Can't make up my mind whether or not to take my dog to see the vet.
She's four years old, small breed, and over the last few weeks she seems to be sleeping more during the day and is quite a bit quieter.
She's never been a big eater - often goes a day without eating - but recently she went right off her food - still happy to eat hard treats though, so not teeth. This isn't unusual with her and given that the food did actually smell different, very wheaty and boring, I concluded that it must have been changed in some way and tried her on something else, which she seemed to love for a few days. I don't change her food on a regular basis and did stick it out until she was virtually not eating.
She still seems happy and excited to go on her walks, still loving jumping and chasing her ball in the park, and gets excited when she meets people. However, when she's just walking on lead she will sometimes stop and sit down and seems to want to be carried, although she tends to do that more when we're on the way out rather than coming home when she will often rush along. So I wonder if she'd just being lazy at times. When we get home she will often scoot around the house, clearly happy to be home. She also seems to be reluctant to jump up onto my bed now, which is something she's always done in the past, although she still does from time to time. I've had a good feel of her legs and she doesn't seem to be in pain when I move them.
I'm annoyed with myself as she's recently had her routine jabs and I didn't mention it to the vet then; it's a new, to me, vet practice and he examined her and everything was obviously fine from his point of view; at that point she'd just started on the new food and was eating well again so I thought I'd see how she goes.
She's a pretty independent and will take herself upstairs in the evening to sleep on her bed - has a bed upstairs and one downstairs - but will often come down to have a wee before bed and expects to play just as I'm wanting to go to bed.
I don't want to go to the vet over nothing, obviously. Does it sound as if I'm being stupid and imagining problems that aren't there? More than happy to be told that. Also I'm not really sure she has any real symptoms to offer the vet, just a gut feeling that maybe all is not right.
Can anyone help?
God I'm sorry that's so horribly long.