Vet Vist, Part Trois
I spent $305 today to hear that by most accounts, Yara is quite healthy. Aside from an ear infection whose origin I’m unclear on and the fact she’s lost another three pounds, that is. Yup, another three pounds.
The vet and I agree this is not a good sign, and coupled with the fact Yara’s a veritable poop factory, we decided to run some blood work. The flip side of this is that we’re both quite sure nothing is going to come of this blood work since Yara has no real symptoms other than loosing excessive weight.¹ But I agreed to a full chem panel and a thyroid test anyway since one can never foresee what might come up that we might not expect. She’s also to have a GI panel done sometime soon when I can safely fast Yara for 12 hours.²
If all these tests come up negative, the next step is to biopsy Yara’s liver and intestine and colon which would require her to come in on a Thursday and be put under. That also means she won’t be able to work for a few days due to the anesthesia. You can imagine how thrilled this prospect is for me.
The best part about today is that I got paid, but between this vet visit and purchasing a new PC I have $0 until next payday. [:: sigh ::] Oh, and did I mention that Dolly went to the vet last week and she’s now on Synthroid because she’s got hypothyroid?
1. At this point she’s lost nearly twenty pounds in a year.
2. Read: “Have a day I’m not doing anything since I’ll be somewhat unable to work Yara.”
Working Girl . . . Again
My father started a new job yesterday at a nursing home and during orientation saw a Pekinese run past. This wasn’t too much of a jolt to him given the many nursing homes that regular take in rescues or have therapy animals paraded through their doors, but he inquired about the pooch and it turns out said pup accompanies his master daily to work at the home. Without really thinking, my dad blurted out that he is the happy owner of a retired guide dog, whom he is a bit concerned about leaving at home for such long periods as she’s getting on in years and may need to relieve more often and probably should be a bit less of a couch potato. No sooner had the words left his mouth than everyone from administration on down was expecting him to bring her along with him today.
He talked with me about it over the phone last night and in the end he decided it was worth trying out . . . and she’s an instant hit there. Dad reports that she schmoozed everyone for attention and food and that everybody has fallen in love with her. He’s still not 100% sure if he’ll bring her continuously; the floors there are very slippery for her and she’s certainly not going to loose weight with every staff person and patient feeding her treats all day long.
Either way I think it’s just brilliant. ;-)
Happy Birthday, Dolly!
Today my fat, black lab of a retired guide dog turns twelve! During our working years, I’d normally treat her to a bowl of vanilla ice cream. These days, Dad’s taken over that tradition, so instead I sent her this. :)
Dolly Sitting
My dad comes back from Amsterdam sometime today and he’ll be picking Dolly up on his way home. This last week’s been fun, but I can’t say I’ll be sorry to see her go; if only because I could use a good night’s sleep free of sound-barrier-breaking snoring. I think Yara was pretty stressed out having her here, too, which I feel very bad about.
But, as you can see above, they do get along well enough. Yara finally got over her need to take every toy from Dolly and I found them both many times contentedly chewing bones next to each other. The bed sharing thing is really cute. Most of the time they go to bed on separate beds (usually the other dog’s bed) and at some point during the night one of them squishes her way onto a different bed. This past night was the first time I caught them both in Yara’s bed.
I’d figured the biggest problems we’d have would be feeding and walking. Meal times seemed to get increasingly annoying as Dolly started working up more courage around Yara. She’d continually sneak into the kitchen, though thankfully she never tried to steal Yara’s food. I was surprised that Yara didn’t growl at her one time this whole week, especially when Dolly was stalking her dinner. Instead, walks were the biggest pain. Both dogs ALWAYS wanted to go out whenever I’d pick up a leash. Even if she’d been out already to relieve. Yara was exceptionally annoying with her bouncing around and stuff. I’ve been taking her out second each time because of just this, hoping that she’ll calm down by the time she gets to go out. I don’t think she’s really gotten the clue as it generally takes us ten minutes to get out the door when I come back because I have to keep working with her to not drag me out the door when I open it.
One morning, I didn’t leave the door properly closed when I took Dolly out and Yara squished her way through it. I didn’t even realize, until I subconsciously cued into the fact that there were a lot of extra footsteps. Yara was heeling completely in step between Dolly and us. When I stopped, she ran off ahead of us and parked her rear at the elevator. She’s really such a character sometimes.
Double Dog Duty
Today is my father’s 50th birthday and to celebrate he’s taken a trip to Amsterdam. Which means that I’m left dog-sitting for Dolly. This is actually the second time I’ve watched her since retiring her, but this time is a bit more complicated given that I now have Yara. And while both dogs have gotten on reasonably well, there are still a few logistics that I was a bit wary of. The least of which being how I would walk two rather large dogs.
Yesterday was a test in my own patience and sanity. Both dogs were pretty wild at first — feeding off one another’s excitement and stress. And once they calmed down, they didn’t really seem too happy about the living arrangements. For the most part they’re getting along fine enough. Yara took possession of the loan toy that Dolly had with her, carrying it around wherever she went. Dolly took this in stride and soon worked up the courage to really explore the apartment and easily found a toy of Yara’s to take for herself. She played with it for a good ten minutes before deciding that chewing it to bits while Yara looked on would be way more fun. Not soon after that she found Yara’s stockpile of bones and busied herself with sneakily trying to take each of them. She made a big pile on Yara’s bed and then tried to chew ALL of them at once! Yara seemed to think this was unacceptable, but just looked on helplessly. So, I took a bone each and filled them with treats and gave each girl one . . . two hours later I took this photo:
The only real fiasco we’ve had has been trying to get walks in. Neither dog wants to be left in the apartment while the other goes out and Yara especially is not doing well with this. She got so worked up the first time I clipped a leash on Dolly that she had an accident right there on the spot, which freaked her out even more I think.¹ And when I finally did take her out, she stood around like she didn’t quite understand the concept of relieving herself. Not to mention, the elevator was broken for most of yesterday — I truly thought Dolly was going to die of a heart attack from having to walk up and down the four flights of stairs. When we’d come back inside and were walking back up, she quite insistently wanted to go through the second floor door. I’m not sure if that was merely because the doors all look the same or she really didn’t want to walk up the rest of the stairs. Either way she was breathing quite heavy when we got back to my apartment!
Oh, well. Hopefully the weather clears up and I can take them both to the park or something.
1. Other than being sick a few times, she’s never had an accident in the house before.