So I have a German shepherd who turns 15 next week (on Tuesday the 28th! So proud of my super senior dog for lasting that long, and despite being otherwise healthy and fit) except for exercise, her arthritis makes it hard to have more than two 10 minute walks a day because that's honestly all she can manage. I'm honestly so surprised that a German shepherd has lived that long, considering the average life span can be about 11-13 years, with 13 years being on the realistic end of life for a dog her size and breed. She's taking Stilboesterol for a weak bladder that releases when she's sleeping. She's been on that for about a year and a half, and after a couple of weeks on it completely stopped wetting herself in her sleep. Absolutely no night time accidents at all since starting the pill.
Recently, about maybe 4 months ago, she started pooping inside. But the thing is, she'll wake up from sleep and realises that she needs to poop NOW and starts squatting while also walking to the door so we can let her out. So that seems to me that she understands that pooping is an outside activity. I don't think this is a sign of cognitive decline since she's self aware that she knows where she needs to poop but just can't hold it in for the 2 minutes it would take to rush her to the door and let her do her business. On the few times we actually did manage to get her outside before she shit on our carpet, she would just give up going on the grass and would just poop on the porch. She has also recently peed on the front porch so often that it stinks outside the front door and the smell is seeping through the windows that won't completely shut due to shitty landords
But the thing is, she will sometimes be able to poop with no problem most of the time and she will tell us that she needs to go outside and we take her out. When she has one of her poop episodes, she will ignore us and instinctively go to the door.
Sometimes few times after going outside and peeing, she'll poop inside maybe 2 minutes after returning inside, as if she didn't know that she needed to poop until that very moment.
She has mild arthritis, has pannus but it's not too bad and can see specific people based on their body types from a distance. she'll see me come home and will cry with happiness, she'll see my mum visit and give her cuddles and love, but even then she pooped inside without letting me know before hand.
It's like she suddenly decided that she couldn't wait the 2 minutes it takes to herd her to the door where she's learned to potty all her life. and is almost completely deaf--you have to shout for her to hear you. She's also recently been showing signs of dementia, but not often. She will sundown maybe once a fortnight or so, walking around the house and being very confused, but I don't know if that's the reason, because she's only started it a few weeks after the first poop incident. She also peed inside twice and in the same manner, she woke up, and tried squatting while also trying to make her way to the door to be let out. But the symptoms of her very mild dementia (as diagnosed by one of out loc very (our local vet has about a dozen vets that they rotate on a day/weekly basis which makes it hard to request a dentist that you have a good experience with.
It's just so weird that she's suddenly lost the ability to know that she needs to poop in advance. She used to be taken out before bed for her last potty of the night where she would pee and poop at the same time because she knew that she had a whole night of sleeping/cuddling to do, but now she'll get up several times at night and I've become so hyperaware of this that I haven't been able to have a restful sleep since it started. The moment she wakes up and jumps from the bed on high alert and ready to clean up any messes she made. Sometimes its a false alarm and she just to drink water and eat her dinner (which she eats once every two days and the vets cant figure out why. Tests show that her blood levels are normal and she has no stomach issues. She's been like this since she was a puppy, so likely not related)
Shes just not super hungy. The next day, she'll devour the left over food she didnt eat from the night before as if she's never seem food before. Is this normal behaviour? Its been happening since been happening since she was borm and I just get paranoid whenever she wakes up that she'll make a mess that I have to instantly clean up, like cleaning piss stains (which like I said only happened twice, but I don't know if that's relevant to her pooping problems). Can behaviourists chime in on this, to understand what's going on it her psyche?
She was never like this, she would always come to us if she needed to go outside, and could handle waiting a few minutes for us to get ready to go outside and supervise her and now we're watching her like a hawk to properly document her toilet habits. She poops inside at like 3-4 times a week, sometimes twice in one day. It's really stinking up the house, even more that our cats rancid poops. Her farts have gotten really bad, they used to be mild but now they smell like rancid rotten eggs, which has been going on for a couple of years before all this has happened, and I just chalked it down to dogs will sometimes eat bad food or not eat one day and then eat a full meal the next, which the multiple very that work at the practice who have seen her all claim that it's perfectly normal for a dog to have less of an appetite, especially if they're in pain due to arthritis. And to be fair, her arthritis isn't \*too\* bad. She still goes on walks, though they're very slow because she can't keep up with me and sniff as a form of enrichment. As a result, i walk super slowly and concentrate on sniffing as a form of mental enrichmet. She doesnt seem to understand concept of fetch anymore, which she used to love over a year ago, she's completely forgotten how to play. She used to play fetch with a random toy and then we'd play tug a war with it and I would let her win after a lot of back and forth between the two of us. Her fave game was also a game we called mouthy/handy where I would put an over mitt on my hands and bait her into playtime and she would gently (super gently, with very little pressure in her bite) bit my hands and it didn't hurt because of the oven mitts. It was one of her fave games. She also really liked fetch, but her Dr told us that fetch puts too much pressure on her joints from the running back and forth, but after a while she got bored of that as well. But all these games she loved feel like foreign cobcents to her, as if she's forgotten how to play the games she grew up on and even played not even a year ago.
Because of her arthritis and it being winter where I am, walks are very short because she is a princess and will complain about rhe cold. Sometimes she refuses to step on cf wet grass and would rather pee on the porch instead, but the problem is that its stinking up the front of the house because out windows are.so badly designed that they let in a centimeter or two of air in in of the smell that is right underneath the window. At first we hosed off the pee stains and it didn't very little to get rid of the smell, so now we have to scrub the entire porch with dishwater soap to get of the smells and the stains.
We have a vet appointment this Thursday because she needs a new bottle of her pee pills, and because she's so old for a dog of her breed her drs want to do blood tests to test her blood count and any problems that are serious for old dogs like heart disease, and she also had giant lumps that haven't grown in size but still worry me, but beause of the many vets that work there, it's unlike you'll come across the same vet twice, and they all share the same sentiment.
So I wanted to know, what do you think is the cause of her problem? Behavioural? Dementia that showed up after the change in personality, or a problem with her bowel movents in the same way she had issues with her bladder.
I'd love some background knowledge so I can properly convey what's happening to the vet and understand what they're talking about because they tend to talk in medical jargon.
