May 2002 Archives

I am happy to report that Jake is home now and apparently feeling MUCH better :D ! He will be on oral medication for a week, and we will will transition him from a bland diet to his normal food over the course of the next several days.

Missy got her rabies vaccination this morning, so now I can renew her Chicago dog license. This year they changed how the dates work. It used to be that a dog license was valid from May 1-April 30 across the board; now it is valid for one year starting from the date of that particular dog's rabies vaccination.

Details on Jake's medication and diet, and some more thoughts about small animal vaccinations in general are in MORE...

Jake had his ultrasound this afternoon and there are no signs of any cancerous activity (or other bad things) in his intestines, liver or pancreas! What a HUGE relief that is!!

Thanks so much to all of you who stopped by and took time to leave us an encouraging comment and your good thoughts... we appreciate it so much.

Just when I thought everyone was going to stay relatively healthy for a while :( .

Jake is at the vet right now with what started out as a mild case of diarrhea and seemingly out of nowhere, turned into much more severe diarrhea accompanied by vomiting. I don't think it's a major crisis yet but he's certainly sicker than we thought he was a couple of days ago.

Thanks to all who left me comments on the pet info boxes! :)

I've updated the dog and cat boxes with photos (like this one of Heidi) and will have the bird photos on there in a couple of days.

UPDATE 5/28/02: Photos for Charlie and Spot have been added!

Last month we added popup pet info boxes to this blog.

So what do you think (mouseover the highlighted phrases to see)... with a photo...

...or the way it was originally?

I'm thinking the photos might add too much overhead for the folks on dialup. If you have a moment, leave me a comment or tag me and let me know what you think!

Aaackkk... I really didn't want to do a three-column layout but I had to in order to fit in some new... I'm calling them "featurettes" because they're not really major enough to be actual features :lol: !

Look over by there to the left... you can now view fragments of the most recent comments to my blog... thank you once again, Scriptygoddesses!!

And still over by there to the left... like many others, I've added a tagboard... this is a PHP tagboard residing on my own server though... this code is courtesy of Dan Reedy... visit his site at dan-reedy.com!

Looks like just about everyone is doing a "100 Things About Me" list...

This is pet-related and tech related, I guess!

If I'd known my pets were all going to make it to a ripe old age but with a number of health and training issues along the way, I would have probably kept better notes. ;) That's one of the reasons I started this blog and its accompanying offline archives. I'm also trying to do a better job of organizing the paper copies of records like the itemized vet bills (and hospital and doctor notes, from some of my wonderful vets who provide those) as well as the legal stuff... dog license paperwork and immunization records.

That's all well and good but it is not too portable. There have been quite a few times when I wished I had more information with me: for example, when visiting a specialist for the first time; or when starting a new training class or going back to an activity after a hiatus. Something I can keep on my Palm IIIc PDA, which I always have with me (yup, I'm one of those people :) ). And you know I've had it for quite a while too since I don't have one of the spiffy new m-models!

I know I could probably keep track of much of this stuff with the wonderful DateBk4 which I have already been using for quite a while. But I still want something a bit more pet-specific, so in MORE... you will see some of the PDA programs I plan to try out over the next few weeks. I'll report back here, of course!

It sure was a busy week. It's a good thing we had no pet health issues to deal with, much less to blog about!

Just wanted to once again quickly plug the 2002 LV/DVG National Championship being sponsored by my DVG club Madison Area Working Dog Association.

And I, too, have been sucked into yet another vortex... The Quilting Bee "thanks" to Cyn... here's my quilt page. UPDATE 5/12/02: A little bit about my quilt square is under MORE...

We'll be back to our regularly scheduled program shortly :) !

UPDATE 8/21/03: My Quilting Bee account was deleted due to inactivity and my two attempts to be reinstated were not replied to. I honestly don't care enough to pursue it further that that, so I've deleted all Quilting Bee references from my main page.

Here are some more thoughts on temperament testing and animal assisted therapy, spinning off from the May 1 entry and comments.

Shelley mentioned feline temperament testing... although the canine temperament testing that I mentioned is often done in conjunction with dog shows or trials, I have not really found any feline temperament testing except that which the Delta Society does to evaluate animals for their suitability for animal assisted therapy work. Although the skills and aptitude tests given by Delta are based on one that was developed for dogs, Delta has alternate tests to be given so that they may also test and certify cats (and other species, too: there have been guinea pigs, rabbits, horses, goats, llamas, donkeys, potbellied pigs and birds certified as therapy animals).

If you are interested in more about Delta's Pet Partners Program and the skills test or aptitude test (this part is more like a temperament test) you can find out more at the Delta Society website.

Anne commented about her friend who visits an area nursing home with her poodle, and wondered if any of my dogs could be therapy dogs. As a matter of fact, one of them is a registered working therapy dog :) . Heidi has been on hiatus partly due to her anterior cruciate repair surgery in January of this year, and partly due to the other pets' health issues and my own work schedule. We are ready to resume our visits to one or two group homes sometime this month.

This might get a bit lengthy so we will finish up under MORE... Go there if you would like to know more about Heidi's job!

I thought I'd use this entry to answer a couple of questions that Shelley left in the comments :)

What does "TT" stand for in the dogs' popup info boxes? It stands for Temperament Tested and is a certification given by the American Temperament Test Society (ATTS). The test consists of 10 subtests, each of which measures the dog's reaction to various stimuli such as contact with friendly, neutral, or unfriendly strangers, unusual noises, and unusual footing. You can see a full summary description of the test at the ATTS website. All four of my dogs have this certification.

How much of the information for arthritis in dogs applies to cats as well? Apparently it is quite risky to give NSAIDs of any sort to cats so they have fewer relief options than the dogs. I didn't know until recently that cats could safely benefit from the glucosamine/chondroitin combo. The makers of the brand usually prescribed by vets (Cosequin), Nutramax Laboratories, now markets a variation specifically for cats. It's packaged in smaller capsules containing cat-sized doses, and it is also chicken and tuna flavored so you have the option to sprinkle the powder on the cats' food.