Heavy Kyra!

(By the way, in my last post I forgot to mention that if Kyra isn't completely deaf, she's extremely close. Which isn't much of a problem, we just have to be careful not to startle her when we come up to her from behind)

Because Kyra's arthritis is so bad, she can't do stairs at all. Chris has to carry her up and down our apartment stairs every time she has to go outside. But when Chris is at work, I'm in trouble because I do NOT feel comfortable carrying her up and down stairs. I may be able to pick her up, she's 40-50 lbs, but there's no way I'm carrying her for any length of time, much less on stairs. Chris takes her out right before he leaves for work and again right after he gets home, but she's old and doesn't have as much control as she used to, so she ends up going on the carpet. The brand new carpet management put in just before we moved here :/

We have a porch in our apartment now. Every time she gives me the tell-tale signs (she makes it very obvious. She starts panting and pacing and coming up to me every 10 seconds. She doesn't want to go in the house, she's a very good girl about it :) I open the back door and let all the dogs out on the porch, but she doesn't seem to get the message. I even put the gate up so she couldn't come in until she did her business, but then she just started barking at me. So she ends up going on the carpet. And she's been having diarrhea too because of the sudden change in diet, and probably a little bit of stress too, so we have a couple brown/orange stains on our new carpet. Which I don't especially care about, but she doesn't want to go in the house and I don't want her to go in the house. But until she gets the hint that she CAN go on the back porch, I'll be cleaning up messes. Maybe if I lay down a square of sod on the porch...? I tried the puppy pads with Briar and Breeze, but they were a pain in the butt because they would just blow everywhere. When Chris comes home today, I'm doing to go down to Lowes and see if they have anything to help.