This is the story of Roscoe and Spur and Bim. Roscoe was doomed to death for biting. I took in the little bastard!
Spur came from the 2007 biggest puppy mill bust the state of Maine has ever seen. He's nice, too!
Bim is our newest addition. My first ever bought dog. Came from a wonderful miniature american shepherd breeder in England!!!!
This blog is about the life of my little dogs and me, Amy Carlson! A silly self-indulgent blog that might bring a smile to your face. :D
While Spur does his tight twisty jump work. Added spread jumps, low. We forget to practice those and we see them in AKC all the time. The last trial he started a little stutter steps after perhaps knicking a double? So, bringing out doubles to practice. We start low.
It gets dark so early!!! So, even though it is SO cold lately it is still quite nice out. I am trying to do as much agility training while my ring is free of snow and ice. And getting lots of walks in. We hit the woods a couple times. It is nice and dry right now, so the woods are awesome. And no ticks, at least none that I have found!!! Yay!!!
Colby is doing better. I think the prozac is finally kicking in. We have slept for three nights in a row. That is AMAZING!! After three weeks of basically no sleep, it feels good.
The ducks and geese are eating as much as they can while the weather is good.
This goose is so odd. I have seen it from a distance and finally brought my camera. The stay far away from us because Spur chases them every time. He gets a good workout and they get annoyed by him, but hey, he doesn't ever catch them. They give him a good work out! So, I was very far from this goose and didn't have anything to put the camera on and so my hands shook some. Zooming in is all well and good, but at a point you really need to stabilize the camera to get a really good shot.
Yes, very thankful! We have had some good sleep lately!! :D Is this because the prozac is finally kicking in? Or something else? We are having moments of good. Still moments of not so good. Especially for me, as I left her at home alone while I took the boys for a long woods hike with our doggie pals. Something she would LOVE doing, in her past. :( That SUCKED. My friends said......"Really, she couldn't have come?". I asked them if they were conscious during our last farm walk. They nodded, sadly. We pretty much drag her out for the first part of our morning walks. Then unhook her and she does OK, but the first half is pretty much a drag.
However, upon return I peeped into the window and saw her snoozing soundly. Who knows, maybe she howled in dismay for the first hour and finally collapsed in exhaustion? I am not good on myself, mentally.
She then woke up and was all excited to see us, so I didn't even bother with her collar and coat and RAN outside to take her for a short walk out back!! She acted, for those 15 minutes, nearly like her "old" self!! We ran to her big ball for some ball games and then I ran out the back pasture with her running next to me!!! WOW! She hasn't run like that in weeks! I capitalized on that and ran back to the agility yard! Then back out again and over to the horse's lower pasture, where she always loves to hunt. She was happy to be out naked and running. It felt good!
She has been sleeping pretty well at night. And even without the xanax!!! Her recent fasted BUN was lower, 61, but still that is very high. It has been 72 and 74 on the other previous tests. She has been eating OK, not the low protein diet, but any canned food I can find that she will eat. I have found she likes a certain texture. Not the stew kind, but the regular canned foods.
Another strange thing, she isn't doing the obsessive drinking. So, is that the prozac? Was her drinking an obsession? Soothing her somehow? I have also been able to get the sucralfate second dose in. It says in big letters "ON AN EMPTY STOMACH". Which means essentially at least an hour before or two hours after a meal. Well, we are constantly feeding the dogs, since they get Charlee Bears often as training treats for recalls or whatever. And cookies and bits of leftovers, often through out the day. But, since she isn't wanting to eat the Charlee Bears, she has an empty stomach for our afternoon walks. And then again around 8 PM. Maybe that is helping? It is a medication to coat her stomach in case she has a gastric ulcer. Which we kind of doubt because she has no other signs of that, poops normal, not elevated blood values like anemia or something. It is all a quandary, but at least we are doing better and for that I am happy!!!!
I'll leave you with some more Silvia Trkman homework from a couple weeks ago. This is the extension/collection exercise we love. I love it because I get a GREAT workout, too!! :D It showed, though, that I need a left and right cue.
We went for a second opinion and she just shows the vets a whole different dog. She looks happy, is all flirty and wants cookies. Even eats the cookies. Then at home, she refuses to eat cookies, is even refusing dinner unless I add something new and "exciting". She vomited all that last night, along with her prozac. OI! Oh and has a big loose poo on the carpet while I was out walking the boys. I left her home because she didn't want to go and had already been out a fair amount and had a morning walk that was not that happy. She was tired and felt like crap. So, she crapped. :(
The new vet said to absolutely try the tramadol and see if perhaps some pain meds will make her feel better. NO, I think she felt worse. Reacting badly with her stomach? I wish she could tell me. We stopped the tramadol and went back to the xanax to get through the night. She finally did sleep last night, most of the night, she was so tired.
This morning, again, had to coax her to eat and then she immediately went out and wanted to eat grass. Her stomach feels bad. She is gassy and not at all happy.
So, here I am waiting for the vet to call back after I checked in say........"Update, tramadol didn't work well, stopped that. Now add vomiting, diarrhea, indigestion and more lethargy to our symptoms".
Poor little Colby, she just got dealt a bad set of genes I would say. She has had medical issues her whole life and now is not aging well. Or aging too well? Just sucks..............I'm tired.
We went to a Cape Farm Alliance thank you dinner meeting last night. Not many farmers there, but lots of folks who volunteer as if they are farmers, to help the farmers. Anyway, some are small time "farmers" with little flocks of laying chickens. Some allow them to free range. But, the talk last night was all about the death of these chickens by foxes and coyotes. So much so that several are regrouping and will be starting over. One has just one chicken left.
Anyway, one lady spoke about her small flock free ranging around her house when a family and their dog walked by and the dog slipped out of the hands of the people and attacked the chickens. One ended up with it's ass bit off. The kids at the home were devastated and dad agreed to take the chicken to the vet. The vet has to suture the ass back on the chicken. The mom is working at the time, but getting updates. She arrives home to the chicken with a cone on it's head, so it doesn't peck out it's ass stitches and a note saying it needs ointment and tending to three times/day. OK, to this point I was just chuckling, but by the time I heard it had a cone on it's head the tears were streaming as I was laughing SO hard. I said that I think MY solution might have been to sharpen the ax, but I guess without kids or if you grow up on a working farm, that is the solution. With suburban kids, off to the vet went the chicken.
She then proceeds to tell us it cost them $300. O-MY-GOD, I am again tearing with laughter!!! $300 would buy a LOT of eggs! The chicken lived.
The next story was a fox story. Wife usually heads to the barn to feed night time hay to the horses and close in the chickens for the night. Trouble was husband wants to watch a movie and be in bed by 10:00. This puts a crimp on her nighttime barn chores and puts it all off by about an hour. Whatever, no biggie, right? Well, after the movie she heads out and the dogs start barking like crazy. Feathers are everywhere. She opens the chicken coop and all but three are in there looking wide eyed and nervous. She spends an hour searching for the other chickens and nothing. They must be gone, eaten. She heads in and goes to bed. OK, so now you have to know this part..............she and her husband sleep naked. This is important to the story. She falls asleep and just as she is dozing into deep sleep she is awakened by this horrible chicken squawking!!! She bolts out of bed and runs outside, stark naked holding her "headlights", runs around trying to find the chicken and spots it...........totally naked itself, no feathers at all, squawking and carrying on like crazy. Amazingly, it looks fine, otherwise. She forgets about her "headlights" and just throws away her vanity and tries to gather up the chicken. She is chasing/herding it around and something catches her eye..........husband has arrived now, shot gun in hand.........naked. At that point NO one is not hysterically laughing!!!! OMG!!! This is in Cape Elizabeth!!!
They manage to gather up the naked chicken and put her in the coop and head back to bed. Not long after they hear another one making crazy noises!!!! The story essentially repeats itself except that husband takes the time to dress some and wife ends up going back in for a bathrobe. They end up saving two featherless chickens and only lost the one.
The other story was about a frozen chicken. The one chicken left from a fox devastation ended up keeping itself safe, but hanging with the cows at night. However, one night it fell in the water trough. This was winter and the poor thing froze!!! The teenage daughter comes into the house with the rock hard frozen chicken crying and carrying on. Mom says the head isn't frozen and must have stayed above the water, so maybe it isn't dead. She tells the daughter to take it to the bathroom and blow dry it. About 2 hours later the chicken got up and walked away!!!! :D
I actually have quite a few I haven't posted, but this is from today. Working on getting more speed and I like how he nearly beats me to the last jump of the first sequence!! YAY! Then we worked on very tight wraps, which has been very hard as it is so much pressure for him. He did GREAT, no trotting between the jumps. And then a through the box discrimination. He kept taking the jump and I wanted him to take the tunnel that is just off the camera. I ended up having to move the jump and doing some call to hand work. Then he got it. Some good work today for Spur. :D
Trying to wrap my brain around why we need to measure the amount of water Colby is drinking. She has a very high BUN value with EVERYTHING else normal, including nothing on abdominal ultrasound, adrenal gland so small they couldn't even measure it, specific gravity of urine - normal, urine cortisol - normal. So, they want me to measure how much water she is drinking. She is drinking WAY more than she ever has. That won't be easy to do with two other dogs, but I can do that. However, when asked WHY the answer was......"because a certain amount is normal, but over that and she could have neurological issues causing it and not a behavioral issue causing it". Um, but we KNOW she is having behavioral issues, which is why all these tests, so it could just be behavior up to a certain amount and then it is neurological? How would they know by the measured amount that it is behavior or neurological???? Isn't the neurological consideration the cause of the behavior???? What am I missing??? I just had this conversation with the vet and we went round and round on it and could not get a clear answer and finally just said...."OK, thanks" and hung up. WTF? I understand they don't know what is wrong, but I am not understanding the reasoning for this particular test.
We still have the urine culture results to come in. Maybe that will show us something.
The consideration if it is neurological would be to do an MRI to look for a brain tumor. Um, OK, $3000 later and what if it IS a brain tumor. Surgery is probably not an option in most cases, it rarely is, so radiation? Really?? Chemo?? Really??? For what? A couple more months?
We took a beach walk today. She didn't seem happy. I wanted to leave her home, but Rich said take her, she might like it. The light was too bright, the rocks too plentiful. She didn't seem happy. She isn't happy much these days.
It is nuts. We are working on week two of her prozac with no change, but did not expect any, yet. She IS, however, drinking more and more and that is really concerning. We head back to the vet to recheck her strange high BUN value.
She is obviously upset. And obviously going more and more blind. But, what ELSE is wrong with her??? That is what I want to know. I want to be sure she isn't feeling bad because of something other than the blindness.
When she is nervous she has always stood over the other dogs. She did this with Jess, even though Jess was definitely the "alpha" dog. She now does it with Spur. It is an odd behavior. I don't think it is anything "dominant", but some way of getting comfort from her pal. Sometimes she steps on him and pulls his hair, he just gets up and moves to another spot, where she sometimes just goes and starts over. Very odd.
She will even nearly sit on him. He's a good boy! She certainly does NOT try this with Roscoe, LOL!!!
Update on Miss Colby. We saw the ophthalmologist and she said her developing cataract could certainly be causing these behavior issues. It may be a rapidly developing cataract and she has suddenly lost more vision. Surgery is $3500-$4500 and that only after a $400 test to be sure she doesn't have too much degeneration in her retina, which would make the surgery a waste. WHAT????? There is a 90% success rate, but that just means that she has a 10% change it won't work at all and she would them be totally blind. But, if she has minimal retinal degeneration we won't know if it is progressive or not. She could be going blind anyway, regardless of a cataract.
She whines and shakes pretty much 24/7. Happiest when out for walks, but only because we are DOING something. In the house, she is only happy if she is in our arms. She is in my arms right now. My arms are tired, my back is tired, my legs are tired. It wears on you to have a dog in your arms all the time. At night we give her xanax, but sometimes it doesn't work and it always wears off after about 4 hours. Then we give her more. Rich is sleeping in the spare bedroom.
It just sucks. We started her on prozac Monday. It can take 2 weeks to up to 2 months to take effect. Usually, only two weeks, but TWO WEEKS of THIS???? OMG, we are all going insane!
We still have the strange issue with her high BUN. We will retest for that next week.
I am a full time pet sitter/dog walker. My past life I was a veterinary technician. I keep my license current in the state of Maine. This blog is about Roscoe, Colby and Spur, and my crazy life surrounded by animals.
