My house is not Handicap Friendly
I've learned over the past two days that my house is not exactly handicap friendly... for my dog. She's small, she's old. My house just might kill her.

While my dad is in the hospital this weekend, our family dog has come to live at my house. She is almost 17 years old. Quite elderly, but she still gets around pretty well. She's had a few near death experiences in her lifetime, namely the tumor that we thought was going to kill her a couple of years ago. But today she runs around the house on her wobbly legs, running into things because she doesn't really see very well anymore.

Of course, running around the house today has also been a near death experience for her.

I brought the dog home with me yesterday, lifting her gingerly in and out of the Jeep. I set her down on my kitchen floor... and she immediately fell down. My tile floor is too slick for her wobbly legs. She has trouble standing on carpet. My clean tile floor was just too much.

Unfortunately, this tile is in several places throughout the house, including in front of the back door where she has decided she likes to stand because she can see out into the yard. Only, she doesn't really stand for very long because her legs slide out from under her. And she hits her head on the door.

And the transition from tile to carpet to tile is not so smooth. She doesn't see very well, namely directly in front of her. She sees better out of her peripheral vision. But, she's spry. So, she just takes laps around and around the house. But when she hits the tile after she's gathered some speed on the carpet, it's legs and body parts flying everywhere.

She just gets up and keeps going, while I have a heart attack every time I see it happen. If I bring my mom's dog back broken, I will be severely punished. The dog is worth more in this family than I am.

The next issue is getting out into my backyard. At my parents' house, they just open the back door and the dog goes in and out. I happen to have a step down that leads onto the patio. And not only does it step down, the flat part of it is a metal door jam. This is apparently very slippery for an old dog.

So, the first time I opened the door, once she could finally see that the door was opened and that she could go outside, she took one step onto the door jam and bit it hard as she fell off the step and onto the patio. She did the same thing coming back in, because I couldn't grab her fast enough to pick her up and put her back in the house.

She's fast, for an old lady.

This afternoon, I dug around in my shed and found what I thought would be the perfect piece of particle board to concoct a ramp for her to walk up to get into the house from the backyard.

Yes, I built a handicap ramp to access my building, for my dog.

It made perfect sense to me. I set it up on the step, and for some reason I thought she would see that and know to walk up and down the ramp.

She fell off of the side.

I set it up again and she slid off. I finally noticed that one side of the board is slick. And, much like the tile floor, she can't quite get a grip on it. I flipped it over to the rough side, but who knows if she'll try it again. She just kinda looked at me as though I was crazy to think she would slide down that thing again.

I put her food bowl in my kitchen, once again on the slick tile floor. She's not the neatest eater, and I'm trying to save chewed dog food from getting all over my carpet. But the trade off is that she slides the bowl all of the kitchen while trying to get food out of it AND balance on her wobbly legs on my slick floor. I need to find a rubber mat or something for her.

It's so ridiculous. She'll only be here for a few days, but I've had to make all kinds of handicap adjustments for her sake.

I felt terrible. I had no idea my house was such a hazard for a tiny, old dog. She may not like me very much after the weekend. I promise I'm not trying to kill her.

Just think if I had a kid running around here.

I'm going to need to cover everything in a layer of Nerf just so no one gets hurt.

C.T.