Most dogs, I like to think, have tales to tell, along with their tails to wag. I imagine my old girl, if she were human, as sitting splay-legged on a stool in front of a fire place, hoisting a mug to her 'glory days' as a crack gee haw leader and scampish independent soul. My old girl Gryphon, now in her 17th year. She is still impish, still flirting with the young dogs she meets on our protracted walks in the neighbourhood, and she still gets the 'zoomies' albeit in a tottering listing kind of way.
She has her struggles too. She is on heart medication, and I have to keep the fat in her diet under 10% to keep her chronic pancreatitis from flaring up. But she is active and happy. And until some time in the late autumn, she made her way around on the laminated interior flooring just fine thank you.
Then, slippage. Gryphon's hind legs gradually splaying away from her midline as she stood waiting for supper. My Border Collie also would have these odd scrambling sessions on the floor. Claws and legs flying, he would make for the nearest throw rug, and hunch down there for 'safety'. His travel patterns inside the house would be a hopscotch approach, landing on throw rug to throw rug. What was going on? Nothing had really changed. Or had it?
It took me a week of consideration, until I began my weekly floor cleaning routine. I stay away from harsh chemicals and strong chemical scents in my household, and to this end my usual fall-back cleaning solutions (for almost everything) are vinegar, dish soap and elbow grease. I usually use a dilute solution of water and dish soap in my floor bucket. However, the last couple of weeks I had purchased a liquid oil soap. Could it be?
A couple of test patches proved I was onto something. Oil soap makes a slippery- er floor. It sounds obvious but it is nuanced. Nuanced enough to NOT make a difference for me, but make a BIG difference to my dogs.
So, back to the dish soap for this household it was. And Gryphon will tell in her tale, of the time in her life when her legs and her world went slightly sideways.