Lately Schnoodle has been waking up at around 1-3am and wanting to be let out.  She barks until someone wakes up.   Her vision is deteriorating, her hearing is gone and it makes it really hard to communicate with her.  Her sense of touch works, and her nose still works pretty well.   Overall she still seems pretty happy to be around and spends most of her day asleep.

Schnoodle near the window well outside

Last night it was my turn to let her out.  I imagine taking care of old Schnoodle is sort of like caring for a newborn baby. So I let her out and she ran around in the fresh snow in the backyard.  I wait until she barks to be let back in and in a few minutes she did bark.  She wasn’t at the back door though.  She was about 10 feet off and standing near the window well.  I could sense what was about to happen.  She thought that the edge of the window well was the back step.

I put my slippers on and started to go outside to stop her.  Sadly there was no way I could have gotten to her in time.  She fell straight down into the window well.

She hit with a thud and then let out a yelp.  I ran inside and downstairs as quickly as I could.  I wasn’t sure how bad a 3-4 foot fall would be on our poor old Schnoodle!  I called for Cassie and opened the window in the basement. She had already gotten up so I figured she wasn’t too bad off.  I got a towel and wrapped her up and took her inside.

When I saw her fall head first and heard that thump, I really though that was the end of poor ol Schnood.  Amazingly, though she is doing just fine today like nothing ever happened.