Another strategy to look at is to make autovacuum more aggresive by
putting entries for that one table into the pg_autovacuum table. I
know that table exists in 8.3 but I don't remember if it exists in
older versions or how it works there. But if you have that available
you can make that one relation more aggresively autovacuumed without
affecting the other relations vacuum scheduling. On 8.3 you can set
individual cost delays, and all the other settings you'd need. If 8.2
doesn't support this, look at migrating just for that functionality
alone.