Pet Gently Homepage ad: Read This If Your Dog Has Stopped Coming Upstairs 👆

I've slept on a camp bed in my own living room for 7 months, and my husband sleeps upstairs on his own. It cost £24 from Argos. It's green canvas, it creaks every time I turn over, and there's a dip in the middle that's done my back no favours at all. Every night at 10 I unfold it next to the sofa, and every morning at 6 I fold it back up behind the armchair so it's out of the way. Because the dog I'm sleeping next to is Bramble. And Bramble is mine. I'm Linda. I'm 61, and I live on the edge of Harrogate with my husband Pete, in the semi we've had for 30 years. Bramble is a Golden Retriever. She came home at 8 weeks old in a cardboard box on my lap, and she's 11 now. She's gone pale round the eyes, she groans like an old man when she lies down, and she still thinks every visitor has come to see her. For 11 years, Bramble has slept at the bottom of our bed. That's her spot. Across my feet, on the left-hand side, with her head on Pete's ankle. Bedtime was a routine. Pete locks the back door. I let Bramble out last thing. She comes back in, has a drink, and then she races me up the stairs. She always won. I worked it out once. That's over 4,000 nights with her weight on my feet. I'm the sort of person who works these things out. I need you to understand what bedtime meant, because bedtime is the whole story. When our two left home, the house got very quiet. Bramble filled it. She was the last thing I said goodnight to and the first thing I saw in the morning, her chin on the mattress, waiting for me to wake up. On the bad nights, when I couldn't sleep, I'd put my hand on her back and listen to her breathe until I could. She was the best part of my night, and I don't mind saying so. Then, about 18 months ago, the race up the stairs stopped. It didn't happen overnight. That's the part I want you to hear. None of it happened overnight. One night she got to the bottom step and stopped. She looked up the stairs. She looked at me. And she lay down in the hall. I told myself she was hot. It had been a warm day. The next night she did it again. So I started going up first and calling her. She'd come, slowly, one step at a time, and stand at the top panting like she'd climbed a mountain. I told myself she was fine. I needed to believe that. Then the mornings changed. Getting off the bed, her back legs would slide out from under her on the laminate. Getting up from her bed downstairs took 3 goes. Her front end would be up and her back end would just stay put. Then one night she didn't come up at all. I lay in bed listening to her cry at the bottom of the stairs. A thin, high whine I'd never heard from her before. I went down, sat on the bottom step with her, and that's where I stayed until 2 in the morning. We took her to the vet. I think you know what he said. "She's 11, Linda. It's wear and tear." Wear and tear. As if she were a stair carpet. We came home with a bottle of liquid and a little syringe to squirt it on her food, and advice to keep her weight down. Both fair enough. The liquid took the edge off, and I was grateful for it. But I tried everything else as well. I want you to know that. Joint chews from the pet shop, a new tub every month. When those did nothing, the dearer ones they sell on the counter at the vet's. A memory foam bed. Non-slip runners down the hall. A harness with a handle on the back so Pete could help her up the stairs. She hated it, and so did his back. The liquid worked, then faded. A stronger dose. Worked, then faded. Then the monthly injection at the clinic, about £60 a time. The first one gave us 5 good weeks. Then it didn't. By the end of March she'd stopped trying the stairs altogether. So in April I bought the camp bed. Pete thought I'd lost my mind. "She's a dog, Lin. She'll be fine down there." She wasn't fine. She cried. And I couldn't lie upstairs listening to it. So for 7 months, my husband of 34 years has slept on his own, and I've slept on a camp bed in the lounge next to a Golden Retriever. When my friend Jean popped round for a coffee and saw the bed folded behind the armchair, she gave me a look. She didn't say anything. She didn't need to. After she'd gone, I sat on that camp bed and cried until my head ached. This is a dog who used to race me up those stairs. And I was sleeping on the floor of my own lounge because she couldn't manage them any more. That weekend I rang my sister, Anne. She's 66, she ran a GP surgery for 20 years, and she doesn't do sympathy. She does solutions. I told her about the camp bed. She went quiet, which isn't like her. "Linda," she said. "Do you remember what the physio told me about my hip?" I did, roughly. She'd taken glucosamine for years and her hip had kept getting worse anyway. "He told me the cartilage in my hip is the same cartilage I had at 16. Your body lays it down when you're young and never replaces it. So it ages with you. Year after year, sugar in your blood sticks to it, and it goes stiff and brittle. He called it browning. The same thing that happens to toast." "He said the glucosamine wasn't wrong. It just can't do much for cartilage that's gone like that. It's like delivering bricks to a building site after the builders have gone home." Then she said the thing I most needed to hear. "And Linda, dogs brown faster than we do. So don't leave it till next year. Whatever hasn't browned yet is what you've got to work with. The longer you leave it, the less there is." That night I sat up on the camp bed with my phone and read. What I read made me cross in a way I still haven't quite got over. It's all true. Scientists carbon-dated the cartilage in people's knees, using fallout from the old nuclear bomb tests as a timestamp. Nothing ever replaces it. When they measured the same browning in different animals, including beagles, it built up faster in the animals with shorter lives. Dogs brown faster than we do. In the lab, browned cartilage was up to 40% stiffer. It stops cushioning and starts cracking. And in a study on dogs, cartilage with the amount of browning you find in an old dog got damaged faster, and the cells inside it stopped rebuilding. That stopped me cold. The cells stop rebuilding. That's what the sliding legs were. That's what the 3 goes to stand up were. That was my girl at the bottom of the stairs she used to race up, deciding she couldn't. It wasn't wear and tear. Wear and tear sounds like she'd used her joints up. She hadn't. They'd browned. Like toast. And toast snaps instead of bending. And suddenly the whole cupboard made a horrible kind of sense. The vet's liquid was doing its job. It calms the soreness, and that matters. But it doesn't touch the browning, which is why every course worked, then faded. The tubs weren't wrong either. Nearly every one was built on glucosamine and chondroitin, and they're good ingredients. But they're building materials, and I'd been delivering them to a site where the builders had stopped turning up. Here's the honest bit, the bit that made me act that week instead of mulling it over for another 6 months. Nothing turns browned cartilage back into new cartilage. Nothing gives an 11-year-old dog her 2-year-old hips back. What you can do is slow down what's happening to the cartilage she's still got. So it all comes down to starting before any more of it browns. Bramble was 11, stiff and slow. But she still got up every morning and wagged at me. She still lay at the bottom of those stairs looking up them. There was still something to work with. If I'd waited another year, telling myself she was fine downstairs, I honestly don't think I'd be writing this. So I went looking for something that went after the browning itself, not just more building materials. That's how I found a small UK company making a joint chew with 13 ingredients in it, working in 3 parts. Turmeric, boswellia, rosehip and vitamins C and E for the browning. In one lab study, turmeric stopped the sugar locking onto cartilage and stopped it stiffening. Hyaluronic acid, devil's claw, green-lipped mussel, salmon oil and yucca to calm the soreness that browned cartilage sets off. Then glucosamine, chondroitin and MSM, so the builders have something to build with once they're back at work. One chew a day, from my palm, every morning when I fold the camp bed away. Bramble took the first one like a biscuit and she's never turned one down since. The bag lives in the cupboard where all those tubs used to be. I didn't stop anything the vet had her on. I just added it. Week 1, nothing. I'd promised myself I wouldn't get my hopes up. I very nearly managed it. Week 2, she got up off her bed in one go. No 3 tries. I didn't say a word to Pete, in case I jinxed it. Week 3, she followed me as far as the half-landing before she sat down. Week 6, I was unfolding the camp bed at 10 o'clock and noticed she wasn't in the lounge. I found her at the top of the stairs. Lying across our bedroom doorway. Looking down at me like I was late. I stood in the hall and cried. Pete came out of the bathroom with his toothbrush in his mouth and just said, "Well. About time." That was 4 months ago. She sleeps across my feet again. Left-hand side, head on Pete's ankle. She doesn't race me any more. She takes the stairs steady, with a breather on the half-landing. I'm fine with that. She isn't a puppy again, and I won't pretend she is. She's an 11-year-old Golden Retriever who got her bedtime back, because we started before any more of her cartilage browned. At her last check-up, the vet watched her walk across the room and said she was moving better than he'd expected. He's happy to keep an eye on the liquid. That's his call, not mine. And in the mornings, her chin is on the mattress again, waiting for me to wake up. Last month I took the camp bed to the charity shop on the high street. The woman behind the counter asked if it had been for camping. I said yes, because the real answer would have taken an hour. So I'm telling you instead. If your dog has stopped coming upstairs, struggles to stand or slips on the floor, and you've been telling yourself she's fine downstairs, please don't take "she's just getting older" as the whole answer. Get your vet to look her over. Keep everything they prescribe. Then look at what's in your tubs, and whether any of it does a thing about the browning. And don't wait for it to get worse, because this is the one thing where waiting really does cost you. Every month you leave it, a little more browns. The earlier you start, the more there is to look after. It isn't just age. It's browning. It's PetGently's Joint Care chews. This is what Bramble's on: https://www.petgently.com/pages/joint-care-offer-adv P.S. It's the small things first. Up off her bed in one go. A step further up the stairs each week. Her chin on the mattress at 6 in the morning. You won't see it happening. You'll just notice one night that you haven't heard her cry at the bottom of the stairs in a while. P.P.S. They give you 90 days to see it for yourself. If nothing changes, you get your money back, even if you've finished the bag, and you don't have to send anything back. Nobody refunded me a single tub. P.P.P.S. What's in it: turmeric, boswellia, rosehip, vitamin C, vitamin E, hyaluronic acid, devil's claw, green-lipped mussel, salmon oil, yucca, glucosamine, chondroitin and MSM. 13 ingredients in one chew, made in small batches, which is why it sells out now and then.