‘I’m Kendall. My 12-Year-Old Husky Was Falling Apart and I Almost Lost Her. Here’s What I Did.’

A Bozeman mom of a senior Siberian Husky shares the four-month journey that gave her dog a second life — and the surprising thing she wishes she’d done two years sooner.

By Kendall R. | Husky Mom, Bozeman MT

Published June 11, 2026 · 514,238 reads

Luna and me, at home in Bozeman

Okay so I need to preface this with: I really didn’t want to write this post. I have rewritten the first paragraph of this thing probably nine times. My whole “thing” is just sharing the chaos of life with a 12-year-old Siberian Husky in Montana — the fur tumbleweeds, the 6am scream-talks at the back door, the way she still tries to herd our neighbor’s chickens like she’s three years old. I don’t do product posts. I’ve never done a product post.

But I almost lost my dog this winter. And the thing that brought her back is so weird and specific and unglamorous that I’m going to tell you the whole story, because if I had read this exact blog post 18 months ago, my husband Eric and I would have $668 still in our checking account, and Luna would have had two more good winters instead of one.

So I’m telling it the way I wish someone had told it to me. Buckle up.

Luna

I got Luna when I was 22, which is not the right age to get a Siberian Husky and I will die on this hill. She ate three pairs of my work shoes in the first month, dug up my landlord’s tulip bed, and learned how to open the screen door with her nose. I thought I had made a terrible mistake.

Then we figured each other out. She came with me through grad school in Missoula, through a job I hated in Seattle, through the move back to Montana, through meeting Eric, through the wedding, through buying the little place outside Bozeman. She’s 12 now. She’s outlived the average lifespan for Siberian Huskies by about a year and a half. I am aware of how lucky that is. I think about it every single day.

She’s still mostly the same dog I drove home in my Honda Civic in 2014.

Mostly.

The Slow Realization

Sometime around her 10th birthday, things started to shift, but it was so gradual I almost missed it. The little husky scream-talks she used to do at the door went quieter. She stopped jumping onto the couch — she’d kind of haul herself up with her front paws. The morning zoomies turned into morning sniffs.

And then one day last November I came home from the grocery store and I watched her stand up from her dog bed and actually wince. Not dramatic. Just a tiny full-body hesitation, like the first step hurt and she had to push through it. I put the bag of groceries down on the counter. She was 12. I had been telling myself she was fine. She wasn’t fine. I sat on the floor in front of her and started crying.

Husky parents are professional excuse-makers because our dogs are professional drama queens. When the drama goes quiet, you notice. And then you panic.

The Research Rabbit Hole

If you know me, you know my response to any problem is to open 47 browser tabs and not sleep until I’ve read every academic paper on the subject. That’s exactly what I did. I spent the entire week after Thanksgiving down a senior-dog-mobility rabbit hole — vet forums, Reddit, JAVMA abstracts, one entire afternoon on r/seniordogs where I cried multiple times.

Here’s what I learned, in plain English, that nobody told me at any of Luna’s annual vet visits:

Siberian Huskies are biologically prone to hip dysplasia, even working-line ones.Cartilage damage in dogs is permanent — once it’s gone, it doesn’t grow back. And this was the one that broke me: most popular joint supplements skip the two ingredients that actually move the needle on the inflammatory pathway in senior dogs — Boswellia Serrata and Turmeric Extract. Everyone slings glucosamine and chondroitin (which do help) but the actual anti-inflammatory work happens further down the chain.

I went and looked at the labels of the three different joint supplements I had bought for Luna over the years. The brands I’d been giving Luna for years didn’t have Boswellia or Turmeric in them at meaningful doses. Not even close. I read 47 academic abstracts that week. I needed something different. Like, immediately.

The Money Pit (And Why I’m Sharing This)

I want to be honest about how much I spent trying to figure this out before I found what worked, because nobody talks about this part and it’s embarrassing in the way money stuff is embarrassing — like we should have known better. We didn’t. Most people don’t.

By February, I was wrecked. Every supplement I tried that didn’t work was a month of progression I’d never get back. Cartilage doesn’t grow back, remember? Every month was a month of damage compounding. I felt like I was failing her. I almost gave up. For real.

There was a Tuesday in February where I sat on the bathroom floor and cried because I thought I might be looking at her last winter. I’m not being dramatic. That’s where I was.

How I Found Wuffbytes

This is going to sound like a setup, but I promise it’s exactly how it happened. I was doomscrolling Instagram at like 11pm — Eric was asleep, Luna was wedged against my leg breathing the heavy old-dog breath — and a senior-dog account I follow had reposted a story from a woman named Margaret.

I clicked her profile. Margaret was a 54-year-old marketing professional in Austin with an 11-year-old golden retriever named Bella. She had written this long caption about how Bella had basically stopped going on walks, and how she’d tried four different supplements and a CBD program and weekly hydrotherapy, and how one specific chew had been the thing that worked. The story was almost identical to mine. Different dog, different state, same downward spiral, same money pit, same panic.

So I ordered a bottle. I told myself this was the last thing I was going to try. I’d been burned enough times.

That late-night moment scrolling through senior dog stories

What Wuffbytes Actually Is

I’m going to keep this short because I’m not trying to sell you anything — I’m telling you what I bought and why I bought it. Wuffbytes is a senior-dog joint chew. It’s a soft chewable, kind of looks like a tiny brownie square, smells like fish and herbs (Luna’s into it). What made me try it instead of the other 9,000 joint chews on the internet is that it actually has Boswellia Serrata and Turmeric Extract at real doses —those are the two that, according to the research I did, address the inflammatory pathway. She inhales the Wuffbytes chews like they’re treats.

Week 1 — Nothing Yet, And I Was Trying Not to Spiral

For the first week I watched her like a hawk. I genuinely could not tell if I was making things up. Every time she stood up I made Eric look at her. He kept saying “Kendall, it’s been four days, breathe.” Reader, I did not breathe.

Week 3 — The First Real Change

I was making coffee. Luna walked into the kitchen and she play-bowed at me. Front legs down, butt in the air, that goofy husky pre-zoom stretch she hadn’t done in almost a year. I literally said “oh my god” out loud and dropped my spoon. Then she did it again the next day.

I don’t know if you’ve ever watched something you thought was permanently gone come back. It’s a very specific kind of crying. I did a lot of that crying this past spring.

Week 5 — The Hike

We went to Hyalite Canyon. I packed her ramp for the truck. I told Eric let’s see how far she wants to go and we’d turn around the second she looked tired. She did the full 4 miles. She didn’t limp. She didn’t slow down. I sat on a rock at the top and just stared at her drinking from a stream and thought, okay. Okay. Something is really happening here.

Week 8 — The Husky Scream Came Back

If you’ve ever lived with a Siberian Husky, you know about the scream. It’s not a bark. It’s a full operatic monologue every time you come home from anywhere, including the mailbox. Luna’s husky scream had gone quiet by age 10. We figured she was just getting more dignified.

I came back from Costco one Saturday in April and Luna did the entire screaming routine — head back, mouth wide, the whole 30-second aria about how betrayed she was that I’d been gone for an hour. I dropped my groceries in the doorway and sat on the floor and let her tell me all about it.

The dog I’d had at 4. She was back. Not in a “she’s a puppy again” way — she’s still 12, she still naps a lot, she still has grey on her face. But the spark, the personality, the dog who has opinions and demands an audience. She’s there. She’s herself. The dog is still in the body.

Luna on the Hyalite trail — her first time back in over a year

What I’m Doing Now (And Why I Joined Their VIP Program)

I’ve been on Wuffbytes for 7 months. Luna gets two chews with breakfast every morning. That’s it. Running out of Wuffbytes is the actual worst-case scenario for me at this point — I will not let that happen, so I’m on their VIP subscribe-and-save thing.

I literally pay for my Wuffbytes subscription every month the same way I pay for my Spotify. I will continue paying for it until Luna isn’t here anymore. That’s why I’m sharing this.

The VIP program (it’s free to join if you’re on Subscribe & Save) gets me:

• Lifetime 20% discount on every order
• Free shipping forever
• Early access to new products
• A private Facebook group with hundreds of other senior dog parents
• First access to any new SKUs they launch

What Other Dog Parents Have Told Me

From left: Lola (8), Apollo (10), Pretzel (9), Cooper (9)

Frequently Asked Questions I Get on Instagram

My Final Thoughts

I almost lost Luna this winter. Not in the literal sense — she wasn’t about to die — but in the sense that every senior dog parent knows. Less mobility every month. Less spark. Less of the dog you remember. The body keeps going but the dog inside starts to retreat a little, and one day you realize the dog you have on the couch is a quieter, slower, sadder version of the dog you had three years ago.

Luna is 12 and she is older. But the same dog. The eyes are the same. The opinions are the same. The husky scream came back. That’s a gift I almost didn’t get.

If you’re reading this and you have a senior dog who’s slowing down — please don’t wait. Don’t spend $668 the long way. Don’t waste time you don’t have.

If I could tell my 31-year-old self anything, it would be this: don’t try to figure out what works the slow expensive way. Start with the one that works. This is it. This is the one.

Follow Luna’s Journey

If you’re a senior dog parent and you want to follow along, I post about Luna on Instagram at @kendallwithhusky. I’m not selling anything. I’m not getting paid by anyone. I just love her and want every senior dog parent to know what worked for us.

DMs always open. Tell me about your dog.

— Kendall + Luna 🌲