwex | Old dog, quick update

As I noted earlier, we suspected that our dog Holly had kidney issues. Urine tests, ultrasound and eventually a biopsy and now at least we know what's up.

It's an illness called Amyloidosis. It's a protein-retention disease for which there is no curative treatment. We just have to keep managing it. That's mostly what we've been doing the past couple weeks, basically some medicines and a change of diet.

The vet says we caught this really early in the disease progression. Holly is basically healthy but will need special food and restricted treats; mostly it means doing less pure protein and more vegetable less animal proteins. Eventually her kidneys will fail - there's nothing we can do to stop that. She's 10 years old now, and 12-14 is normal lifespan for this mix breed of dog.

We will do what we can to make her remaining years as good as we can, and I'm still feeling really sad about this. Holly is my first dog and a big chunk of me still thinks "forever home" is "human forever" not her forever.