Tuesday, January 20, 2015

More Modifications

As Henry's vision worsened, we realized that we needed to make more and more modifications. Of course, he only has one eye and while that eye is not very useful for sight, we do not want it to be harmed or injured, of course. So, have needed to find a way to protect his eye from one of the most immediate dangers that he faces. This would be our agave plant.

It is not uncommon for us to hang out in the driveway and surrounding front yard areas. We would do this often when we had the 3. While off leash, we found it still to be a safe time since we live on a very quiet street, they were beyond chasing bikes or squirrels and surprisingly they were pretty good listeners and knew their boundaries (for the most part--not saying they were perfect angels but overall we could not complain).

Now, things are little different. When Henry likes to roam around outside now we need to keep him on a leash. Even blind, he is still quicker than we are and this means that he can run full steam into nature (and houses) around us before we can catch him and save him from his crash. The good news is, though, is that he is starting to slow down since he now realizes that low speed bumps hurt a little less than high speed collisions.

Anyway, back to the agave....running on only one kidney (and just general old man disease) has made it such that Henry needs to pee a little more often than he used to have to. And it is not uncommon that he is up 1-2 times in the overnight. When this is the case, he wakes me, I let him down off the bed, we plod outside to the front yard and he does his business. Going out it is all well and good, but it's the coming back inside that is bigger challenge. For some reason, at that particular time of day, Henry typically loses his bearings. Instead of the straight shot back to the front door, he often side tracks towards either the garage door or either of the 2 windows that flank the front door. And in the process of finding his path again, he bumps into the agave. The thing about the agave is that this is a very mean plant. It has very sharp barbs along it's long pointy leaves. So, if Henry were to get his eye poked by one of these fronds he could do some serious damage to himself.

Thus we have placed a small picket fence around the agave in order to help Henry redirect when approaching the dangerous plant. So far we have not receive hate mail form our home owner's association (they are kind of sticklers). If we have to take it down we will work on another solution. But for now, it is working (plus we are still there to help nudge him in the right direction).