Our Furry Friends



In January Neal came home from his deployment.  He unloaded his bags while I went into the house to let the dogs out.  I wish I had my camera ready for when Sadie saw Neal.  She had been really sick for about three weeks.  She rounded the corner after coming down the stairs and saw a man standing in the dark kitchen.  She slowed down as she kept her eyes on him.  Suddenly she recognized Neal and started swinging her short tail and running to him.  Five days later we made the hard choice to put her down.  Sadie was a very sweet dog.  I just couldn't bare stretching her illness out.  She had stopped eating days earlier.  When we took her to the vet they tried to get a stool sample, but couldn't because of her lack of food.  She had fluid in her chest (not lungs) and abdomen.  Her liver was enlarged.  The vet said it could be heart problems, but they couldn't find anything wrong with her heart.  When I told her if it was something deadly that we could only stretch out not heal that I wanted to put her down the vet opened up.  First let me say this...  If Sadie had something like high blood pressure, we would be willing to give her medicine for the rest of her life.  However, if it was something like cancer that treatment may only stretch out her life making it a painful, drugged up existence, we wouldn't proceed.  The vet said what I feared, liver cancer.  We said our goodbyes and tearfully left Sadie behind.  Once she was put down the vet did an autopsy (on her dime) and confirmed it was liver cancer.  She said we made the right choice.  She was such a faithful dog to turn our backs on her.  However, I think we did what was in her best interest.

When I would drop Kaitlyn Joy off at school Sadie liked to lay in her car seat.

On March 1st we adopted another dog.  He was the hairiest small dog they had, but it was all mats, dirt, and sticker burs.  Without so much as a bath, he was neutered the day before we adopted him.  Why did we get a male?  Neal mentioned a couple different times how he was outnumbered so I adopted a male dog.  Big mistake!  His temperament is SOOOOOOO different then Maggie's.  He likes to play fetch until your arm wants to fall off.  He's aggressive.  Ugh... this  one has almost gotten him evicted several times.  He has taken Barbies out of the toy box and chewed off their arms and legs.  Lovely.  Over all he seems to missing some brain cells.  I'm thinking his last owners must have smoked crack around him because he isn't quite right.

As soon as I brought him home I clipped all his hair short on his back and got the sticker burs out.  I debated leaving his hair like Maggie's, but decided against it.  Other then his long tail, I clip him like a Schnauzer.

Butterball Buddy T-"Rex" is a nut!  He bites at water hoses, the mower, the vacuum, and the clippers.  He hates having his hair cut.  Anyone want a dog? =)

MOPS and other updates

Kaitlyn loves going to MOPS (Mother's Of Preschoolers). As soon as we get into the chapel she wants to go straight to the one year old room. Because there are so many one year olds they now have them in two rooms. Today I took her to the main room and asked if they were full; they were. Kaitlyn started flipping out. I'm trying to walk her to the second room and she thinks we are leaving. She was pulling away from me trying to get into the room. I kept telling her she was going to get to play and that we were going into the next room. Nothing helped. I finally got her to the next room and put her in before signing her in. She took off. When I finally had her signed in and the name sticker for her back she was happy as a lark playing with stamps. I don't think she was doing much stamping as much as taking the bottom off and on. They were the same kind of ink stamps I had as a kid. She got to play with the paints a little bit. I came home with her hand prints on paper. Beyond Kaitlyn's thrill of playing with kids the meeting was great. I enjoy spending time with other Christian ladies. At the next meeting I will be in with the kids. I figured I better take my turn in there so when they said they were short I volunteered.

After a bout Monday of what looked like a rerun of the same sickness Kensey had before I called the vet and started giving him the meds I was sent home with last time. After a full 24 hours off meds I called the vet and cancelled his appointment that should have been today. He seems just fine.

Our move has been pushed back two to two and a half months. The new job Neal was going for he got accepted to do. The tech school for that job starts January 6th. We are trying to decided now how to hand us leaving being all jumbled into the holidays. We are nowhere near an answer yet, but were talking today about leaving between Christmas and New Years. Can you imagine being in a hotel over Christmas? It really wouldn't matter in the long run seeing how if we were here at the house we wouldn't have any Christmas decor because all our household goods would be gone or about to leave.

Just for giggles I thought I would share this picture with you. Kaitlyn thinks it's okay to sit in her doll strollers. Notice the bar sticking out by her thigh. There used to be fabric there, but her heavy booty is ripping it. I figured when it officially breaks I'll rip all the seams out and use it as a pattern to make another seat. Her TV watching from this perch didn't last much longer because the back wheel (as you can see) fell down into the couch.

Kaitlyn & Sadie Playing

Kaitlyn likes playing with Sadie; this is really a new thing. Kensey doesn't know how to handle the two of them roughhousing. He thinks Sadie's growling is aggression. Seeing how he feels Kaitlyn is a maggot that needs to be out of our lives, well, he doesn't need any other excuse to jump in and bite. We have to really watch Kensey while the girls play making sure he stays out of it.

"Ken-sey"

Kaitlyn learned a new word yesterday. After months of her calling everything with four legs and sometimes two (ex.a peacock) Sadie, she finally said Kensey yesterday. She has never been able to say K's so tackling this name was big for her. I got her to say it a couple weeks ago, but after two tries she was done. Yesterday she kept calling Kensey Sadie and I would correct her. Suddenly she said "Ken-sey". She played around with the word a little bit until she felt it was perfected.

Speaking of Kensey, he is doing really well. Or at least he isn't vomiting and pooping indoors anymore. I'm hoping yesterdays success wasn't just the product of all the shots he got. I still have three meds I'm squirting in his mouth or pills I'm having to put down his throat; I hate forcing pills down a dogs throat.

Yuck!

I woke up this morning to the smell of poop. Great. I went into Kaitlyn's room and asked her if she pooped. She hadn't. The house really stunk so I knew I was in for a nasty job, I just didn't know how nasty. I walked down stairs to find poo blown all over (in and out) the dogs pen. Both the dogs were having to sit in the middle of the nastiness. It was just gross. After taking the dogs out I knew for sure who the culprit was. Because Sadie is on a special prescription diet our dogs eat different foods. In the middle of the poop splashed pen was vomit. Kensey was really sick. Last week when we went to Germany our dogs were kenneled. The lady said on Monday she noticed blood in Kensey's stool so she took him to the vet. We have been giving him some kind of cream in a big syringe three times a day. The drug ran out yesterday or the day before. When we picked Kensey up the lady said he had intestinal problems. Well they are apparently worse. Neal tackled cleaning the pen while I washed the bedding, cleaned a toy of Kaitlyn's that was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and bathed the dogs. While bathing Kensey he kept trying to melt over. I called Neal in and said start with the guy who saw him last week and see if we can get him in today to be seen. Now $400 later we have a pile of meds, some dog food, and one drugged up dog quarantined in our kitchen. The vomiting has stopped, but that's only because he was given a shot to stop it. He is still pooping blood, but not like before; it's darker and not looking like a dripping cut. We were still not told what the problem is. I'm going to call our vet on Monday and see if they will look over everything we have been given. I think I will set up an appointment for the following week to have him seen too.

Needless to say we missed church today. About the time Neal made it home from the vet our church services would have been 3/4 over. Of course all our fun didn't stop there. I had to clean the kitchen floor while he was gone; poo and vomit everywhere just in the 15 or so minutes from his bath to leaving for the vet. The floor was still wet when he returned so I was holding Kensey wrapped in a towel while Neal ran for a spar kennel we keep in the garage. Kensey went poo (blood) on the carpet while we waited. =( I swear it seemed our morning would never end. We only ate breakfast because after all the cleaning the dogs were still outside. Thankfully Kensey is sleeping or seems to be right now.

Grrr... Kaitlyn's not sleeping. I need to go get her out of bed.

Kensey Spotlight

For all the dog lovers here's an old picture of Kensey. I haven't taken recent pictures of the dogs because they have been getting the full body shave. =( Actually I may have pictures of them mixed in with Kaitlyn's pictures; they wouldn't be of just them.

Kensey likes the camera, but he will not smile for it. I guess he has to look tough. I could be taking a picture of something cute Kaitlyn is doing and he will park himself right in the middle of the action and look at me just like the picture above.

Kensey isn't crazy about Kaitlyn. Actually I think he views her as a parasite that our lives must be free of. I guess my one hope is that he viewed Sadie the same one at one time and now they are always together.

Sadie

It's time for me to explain what is going on with Sadie. Right now she is at the vet being spayed. If they haven't already taken her back for the surgery they should be soon. Sadie has been sick all summer and the three vets we have taken her to do not understand what is wrong. She has been on some kind of medication for almost the whole two months since we first took her to the vet. I'm honestly tired of shoving pills down her throat and I know she is too. Thankfully we have gone from three times a day to twice a day. He putting a pill down a dogs throat one less pill really does make a difference.

It all started with what appeared to be a UTI, but I really wasn't convinced that was really the problem. The British vet gave us pills for a UTI and sent us home. At the end of the 10 days she only seemed a little better. Within a week or two the frequent urination and blood returned. We took Sadie to the vet on base who again assumed Sadie had a bad UTI. She said it may have returned. I really wasn't sold on her diagnoses, but agreed to give Sadie the pills and return in a week. A week later everything was the same except she started to drip bloody urine for a couple minutes after going pee. At this point both American vets got together and talked about what the problem may be. They agreed with her being 5 and having never had a litter of pups that her uterus was at a high risk for an infection which could be the problem. So instead of staying on the mile long list to have her spayed we were moved to the front of the list for an "emergency" spay. They were so booked we still had to wait almost two weeks to have it done.

I know it was a different situation, but my mom took a dog in to have her spayed and she died so I'm a bit nervous. With mom's dog she was having a c-section that should have had a spay follow, but she didn't even make it to that. I keep picturing Wendy when the doctor knocked her out and she was like a little rag doll in his arms. Sadie would be a big rag doll, but knocked out just the same. I really hope this is what her problem was. She has been sick long enough. I just want to be done with the frequent urination and blood. I'm sure she wants to be done with the pain.