Frozen

Actually, Peeper and I did go see the movie Frozen last night, as a little something special to make up for Shrike getting called in to work at the very last minute. She loved it, and thanks to a friend who unexpectedly hooked us up with a copy, she's watched it another time or two today.

But we're also pretty frozen today. It's around (below?) 20 degrees out there, with snow falling all day and several inches of accumulation. Peeper was already scheduled to be off school, for a teacher inservice, but all the other schools in the area, including the college where I work, were off too.

Peeper does love her snow. I think she went out in it about four or five times; I made her go by herself at 8 am, when the ground was barely covered, because I knew I had another trip or two ahead of me later in the day. As it turned out, I think I went with her twice and Shrike twice.

She wanted so badly to build a snowman. Light, fluffy, dry, 20'F snow is great when you have to shovel and clear off the car, but not so much for snowmen.

After we came in, I heard her in the bedroom where Shrike was sleeping. She said something to her about drying off PerfectPup, and went and got a towel from the linen closet. Then another. And another.

I went in to see what was going on, and found Shrike still asleep, and poor PerfectPup like this.

That pink thing beside her is Peeper toy blow dryer. Running.

This is what she left behind when she finally got fed up and walked off. I guess Peeper was right that she needed to be cleaned up.

Galoot on the other hand, was just keeping Mommy nice and warm.

A few more trips out in the snow, including helping Mommy shovel, and an attempt to fix up her snowman, and then we had a perfect snowy weather dinner - hot soup and hot-ish chocolate.

Peeper declared this "the bestest soup ever!" (Campbell's chicken noodle.)

Looks like she could use it.

"Help Me!"

What's a little dog butt on your head, between friends?

My Three Favorite Girls

(That pile of fluff on the ground is PerfectPup.)

Skunk!

We were all out in the backyard this afternoon when I looked at Shrike, who was on the far side, near the fence, and spotted a skunk about three feet behind her, just bopping along, pretty as you please. I said, "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!" trying to get her attention without saying what it was, I suppose so I didn't clue the dogs in on it or something. Then I realized that was stupid and just yelled. "SKUUUNK!"

Maybe my dog thing wasn't so stupid, because as soon as I said it, Galoot came running over, grabbed it up and started shaking. I didn't want Peeper to get sprayed or to watch him kill it, so I swooped her up and ran inside, and Shrike was right behind us.

The dogs and skunk all ended up in some bushes where we couldn't see what was happening, but we heard two separate yelp/whines, and knew exactly what that meant.

The skunk was actually pretty small, probably an adolescent I suppose, so I think maybe he didn't have all his stink yet, because it turned out to be not nearly as bad as we'd feared. Shrike found the bottle of skunk destink spray that she bought the first time this happened and that took care of it.

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Update on Galoot

Yesterday, Galoot when back to the vet for a follow-up on the tumor in his mouth that was discovered when he was having his nose biopsied last month. 

First, it seems I was mis-remembering what the vet told me after that, and it was on his lower jaw, not his upper jaw.

When she looked at it yesterday, she saw that it had already regrown quite a bit, and according to the x-ray, it was beginning to invade his jawbone, so she removed the big molar that it was near plus the teeth on either side of that one, and a segment of his mandible underneath those teeth. 

When she said before that she might have to remove some of the bone, I had envisioned shaving off a bit at the top, but no, she removed the bone in that area. The whole thing. You can't tell anything looking at the outside, except that his mouth is swollen on that side, and you can see where the teeth are missing. The vet says that it will take him some time to get used to it feeling weird, but he should be pretty much back to normal in a couple of weeks. 

In the meantime, he's doing pretty well, all things considered, but moving a little slow, and pretty well-medicated. He's got a fentanyl transdermal patch until Monday, oral painkillers three times a day and two different antibiotics (twice a day and once a day).

She said that given how much she took, she's very optimistic about having gotten all of the tumor, and this is not a kind of tumor that metastasizes, so assuming we hear back from the path report that the margins from this surgery are clear, then he'll be cancer-free and good to go.    

After a false alarm about him being ready to come home yesterday, Peeper was very, very glad to see him today and get him back home where he belongs. 

This is the best I could do trying to get a photo of his face. The surgery was on the right side, but you really can't seen anything here. Not that there's much to see. You can, however, see the lesions on his nose.

Puppy Problems

It seems that BigGaloot is having some health concerns.

A couple of weeks ago Shrike was being "overly protective and paranoid" (I thought) and took him to the vet to see why his nose looks chapped all the time.

The tentative diagnosis was discoid lupus or "collie nose" which is, as you would assume, an autoimmude disease, but it only affects the skin. He had it biopsied last week, and the vet called today with the path report.

It is discoid lupus, which should be controlled with topic anti-inflammatory and sunscreen. He might need antibiotics and steriods from time to time if it flares up, but other than that, it shouldn't be a big deal.

A bigger deal, though is that during the surgery for the nose, she found a "mass" in his mouth, near his upper gum, way in the back, I believe. She biopsied it but told us that she expected it to be something with big words that's benign.

Turns out it's, same big words somethingelse-blastoma, which is not so benign.

But although it is invasive - it spreads locally - it is not metastatic - it doesn't spread to other parts of the body, which is much better news than it night have been.

Given our options, we're thinking the smart thing is to get xrays (under anesthesia) and see if it's spread into the bone, in which case a bit of the maxilla (upper jawbone) will need to be removed.

I don't know if we can knock him out, xray, then while he's still under, go ahead and cut out what needs to come out or if it will necessarily be separate procedures.The path report says she didn't get it all with the biopsy, so seems to me something needs to come out, even if it's just soft tissue, or we will just be waiting for it to go into the bone and then remove it, which seems dumb. We're hoping we can just do it all at once, for his sake and the sake of our bank account.

If we did nothing, it would erode the maxilla, he'd lose teeth, be susceptible to infections, I would assume it would be painful eventually. She didn't have a timeline on that, because she's always done the surgery, and she says that they do very well afterwards; you can't tell by looking at them, she's got one who's now chomping on milkbones, etc.

He goes back next week to have the stitches removed from his nose, and we'll discuss it all with her in more detail then.

I'll update when we know more.

Visiting with Aunt Frappa

Before Shrike hit town this evening, Peeper and I dropped Anonymama off to get her hair "did," ran to Target, had breakfast at Starbucks, picked up some dry cleaning, hit the grocery store, visited Grandma's beauty shop ladies then took her back home, changed Peeper's clothes that she'd dumped water on, and visited with Aunt Frappa. 

Whew!

Peeper made pizza for everyone. 

And then we played with the kitty that Frappa's been fostering and who will probably be going to live with the Anonyparents soon.

They have found themselves, over the course of just a few months, unexpectedly catless. They were really in the market for a kitty yet, but this sweet boy showed up, so I think that's where he's headed as soon as the holidays are over.

(video coming soon)

Graduate Dog

A couple of months ago, we were having some issues with Peeper and BigGaloot not properly respecting each others' personal space. She was getting in his face, and he was warning her, in ways that would be appropriate for another dog, but not so much for a little girl.

It was freaking us out, so we actually took her with us to the vet's office to pick up doggy meds one day, and had one of their staff members talk to her about how to behave around doggies, and also asked their advice about what to do.

They suggested getting him some training, involving Peeper if possible, to help him to realize that he's not the Alpha around here, and that she has a higher status in the pack than he does.

We ended up going with the PetsMart beginner class, which he's actually taken before, and Peeper ended up not actually attending, but we did show her some of what he'd learned (Every week when he and Shrike came home from class, she'd say "Hi Galoot! What did you learn?!") and let her work on giving him some commands. Things have been much smoother between the two of them, knock wood.

Today was his graduation, so Peeper and I went up to the store at the end of class to cheer him on.

When he put his hat on, Peeper kept saying "Hey, graduate dog!"

(That's grad-u-ATE, with a long A, as in the verb.)

Morning Snuggle

Peeper was hosting a picnic breakfast in the sun room, which is not connected to the central air and heating system, so I went looking for my sweatshirt. I thought I could just sneak into the bedroom, where Shrike was sleeping, grab the shirt and get out.

Evidently, I opened the flood gates.

(It was dark, so I never did get exactly the shot I was going for, but you get the idea.)

Oh, and I never did find the sweatshirt. Well, that's not true. I found it several hours later. On the couch in the living room.

Catless

Well, it's done.

It went about as well as we could have dared to hope. Very peaceful, with all three of us petting him.

Peeper is doing well. We've had many, many conversations about it since Friday, and many tears (from all of us), but when the time came, she was the most composed one in the room, I think (vet and tech, included).

I don't know where kitties go when they go, but we've decided that we want to believe that he's playing bop-on-the-head with MamaCat right now, and has probably already tried to hump GirlCat, and been humped by BigBrotherCat, who went long before the others.

Rest in Peace, Ringeaux. We love you.
March 28, 1997 - January 23, 2012

Quality Time

We're trying to do as much of this as possible right now.

Cat Girl

While we were at the vet's office this morning, the tech who was treating BoyCat gave Peeper this cool shirt. (The clinic's name and contact info are on the back.)

It's the smallest size that the7 had, and is just a weeeee bit big on her, but she doesn't mind at all.

We told her it can be her "kitty costume," and she wore it all afternoon, as she ran around the church gym while I  helped set up for the MOMS Club yard sale.

When we got home, she took it off and put it right into her "dress up bin."

As you can see, she loves it.

Considering the circumstances surrounding how we acquired it, I hope I can manage to not hate it.

Boy Cat

I might have mentioned to some of you that when BoyCat had his check-up a few months ago, he'd lost some weight, and we made a plan to take him back this month to have it checked. When I got the reminder about that around the first of the year, my reaction was "Oh yeah, I guess we need to do that. I wonder if he's lost any more? He looks about the same, and is doing fine."

Then, when I got home from Texas, it was obvious that he'd lost weight, and it really seemed to have been precipitous, not just a matter of being away from him for a while, and he suddenly looked much thinner, and just "not right." Sick and old. We realized that he hadn't been eating much over the past few days, either.

We took him in to the vet today, and found that he's lost more than 3 pounds in the past three months and is dehydrated and anemic, and his lab work confirmed that he is in end-stage kidney failure. 

The vet said the other big possibilities were hyperthyroidism or diabetes, which are manageable, although his symptoms did point toward the kidneys. We weren't thrilled about spending money on testing that we didn't really expect to lead us to a treatment plan, but it did help us to confirm what we are dealing with, and what we need to do. 

After considering all our options - from doing absolutely nothing and letting nature take its course, which would probably mean a very painful and unpleasant couple of weeks (at the most) for him, to hospitalizing him repeatedly for IV fluids, giving medications for pain and nausea and putting him on a special diet, and paying a ton of money for treatments which if he responded very, very well, might buy him, at most, a few months, but more likely a few weeks - we decided to have them give him subcutaneous fluids and injections of antibiotics and anti-nausea medication today, and have brought him home to spend the weekend giving him lots of cuddles and pets as well as some special food, if he's willing to eat it, and some more antibiotics and anti-nausea meds to make him more comfortable, and saying goodbye. 

I plan to call them back in the morning and make an appointment to take him in on Monday, to put him down. 

When I asked the vet what she would do if it were her cat, she said that she would probably have done it today or sooner, based on his kidney functions, but that with rehydration and some relief for his (assumed) nausea, he shouldn't be suffering much over the next couple of days, other than feeling generally tired and sick. 

To be honest, I don't know that we're doing him any favors by keeping him going for a few more days, but we had to balance his needs with Peeper's, and we really thought she needed some time to prepare. 

I talked to her about it this evening. She went with us today, so she knew something was up, but of course she was not privy to the nitty-gritty discussion (for part of that I was alone with the vet while she and Kris hung out in the waiting room, and then Shrike and I talked to the vet together while one of the techs took her in the back to visit with (and feed treats to) some of the animals who live there). 

I explained that we took him to the vet because he didn't feel good, and that the vet said that he's a very old kitty and he's  very sick and his body is about worn out and is going to stop working in a few days. I've told her that the vet says it will probably stop working on Monday (at least she's young enough to buy that we can predict such things, without having to let on that we're deciding when it will happen) and that we will take him back so the vet can give him some medicine, so he doesn't hurt any more, and then it will be time that his body will stop working. 

We also talked about how we are all sad about it, and we will be sad, but it's okay to be sad and to talk about it, and we can all be sad together. 

And we are.

"Does Dogs Wike Yogut?"

(They does.)

Dog Wash Day

The vet tech club at our local college holds a big dog wash in the Spring and Fall, so we took our pups over there today to get all spiffied-up.

Last time we tried this (pre-Peep), PerfectPup freaked out and we gave up and brought her home, but there wasn't a big crowd this time, so she did fine (although she did have to be dragged into the building for the actual washing).

Of course, Peeper wanted to go along, so we made it a family affair.

While we waited, she found plenty of ways to entertain herself.

First, she played with Mommy.

Then she "clime up da twee and get some honey. Here go. Here some honey fuh you, Mama. Honey fuh you, Mommy!"

Then she "painted: this brick wall with a dandelion.

And then she pooped, and I didn't have the diaper bag with us (She never poops until after her bath!) so she and I came on home in one car, while Shrike waited for the pups and brought them home a little while later.

And they were definitely spiffy! And festive!

Yes, This Again

We're trying to make it a Sunday Thing: Dinner on the grill and then take a walk and get some ice cream.