Shopping for my family during the holidays is a cinch, but when it comes to my furry family members, gift-giving becomes one big guessing game. Will Nina and Gracie play with the blinged-out feather cat toys I painstakingly picked out for them, or will they just bat around the gift bows for hours like always?

By the time I adopted Annie, a beautiful chocolate Lab mix, she was 9 years old and in pretty bad shape. Her left hip was severely arthritic – the result of being hit by a car when she was a puppy – and her previous owner had become too ill to care for her properly.