I will definitely look into a leave in conditioner, thanks

Thanks for that, looks very interesting, I'll have a good snoop later on

No probs, its very hard when our dogs get older and they cannot tolerate so many things. Leave in conditioner is quite a good option, I just suppose its down to how much your girl will put up with especially as you can only do 2-3 mins at a time.

During Sam's (Border Collie) life, I used to sit on the floor at the side of him, tease out any mats with my fingers and remove any shedding by gently pulling out the dead hair. He would tolerate this, but not proper grooming. I also used to trim out his knickers and also his underbelly, but I did the latter in two parts as I had to wait until he naturally chose which side to lay on. He had the fan on in the house when it was hot and I was very careful about the amount of time he spent in the garden. He didn't go for outside walks during the last 18 months of his life as he just couldn't cope (physically) with them.

There comes a time when we have to respect their wishes and just do all we can, management wise, to help them out.

That is quite spooky, I could have written this post almost word for word about Tia. She can at the moment handle very short walks but does 'stumble' more often now.