thank you all for your reassurances. You have no idea how much it's helping me, because he won't be going to the vet until Friday. There is only one vet at the place we go that I'm comfortable with (and that Prince is comfortable with), and she's not in again until then. I'm keeping a close eye on him and since I'm off this week, we're pretty much together 24/7, so I'm not having to deal with being a part from him. The one vet I like is really good with him, and all the others seem really afraid of him. While I can understand a certain level of apprehension, it really pisses me off that the very first thing all of them (but the one I like) want to muzzle him. They want their assistants to do it, too, and won't even come in the exam room with him until he's muzzled. Those vets need to stick to cats and guinea pigs, and if I ever get stuck with one of them again I won't be able to stop myself from saying so. The one vet I like is fabulous. She is so, so good with him. She does everything right. Ignores him at first, doesn't hold her hand over his head, doesn't talk to him in baby talk...the first vet we saw there did all those things and more. Prince is very, very aloof, but does not just ignore everything and whatever is stressful for him (and we are at the vets, stress-city), he will react to. He's not vicious, he doesn't attack, he's just very on-guard and is NOT friendly. It blows my mind that people who are VETS can be so clueless. But our vet is the best. I love her. I feel absolutely confident that she will find out the exact problem and start the right course of treatment. You know she's gotta be good if she can calm me down, as well as the dog!!!!!
I really hate the thought that he's getting old. I know he is, he's going all white around his lips, but he's always been my baby. I watched an Animal Planet show about dogs and their wolf ancestry recently and one of the things it said was that the way to calculate a dog's age has changed. The first two years are actually the equivalent of 25 human years, and then after that, every year is equivalent to 4 human years. So if he's 10 and a half, he's equivalent to 59 years old.
Other than ear infections, he has been unbelievably healthy all these years. I hope this is just blip and not the start of decline. We're going to be moving later this summer and I worry almost obsessively about how he'll do in the transition. If it wasn't for this board I'd think I was crazy!