Q:I have an 11-year-old Welsh corgi named Alice who's having plenty of old-dog troubles. She's going blind and has a hard time getting up. Everyone says it's time to let her go but I keep reading about dogs like her who can live to be 15 or more. Help!

A: Every animal, dog, cat or human, has aging issues to bear. For some it's vision and hearing, for others dementia and arthritis, among many possible combinations.

The one thing they all have in common is the certainty that at some point our ability as pet owners to keep them comfortable exhausts the innovations veterinary medicine has devised to deal with their problems.

Having said that, it sounds like you may not be aware of the many ways in which veterinarians can help dogs like Alice. Here's a checklist of these common problems with solutions that might help her and other aging pets:

• Dementia: Most pets suffer mild to severe dementia in their geriatric years. Drugs like Anipryl (selegiline) can be effective, as can behavior modification techniques your veterinarian or a veterinary behaviorist can prescribe.

• Arthritis: Weight loss for the heavy to obese among us is imperative to arthritis patients of any species. But she won't lose weight if the pain keeps her from moving about.

All arthritic pets will improve with pet-specific pain relievers, but careful, individual tailoring of these drugs is a requirement.

• Blindness: A large percentage of aging pets suffer cataracts. If caught in time, vision-saving cataract surgery can be had at a veterinary ophthalmologist's practice. Ask your vet for a referral. Other highly treatable conditions such as ''dry eye'' can also cause blindness. Diligent care will typically prevent vision loss in these pets.

• Deafness: As with blindness, loss of a sense gives dementia a boost. That's why it's important to keep tabs on your pet's hearing and let your vet know if it's declining. While veterinary medicine has no good solution for most age-related hearing conditions, careful owners will help their pets adapt to this loss with a stricter routine and training solutions vets can recommend.

The ideal approach to all these problems is a holistic one that addresses all issues that affect a pet. Understanding that each problem contributes to the other's severity is key to keeping aging from affecting your pet's quality of life for as long as possible.

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