For all my old pets I give subcutaneous fluids at least once a week. Most of my older dogs and cats have had some degree of kidney insufficiency in their later years and hydration alleviates the nausea associated with it and perks up their appetites. I believe this has extended most of their lives, but more importantly it keeps them comfortable. Probably of all the things I've done to help my senior pets, this has made the most improvement to their lives. My older cats enjoy(ed) their heating pad covered with a towel. In or near their 20s, they have all lost weight and it was/is harder for them to generate enough of their own body heat to stay warm. I have a 4 foot wide gradually sloping ramp that I built so that my old dogs do not have to climb stairs to get in and out of the back door into the yard. I covered it in that fake grass indoor/outdoor carpetting so that it is not slippery. It is tough stuff and I can scrape snow and ice off it without harming it. For my collie in the last months of his life (He had an inoperable tumor in his abdomen that I believe caused him to be incontinent) I wrapped his beds with plastic tarps and covered that with washable and comfy fleece blankets. (His beds were 2" thick blocks of dense upholstery foam that I had made for him when his arthritis made it too hard for him to get up on the couch.) When he slept urine would just run out of him, so I could just change his blanket and sponge off the waterproof tarp-covered bed with soap and water. I had about half a dozen blankets that I would just throw in the washer everyday. It was a system that was easy for me and comfortable sleeping for him. Likewise my last two cats in their 20s were "leaky" when they slept. I lined all of their beds with plastic waterproof tablecloths, cut to fit. Then I covered that with soft cloths made from old towels and old clothes that were disposable. I affixed the disposable bedding to their beds with masking tape that I could tear off the next day. I had boxes of discarded fabric items cut into cat-bed-sized linens. When the supply began to run low I bought a box of hospital pads and used those. When my dogs were very old their appetites waned. I home cook for all my pets, and I cooked only those foods that they liked the best in their last days, because it was most important for them to eat to keep up their strength and to get adequate nutrition. Poultry was a favorite, and I cooked many a 25 lb turkey back then. Toward the end it was too hard for my guys to stand to eat a meal, so I hand fed them so they could eat lying down. For my dogs, glucosamine/chondroitin and fish oil capsules have helped their arthritis noticably. Eventually old age gets the upper hand, but these remedies stave off the crippling effects of arthritis for some time. I hope some of these suggestions will help you with your older pets. I find it very rewarding to care for my pets in their later years. There are so many ways to make their lives more comfortable, and to provide them with contentment. They appreciate the extra care and enjoy this phase in their lives, even though their world and activities have shrunk from what they once were. And now that I, too, am old I can empathize even more with the difficulties they have, and instinctively take steps to alleviate them.

Good one, so funny. Thanks, Dottie

Hi, no one here knows me, but I wandered in here and found this thread that reminded me of my own Dad, who, when ten years younger than yours, took off in a van with minimal camping gear and spent just short of a year traveling, hiking, camping, gold-panning. He was surely depressed and angry when he started out. He handled his depression by doing a lot of lashing out at people, being very defensive, critical, and being an obnoxious know-it-all. I was a teenager at the time he took off, so I was glad he left and I did not hear from him in all that time. Now from an outsider's point of view there were other normal things he should have been doing during those months-- such as getting a job to support his still young kids. But, again, I was glad to be rid of him. And he came back a much more relaxed person, with lots of stories of places, people, animals, close calls with rocky cliffs and gravity; hot burritos bought from a tiny store in the middle of no-where on a rutted dirt road, climbing out of narrow river canyons when sudden storms threatened to flash flood; many pans of popcorn shared with others at park campgrounds, his cleverness at figuring out how to bake a chocolate cake over a fire to share with the popcorn eaters. And yes, he even got lost in a desolate place a time or two. He had a zillion stories to tell for the rest of his life. He spent months in nature and did not have to live up to anyone's standards, didn't have to prove himself better than others (which he was always trying to do previously), didn't have to do anything but let the sun shine down, wash his laundry occasionally, and see what was out there, how the clouds looked, where the fish would bite. I don't know what to say about how he faced or dealt with his failures that were part of how depressed he had been. He never did talk about that, but he was easier to live with afterward. I can see that his trip into another world was soothing, healing, "smoothing" for him. I won't say his solitary travels made him into a new person, but he was much more relaxed for ever after. Oh, he also got more physically healthy-- lost weight, gained muscle, built stamina, even ate healthier. He became a person who could almost always find something to enjoy. Thank goodness. Maybe it was his walkabout.

I still very much like the idea of SMdA. I'm not sure whether I like the idea more than anything, but at least it's something to continue to ponder. I've been intrigued by the thought of going there for quite some time, but DH always wanted to go to a beach in Mexico, so that's not something that was ever on our list. It looks so charming, though, so I'm definitely not discounting it at this point. I completely understand not wanting to return to a place you've already visited numerous times. I'd not particularly care to go back to Chicago, for instance, and I've never really had a desire to see the southernmost cities of the U.S. The problem with an exercise of this magnitude is trying to find a "one size fits all" location, and as has been stated upthread, that's just not a possibility.