Wednesday, December 10, 2008

And now for something completely different

Apollo, age 13+, has been having some trouble jumping up onto the couch and onto the bed. He has arthritis and some weakness in his legs/hips. We help him up onto the bed at night, but we aren't always around during the day to help him onto the couch. We tried the "as seen on TV" dog steps, but they are plastic and too lightweight. If he approaches them sideways they slip on our tile floor. Perhaps they work better on carpet.

(Because of my allergies, our only carpet is in the basement and on the screened porch; both are indoor/outdoor carpet without padding, since the padding is what grows mold spores and the I/O carpet is thinner and easier to thoroughly clean with our Dy.son.)

When my mom was visiting recently, she suggested that we buy Apollo a vinyl bean bag so that he has a fairly soft place to curl up that's lower to the ground. A regular dog bed or cloth bean bag wouldn't work since we have a dog door and he is in and out all day, so his paws are sometimes dirty. I decided to get purple so that if this solution doesn't work out for him, we can still use the bean bag for Evie.

Well, the bean bag arrived in the mail yesterday and as soon as I had unpacked it I encouraged Apollo to try it out. He was so grateful that he even posed for my picture!

How long do you think it will take us to try posing Evie on there with him? :)

7 comments:

  1. How cute! He looks so comfy! I'll need to give that a try with our 2. I love them dearly but I'm sick of them hogging the whole couch!

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  2. I hope the bean bag works out for him! Poor thing - I'm sure its hard to see him having a tough time.

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  3. Poor Apollo. He's such a good dog.

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  4. He looks so happy on his bean bag!!! What a great idea!

    (One of my friends found a company that made dog steps out of plywood, and they are nice and sturdy. Her steps are covered in carpet, though, which I guess would't work for you. Maybe you could order them uncarpeted, though?)

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  5. Aww! My dog would just eat it and I'd come home to little beads everywhere!

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  6. He looks like the king of the hill there! Very cute. As I'm reading more of your blog, I found another thing we have in common - Ohio! We lived there for about 9 months and even adopted Les from SICSA in Dayton.

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