Miss Pepper has started to show signs of her age this winter. She's 11. We're trying her out on Rimadyl to see how that goes. She's been having real problems with stairs, and since we live in a split level, it's all stairs here. Luckily it's only two steps down to the back yard and she can manage that. But getting her out for walks is a challenge. She can manage going down the front steps to the street side of the house, but won't go down the family room steps to get outside UNLESS my husband's the one taking her out. She'll do it for him, not for me. Getting back in is twice the problem. Won't go up the front steps, won't come in the side (unless Hubby takes her, and he has a bad hip so he usually prefer me to to the leg work with her. So we either go through one side or the other to get into the back door. I nearly lost my shoe in the mud (it's either mud or snow here in winter), but we got her back in the house. Poor old girl! (the dog, not me!(