Wednesday, December 9, 2015

12/9/2015

BILL ANNOUNCES: Straydog Radio Show covering the events of Wednesday, December 9, 2015. This is Bill, here in my office early Thursday morning, with Juana on the phone from Hospital One at Straydog.

JUANA: It was a chilly morning but as the day wore on it got very nice. Our dogs love this weather. We had a full crew and we did our regular chores of feeding the dogs, raking, cleaning, changing water buckets, caregiving and walking the dogs.

Connor was the walker of the day and here are some pictures of him taking dogs to the park. He was playing in the park with Blondie.

Blondie and Toby are on their way to the park.

Once there Blondie tells Connor to find that ball because she's ready to play. Toby walks off the other way, we can tell he's not feeling too well.

Tobi hasn’t wanted to eat for a couple of days. He doesn’t have an appetite. We’ve been trying to switch up his food and give him more canned food and we have been soaking his food. I thought that one of his teeth might be hurting him. He didn’t have an appetite, but he was eating. Last night he would only eat about half of his food and this morning he wouldn’t eat at all. He would take a cookie, but not like he normally does. Something was wrong with him. We know that it’s been over a month, since the doctor put him on thyroid medicine and he hasn’t lost any weight. I know that it can take longer than that for the medicine to kick in. He doesn’t have any diarrhea or anything like that. So we took him to the vet, to see if there was anything wrong with him. He is aging, so he might start to have some problems. So we took him and Amy to the vet.

Amy has had diarrhea. She has a history of irritable bowel disease and she’s been on E/N food and warm water and nothing else. She’s been eating very well, but lately she’s had diarrhea. We put her on Metronidazole. That usually clears things up in a couple of days but it hasn’t cleared up. Then she wouldn’t eat on Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. We feed our inside dogs around 1:00 in the morning and she wouldn’t touch her meal. She doesn’t have any diarrhea right now. I don’t think it’s the IDB. When that flares up, she has bloody diarrhea. She is also a senior dog. She’s much older than Tobi. She was doing fine until Wednesday.

Amy in the van crate on her way to see the doctor.

Toby's on his way to see the doctor too.

George took Amy and Tobi to the vet. Lacie was our vet tech and she knows our dogs. There’s a big advantage in having someone there who knows our dogs and it makes it easier to handle them. Dr. James examined Amy and Tobi. He did blood work and took x-rays. He said that everything looked fine for Amy. He wanted us to stop the Metronidazole and start a different antibiotic. He said it could be IDB, even though it isn’t showing up. She has a little growth on her eye and it is betting bigger and bigger. When Lacie comes to Straydog, she occasionally aspirates it. It doesn’t really bother Amy very much. But it gets in the way when she closes her eye. During the examination the doctor found a suspicious cyst or tumor on the muscle in her leg. He wants to get her well and resolve this problem and then we can take her back to the clinic and have that tumor removed. We will deal with that when she gets well.

Lacie checks out the growth on Amy's eye to see how it's doing.

Then she draws a blood sample.

Next Dr. James listens to her heart and lungs.

Dr. James finds a suspicious cyst or tumor on the muscle in her leg.

Lacie measures how big Amy is and gets her ready for x-rays.

X-rays showed that Amy does have a tumor which will need removed.

When Lacie took Tobi’s temperature, it read 105. She thought there was something wrong with the thermometer and she got another one. When she took his temperature again, it was 105 and that was very strange. The doctor couldn’t find anything wrong with him except for the fever. His blood work and x-rays were fine and the doctor even took a sonogram. The doctor said that he couldn’t find anything wrong with him, except for the fever. He sent him home with some Metronidazole and Carafate and some pills to stimulate his appetite. The doctor wants us to watch him and if he doesn’t seem to feel any better we should bring him back to the clinic. He ate last night and he ate this morning. It’s very strange that we can’t find anything wrong with him. His fever went down and he’s eating and taking his medicine. He seems to be doing fine. It was so strange. Even the doctor was scratching his head. His ears were fine and his eyes and teeth were fine. I thought it might have been an infection in his mouth, but it wasn’t.

Toby's turn to get a blood sample taken.

Dr. James examines Toby's ears which look fine.

Everything sounds good too. We will just have to keep an eye on him.

When George came back, Amy was ready to go into H2 and she took her cookies. Sometimes, if we take our dogs to the vet, they get scared and they are all better once they get back home.

After Amy arrives back to Straydog she gets herself a drink of fresh cool water.

And then tells us she wants to go in.

Amy finds the cookies left for her and quickly eats them up.

And then settles in on her soft bed for a nap.

I did it again. About two weeks, one of Morton Clinic’s clients brought a six-month-old Chihuahua to the clinic. She was really, really sick and she had parvo. A lot of people don’t have the money and they don’t want to deal with a dog that is going to die. The owners wanted to put her to sleep. Gordo and Lacie called me, because she was so sweet and asked if I wanted to help her. I said, “Why not? She’s just a baby. Let’s see if she makes it.” She had been at the clinic for two weeks and she is now all clear. She’s had her puppy shots and she’s not contagious. Because she’s had parvo, she won’t get parvo again. She’s all better, so I brought her back to Straydog. They didn’t name her at the clinic; they just called her the parvo puppy. She’s so terribly skinny, because she had been so sick. I hope to put some weight on her and find her a good home. She’s made it through parvo. I feel so badly for this baby and she’s lucky to be alive. If we didn’t step in and help her, she would have been put to sleep. We need to name her, but for now she’s the parvo puppy.

Puppy Parvo made it through the parvo and is lucky to be alive.

Tobi was so happy to be home. Blondie was kissing him. I went out there with some canned food and he took several bites of food from a fork. Then he ate at feeding time. I am telling you, sometimes we run into the weirdest things and there’s no explanation.

Blondie is so glad her kennel mate Toby is back from the clinic.

I brought Annie and Wup to the park. Wup is so handsome, but he’s rambunctious. Miss Annie’s face is going white. She’s getting old and she’s slowing down. We’ve tried to move her to a different spot and keep her closer to us. But she doesn’t want to be anywhere, but her kennel. Tyler built her a bigger shelter, so she could have a big doghouse. He installed a heating lamp for Annie for this winter. I was worried that Wup might mess with it, because he is so rambunctious. Tyler hid the cord and secured it, so Wup can’t mess with it. I hope that he leaves it alone, so he and Annie will be warm this winter. Wup hasn’t messed with it and I am crossing my fingers that they will have a heating lamp this winter.

Wup says Hi!

This is Annie walking around the park. She sure is getting up there in years and is slowing down. Her face is going white more and more each day.

The parvo baby needs a name. I’m sure we will name her today. Shelby and Wayne are here. We are working on a trifold Christmas mailing. Polly is coming to volunteer and we will have several people helping and working on this mailing. We will name this little girl.