Remembering Printz was posted to one of the rottweiler discussion lists and it is a sad reminder that basic veterinary care in many parts of the world is not anywhere near what we in the United States take for granted.
As you may already know from Monday's entry, we are planning to consult a veterinary acupuncturist to help Missy with the weakness in her rear end.
Due to our work and travel plans for November, it turns out that it will probably work out better to have the treatments start in December once all of that is out of the way. So we've made an appointment for the initial consultation on December 9.
Missy's blood test results came back today and just about everything was within normal ranges, with the exception of one slightly elevated liver enzyme and slightly elevated cholesterol levels.
This time we will follow up with the veterinary acupuncturist. She takes phone calls from 7:00 to 8:00am, so we'll call tomorrow morning and set up an appointment for a consultation. UPDATE 10/29/02: Oops, make that Wednesday morning... I stupidly left the phone number on my desk at work... and of course I don't get in to work until after 8:00am!
Oscar also had a vet visit on Saturday. He has had more than a normal amount of eye and skin irritations this fall.
He has been taking a low dose of an antihistamine and has some topical antibiotic ointment to apply, but he had one particular irritation on his face that was not healing properly. It looked much like a hot spot, and we had been treating it as one.
But since it is taking longer to heal, and there appears to be some thickening of the skin under and surrounding it, he has just started a course of oral antibiotics to help things along. The worst-case scenario would be that this is a skin tumor of some sort. We need to get the irritation and infection taken care of first, though.
His dose of antihistamine has also been upped to make him more comfortable until that spot, and his irritated eyelids, are completely healed. Much as they do for many people, the antihistamine has a side effect of drowsiness at this higher dose, so we won't be letting Oscar operate any heavy machinery for a while :)
Missy seemed to enjoy her vet visit (actually, all of our dogs enjoy going to their regular vet). The vet opted to run some blood tests, and the results should be back on Monday. There is a possibility that Missy's symptoms could be yet another recurrence of her Lyme disease, so in addition, she started a course of antibiotics yesterday as well.
On the positive side, a small lump on Missy's neck was found to be a fatty cyst and nothing to worry about at this time :) It is always nice to get some good news, even if it's just a little bit!
I wish I'd done something like this...
Photo and pawprint in a hinged stand-up frame
or like this...
Matted framed photo and pawprint
(search on Pawprints Kit - Maple if the link has expired)
with Jake. And I will be doing it for the other dogs (I don't believe the cats will cooperate ... not MY cats).
Now to finish up what we started in Monday's entry about everyone's age-related (and sometimes injury-related) joint problems...
Sandy asked about Oscar's hip and elbow x-rays in the comments for Monday's entry, so I thought I'd take a moment to talk about OFA -- Orthopedic Foundation for Animals -- and some of the other health testing and certifications that are available.
Ethical breeders will have these tests done to ensure that their breeding animals are free from the genetic disorders that are common to their breed. For larger dogs, such as my Rottweilers, hip dysplasia would be a concern. For small dogs, like Sandy's Korki, a Pomeranian, patellar luxation (where the kneecap will pop out of place) would be more of a possible concern. Many Code of Ethics breed clubs would also consider these certifications a requirement for a breeding done by a club member in good standing.
As promised, we're trying to get back to posting about health issues starting today. With our youngest dog Oscar just having celebrated his eighth birthday, there is no escaping the fact that from here on in, we'll be dealing with more and more age-related and age-aggravated conditions.
We have done what we can to slow down the process, particularly where joint problems are concerned. I'll put the details in MORE... since all of the dogs were affected.
I've just added another feature from the too-wonderful Scriptygoddess site... the ability to restrict access to certain posts only while keeping most of the blog open to the public.
This was actually posted by the Scriptygoddesses back in the spring and I finally took the time to implement it on this blog :)
Here are the direct links to the how-to's:
http://www.scriptygoddess.com/archives/000916.php
http://www.scriptygoddess.com/archives/000934.php
UPDATE 10/26/02: Did a few minor edits. One will hopefully allow cookies to be set whether the site is being accessed with or without "www" in the URL. The other was to add a pop-up "request access" form.
While I definitely want to return soon to the pet health care topics that are the main focus of this blog, I find that I still need to think about and talk about and yes... write about... Jake.
So I’ve created another blog just for stories, photographs and memories. While I’m not making it private or hidden, I probably won’t publicize it, either, except in this entry that I’m making right now...
Just completed a remarkably smooth, pain-free update to Movable Type version 2.5 :) The database conversion from Berkeley DB to MySQL went smoothly as well.
I started using MT with version 2.0 and haven't done any of the updates in between that, and this latest release, so I still have quite a bit of work to do in order to implement the public search function and TrackBack. The templates and style sheets need to be updated with the code for those functions; then the style sheets have to be edited to match the dog:blog :: cat:chat look.
Hopefully everything will be working as advertised over the next few days, and we can get back to our intended main focus... pet health issues.
UPDATE 10/13/02: Well, that didn't take nearly as long as I thought it was going to. Search form is over by there to the right (under the archive listings) and TrackBack is working. Uh... yes, I know that GM has always had a public search function. It's a moot point now, isn't it :) . I still need to find some time to go through the TrackBack Development blog and the rest of the docs and specs.
Happy Birthday, Oscar!
Today we celebrate Oscar's eighth birthday! We've already had a little party at lunchtime for him, featuring a favorite treat of McDonald's hamburgers (with pickles and onions carefully removed, of course) and a party dessert of frozen yogurt.
We met Oscar for the first time when he was about three days old, and brought him into our family at the age of eight weeks. We have shared a lot of fun and training, a little bit of competition, and tons of love and companionship over the last eight years. How eight years could have gone by so quickly is a real mystery!
As most of you know, Oscar is also the logo dog of this blog and his portrait is one of my prized possessions. There's MORE... too -- just a couple of pictures and links...
If a diamond is forever, and real love will never die...
