I have been looking for a used baby crib for Shadow with no luck and I certainly don’t want to pay a couple hundred dollars for a new one. So yesterday I spent my time trying to figure out what I have just sitting around that I could recycle into a bed of sorts. I needed it to be easier to reach him and change him around without continuously getting up and down off the floor, we’re both mature after all.

I remembered an odd shaped table in the basement that I was using to store stuff on and asked Bill to bring it up after I unloaded it of course. I had an old computer type chair that I had broken down that was on rollers because I had tried to make something to put shadow on to help him be more mobile, but it hadn’t worked out so Bill took the rollers off and added them to the table I had decided to use so I could roll him where ever I wanted him.

We then concentrated on side boards so he wouldn’t roll off. Bill brought some solid pieces of wood home from work and some blocks, but I wanted Shadow to be able to look through slats and not feel like he was cooped up, poor old guy, it breaks my heart to see him this way. I remembered I had some small pieces of wooden fence that I had used around my tomato plants to keep him from urinating on them and decided they would be perfect for my DIY project.

I needed 3 pieces of the fence, 1 for either side and 1 split in half for the ends. Bill sawed off the bottom parts that go in the ground and measured where he wanted the blocks, then used the wood screws to secure everything. We had an old lounge chair pad that was like an inch thick that fit perfectly, so I added his favorite blanket and his pads and he was ready to go. It’s not very pretty because I decided not to add a skirt or paint, but it gets the job it was intended for done.

It’s so much easier for me to take care of him now. Of course I’m hoping a miracle will happen and in a month or so he will be walking again. At his age surgery and the use of anesthesia is not something I want to consider because it could be very harmful for him. He walked a couple days after his accident, but hasn’t tried since. He was on steroids for 17 days plus antibiotics for 10 because there was blood in his urine the day we put him in the kennel.

If he was in pain and not alert I wouldn’t want to see him suffer just because I’m selfish and want to keep him with me. I would have to pray very hard for him to die on his own because I honestly don’t know if I would have the strength to put him down and lose him too. It’s so strange that he has many of the same human characteristics as my Son and I have always slipped over the years and called him Eric half the time. He’s happiest when Bill is home because they’re buddies.