First week of new ownership

Originally written November 16, 2010

I was really concerned about how this was going to affect Sidney. He's been an only dog for so long and never learned how to play with other dogs.

He's interested in them but the minute they show interest in him he comes running to me to make it all better. I don't. I never have.

For some reason I didn't get my puppy until she was 9 weeks old. I would have preferred her to be between 7 and 8 weeks old as that is the best time for them to bond. But that didn't happen and she has worked out. Sort of.

As soon as Sidney met her he was not impressed. She cried a little on the ride home but settled down pretty quickly. I was concerned when I first picked near up as she didn't seem to recognize me as Sidney had 8 years earlier. He met me at 4 weeks old and definitely knew who I was when I returned to take him home.

As it turns out, the first week she was home, the hubby was going out of town. He only got to spend 5 days with her before he left.

Now, this trip has been on the books for 11 months and 3 weeks. I was going to be by myself at home. I had booked some time off in order to get the things done I had planned. Painting, cleaning up, installing shelves, the backyard, etc. That didn't happen as I did not take into consideration a 3.5 pound bundle of energy.

By the time hubby was gone two hours I was rethinking this whole puppy thing. She was into everything! ! !

She found things I didn't know we had any more. I expected her to drag out Jimmy Hoffa's well preserved corpse ! ! She found an expensive camera battery that hubby misplaced in May! It was even in the spot where we had looked numerous times.

She has become sort of bonded to me but I am glad to see that she is very excited when hubby comes home. I love Sidney to bits, but he is stuck to my butt ALL the time. When I move from in front of the tv to the computer, a distance of ten feet, he will get up and follow me. Right now he's sitting by my foot.

Hard to Believe

Its hard to believe that its been two weeks since her surgery. Emma gets her stitches out tomorrow. She has not slowed down one little bit except for about an hour, two days after surgery. That's when, one of the times she was flying all over the house and jumping over everything that she finally paused half way through getting off a chair. She just stopped in mid leap. You could almost hear her say "oh, yeah, I had surgery."

Her and Sidney have sort of been getting along. Every evening though she gets a burst of energy and wants to play with him. Her idea of playing is to grab his: ear, cheek, tail or whatever and pull. He of course does not like that, and so it starts.

He barks at her as if to say 'leave me ALONE!' She hears 'oh goody, that was fun. Do it again." and they're off. Up and down the hallway. Hubby is usually in the middle of this somewhere. When he goes down to bed, they follow him because each night they get a 'toothbrush' (piece of Denta-Stix).  They do their tricks: sit, down and rollover and then get to eat their toothbrush.

Sidney is perfectly happy to go to bed too or come upstairs with me and sleep. Emma, on the other hand, has just had, what to her seems like, her '5-hour-boost'! Off she goes, so Hubby starts to play with her. Now Sidney always used to be the one to do this and Hubby tries to keep him involved, but Emma is such a competitor. They each have a toy to chase. Or at least it starts out that way. Emma will fetch her and then while Sidney is on his way back with his toy, she sees him and HAS to have it.

She grabs it and while Sidney would like to play tug of war with the toy, she

MUST HAVE THE TOY!

Now Sid holds on pretty tight but what Emma does is bite the toy close to where he has it and then gradually work her way up until she is close enough to him that the next grab will be his nose. Sidney, being rather fond of his nose, will let go, at which point Emma no longer wants the toy. She doesn't want the toy, but she doesn't want Sidney to have it either.

Sid will grab another toy and same story again. Sid so wants to be in on the playing but she makes it difficult. We have to hold Emma sometimes just so he can get a few rounds of fetch by himself.
He used to like to lay down in the evening with his mouth over his tiger's nose, but Emma will have none of that. Its okay for her to 'kill' her bear, but Sid can't 'kill' the tiger. The vet told me once that the 'killing' the toy was his way of showing that at least he wasn't on the bottom of the totem pole. There was someone, or something below him. Now he just doesn't even bring us a toy when he wants attention.

I know you're not supposed to put your feelings onto the dog, but he does seemed different now. He looks at us sometimes like "I used to be the centre of attention.What did I do?" I make sure to take him out at least every other day by himself in the car. Hubby will keep Emma at home and Sid comes with me to do errands. Doesn't have to be anything spectacular, as long as he has his alone time. He can wander around looking at trees, or grass, or whatever with out something black stuck to the side of his head.

HOO RAY for Emma

First, Sidney's eye is great. He is off medication and back to, more or less, his old self. By that I mean, don't let him know that we have seen him, but he is actually starting to play with her.
A little. They will play tug of war with this one teddy they both like. And I have actually seen him chase her with when she has a toy ! ! ! ! And his body language is better.

* * * * *

Emma is fine. She had a day or two last weekend where she was being her old crazy self and then would suddenly stop. You could just hear her saying "oooowwwww, don't think I'll do THAT again anytime soon"

She is supposed to not have any vigorous exercise. So, short of strapping her to a skate board to get her anywhere, we have tried and basically failed at keeping her quiet. But, after seeing her cringe a few times, I have to figure she knows what she can do. The incision is healing very well and stitches come out next Thursday.

Right now, it is 6:39 AM and she is tearing up and down the hallway, beating up on Sid.

Hubby told me, that she was so excited when she first came home. You what made her so????

Her toys?? She must have suffered withdrawal at the vets office. She went to several and just couldn't decide what to play with first! ! !

She was like a kid in a candy store.

Oh, and she has learned to 'roll over'.

Hooray ! ! ! ! ! !

We decided to have Emma spayed and take the chance that she might not make it. We were going to have to find out at some time and I didn't want to face complications from her not being spayed.

Anyway, it was going to be a question of whether she would make it or not. I dropped her off at 8:45 and had paper work to do. Then I had some time to kill because they don't start doing surgery until around 11.

They were thinking of doing Emma first so they had all day to watch her. I had some errands to do, so I told them I would be home by noon.

I was only in the door for about 15 minutes when they called to say she was sitting up and they were keeping fluids running until they were sure all the anesthetic was gone. She appeared to be fine.

Boy, for being such a pain in the arse for a few months I sure would have missed that little dog. It was SO QUIET around here tonight. Nobody shoving a dog, rabbit, frisbee, carrot, snake, bear, slipper, bear, tiger, bone, lion, bear, squeaky ball, tennis ball, knitted ball, bear, alligator, shark, bone, water bottle, ball of yarn, slipper, or turtle in your lap for hours on end. No one lying under your feet when you're trying to sit in the chair. No one beating up on poor Sidney. No one hanging around thinking that if she's cute enough you'll give her something from your plate.

Can't wait to see her tomorrow.

Well, it wasn't 'the day' after all.

Took Emma in, again, and again her blood count was off. They wanted to do a special test called a blood bile test. She had to be without food for 12 hours, then they fed her and tested her blood two hours after that. The results came in a day later and they were four times normal.

FOUR times!!!!!!

So, the vet wanted to have a specialist analyze the results. I got the call Saturday that they think she could have something called a shunt. That is where a vein for the liver is either just passing right through the liver or is going around it. Either way they don't work properly.

That means, that her liver is not flushing her blood clean fast enough. Therefore if she was to go under anesthesia she may take a long time coming out of it or maybe not come out at all.

The good thing is that if her ammonia build up was bad, she would be having seizures, which she isn't, thank heaven.

I did some research on the net but you have to take a lot of that with a grain of salt. Luckily I did find some stuff from veterinary universities.

I made an appointment to talk to the vet that owns the clinic. She is the one we used to see when we first moved here and got a dog. She talks to me like I may know what she's talking about. Not to say that the others don't, but I have known her the longest and I wanted to just have a one on one.

That was Monday, two days ago.

We are looking at THOUSANDS to find out what is wrong and we just don't have that. After careful thought and discussion we have decided to spay her anyway and just take our chances that she will be okay. I can't really leave her whole as there are too many things that can go wrong later in life. I think I would rather find out now if there is a danger to her health than to find out later and she has maybe developed other health issues.

Now 'the day' is tomorrow, Thursday April 14, 2011. She will be 5 days shy of 8 months old.

* * * * *

Yesterday was the first day that I left the dogs at home, alone, loose. I usually left Sid out and had her in the crate. Then because the weather is still cool and not much sun I have started to take them to work with me.

Now before you freak on me for leaving the dogs in the car for two hours, it is no longer than if I go shopping and have them with me. The good thing about taking them to work is that Emma is NOT in a crate, Sidney is relaxed, they are both getting fresh air, and rather than being home alone for over 5 hours, they see me before work, two hours later on my break and they two hours after that when we go home.

Also, a lot of my customers check on the dogs (they know my car) and the staff does as well. I do NOT bring them if it is going to be a sunny day and no wind!!

Not a breeze. It must be a windy day if the sun is out. And even then only in the very early spring and the late fall.


I wasn't sure what I would find when I got home, but the hubby was there first. He said they were both lying in the chair when he opened the door. That tells me that Emma was a little nervous about the fact that she was at home 'alone'. Usually as soon as she hears the key in the lock she is at the front door waiting for him to come in. But still sitting in the chair?? I know she had started to look for me and then stuck close to Sid the rest of the time for protection.

Today may be 'the day'

Even though this is posted today, it was actually going to be entered last Thursday., March 31, 2011.

* * * * *

This will be the third time I have tried to get Emma spayed. The first time was Feb. 24. The vet suggested that it would be a good idea to have a blood test done so they can have a 'normal' record of her blood counts for future reference.

Okay, sounds good to me. So I had dropped her off at 8:00 am, and figured that I may as well take Sidney to the big dog park up there. I also had a few errands to do. I was out until around 2:00 in the afternoon. Sidney enjoyed his 'just him and me' day.

I had been told to call about Emma after 4 pm. So I did and they said "oh, we've been trying to reach you all day."

I explain where I had been, and then she says "hold on, I'll get the vet."


This did not sound good. Turns out Emma's liver blood counts were high. The vet said it indicated her having gotten into something toxic. I asked her what she meant by that and she told me it could be something as little as a plant leaf.

So they suggested we wait two weeks and try again. It is probably that she is just getting done fighting whatever it was.

It is now March 10th and we show up again, at the vet's. Blood test and it is not as low as it should be. They suggest some pills or an ultrasound. The pills are less so we opt for that first. Maybe that is all it will take.

March 31st. She had fifteen once a day pills so we opted to give her the extra week. I take her in to be tested and spayed and turns out I am one week early. It is next Thursday. I'm there anyway, can we get her blood tested again? Sure.

Well the one count has gone done but the other has gone up!! They suggest another blood type of test that is sent out to a specialist. She says they should know something by the beginning of the week.

Saturday April 2nd. I get a phone call from the vet. They have the results already and the specialist has suggested something called a bile liver test. Another $100.00

So, we have to starve her overnight and she has to stay there for four hours. They do a test, then feed her, wait and then test again.

So, I am now going to call the vet and make arrangements for her to go in tomorrow.
................

Its a GO.