Announcing the beginning of the Poo Grotto Expansion Project #4 for the month of April. Prime fence barking, private poo area and access to back area will be hindered during this partial deck removal and stump removal.
Category: Dogs
Category about Dogs.
This is an announcement for the Poo Grotto Expansion Project #3. This project consists of the removal of a bush and tree and the removal of the stumps and then back fill in the hole. This is intended to improve the current poo area and stump wood for camp fires in the summer. There will be interruptions of prime poo spots surrounding the expansion area during the project. The project is slated to start March 2016 and end April 2016.
I had posted a lot about my dog and the perils of his disease and a lot of dispair. I am glad to report that he is doing well, has been doing very good for the past 8 months or so. He’s not cured or anything, I’ve just paid a lot of attention to him to make sure he’s safe and not in posistions to hurt himself. He did get a blood transfusion in April or May of 2012. Most likely this was his last blood transfusion. With his disease he can go at anytime and it’s not easy feeling to know that. It’s been a mild winter for us which I believe has helped a lot. And just attention to what he’s doing.
I kind of got to a point with his website that I got a bit overwhelmed and then realized the template was just stupid. I did learn how to template BlogEngine.NET pretty good in doing so, but then just got discouraged with any sort of direction and where I wanted to go with his website. I’m not making very specific blog sites so no one is really interested in reading online diaries of boring people with fucked up animals.
I haven’t posted much of anything lately. I haven’t had much to say, or just not sure what to say.
Cobar is doing extremely well and for the most part has recovered from his ordeal. I have nearly completed his web site (http://www.kuparr.com) . I’ve just been very un-inspired lately about all my web sites. I think I will migrate some of the posts about him here to his web site. There was a big scare when we went camping at Potlatch State Park where he jumped into a 15 foot deep cistern, culvert type of thing. He managed to escape any noticable injury which is unbelievable.
As I mentioned, we went on our first camping trip of the summer season. We went to Potlatch State Park and the first night it had rained quite heavily. The most rain on the first night that we’ve experinced when we started the whole summer camping trips about 4 years ago. The weather cleared up and it was a wonderful weekend. We did that the Memorial Day weekend. It was relaxing and I actually slept without having to take anything to relax me and sleep. Normally I have a difficult time sleeping when camping, even though I love it.
Can’t think of anything else to say.
In one of Cobars first major outings from his illness we took him to the Dog Easter Egg hunt dressed as the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland. He was a bit barky when we first got there but he settled down and had had a lot of fun. We didn’t win any prizes in the easter egg hunt this year. Too many of peoples human children were grabbing the eggs, not the dogs. Cobar managed to grab about a half dozen eggs though, he loves doing it. After the egg hunt there was an hour wait for the fashion show so we took a walk around the park. This was his first walk since a brief moment at the beginning of March when he was feeling good. He managed to place 3rd in the small dogs, which we were confused a bit as he’s not a small dog (over 30lbs). The toy he got he loves very much and he’s playing with more of his toys as we let him access to them. His barking was my biggest concern and so far the day after he’s doing well and appears normal and still has a normal voice.
It has been a few weeks since my last update on our dog Cobar. The blood transfusion was like getting a new dog. I am still amazing that just the blood transfusion made him that better, all in about 24 hours. It was difficult to keep him from not barking, but certain things alinged to help out. Mainly bad weather kept door to door salesmen from coming around, which is the biggest thing that makes him bark a lot. We were able to keep any other barking to a minimum. It is now almost three weeks since the blood transfusion. He’s transistioned from prescription diet canned food, to very low fat dry food that is soaked in water and then given to him in a soupy mixture. I think this change in diet has helped quite a bit. And we may have narrowed in on some past issues with constipation he has had. He’ll be going to his normal vet for a check up tonight. I don’t think he’s completely recovered from this ordeal, but he’s definately improving day to day.
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Darth Vader and Toy Poodles
Our dog went from bad to worse in the past week. He kept the cycle of feeling good, then getting worse. This time around, from his constant pain, he was making these whining, groaning noises from his throat. This progressively got worse and worse to the point that we brought him back to the internet medicine vet and they did an endoscopy on his throat to discover a severe hematoma and bleeding near his larynx. It was very bad, much worse than I thought. He had increasingly started to sound like Darth Vader in his breathing, but what I never thought about what that his airway would swell up and restrict it. This is what was happening. If we had no scheduled this check-up and went with the endoscopy, it would have been around 48 hours or so that his airway would have been restricted and he suffocated.
After the endoscopy they immediately started giving him blood plasma to increase the clotting factor and get him to heal. We went with the doctors recommendation of one bag of plasma for the transfusion. It’s not cheap and we’ve quickly exhausted the funds for his care already. In an fortunate yet unfortunate turn of events, a toy poodle had come in during the evening with an emergency that required it needed plasma as well. However, it being so small, it didn’t need the entire bag of plasma so it was donated to Cobars recovery. The blood transfusion was successful, in the terms that it did not create more problems and he is, slowly recovering from this severe internal bleeding event.
We don’t know yet if there will be long term issues, but I some how doubt it. He is eating properly now as well. It’s all around a good thing. There’s quite a bit of stress lifted from us. There is still a good 2 week window of healing. So that is the latest update.
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It’s Good, It’s Bad
The day I posted the previous article about our dog, I learned that he has Giardia. This would explain a lot of his problems. He was put on two different types of meds to get rid of the parasite and he was doing fairly well until this weekend. Some minor, yet consistent vomiting started up. Gave him some Ace and other pills and that was able to get him through the night without vomiting. This morning he seems to be doing better, but I think that is still up in the air a bit. Will continue to post articles about once a week as updates to his health.
Ugh. Sometimes it just never ends it seems. Yet, I fear the ending. Or at least, the worse case scenario. I always preach to not succumb to the fear of loss, yet I seem to fail myself.
And yes, this post is about our dog Cobar.
He recovered from his illness in January and was doing good up until about two weeks ago as of this post. He started acting a bit weird and he started urinating blood. That was a very very bad sign. Bleeding of any kind, especially internally is just really bad. Of course, this was on a weekend so a trip to the Vet Hospital was in order as the normal vet practice is closed. They did a very good job of looking him over and determined he got a UTI. Which was a bit odd. Over the course of about five days he started to improve, and for the most part he had improved, except he was urinating a bit more than normal. Instead of just peeing once he would pee two, maybe three times. I was beginning to worry that this was more than a UTI. Possibly issues with his kidneys.
Then comes the record low temperatures. When it gets cold out, you can get dehydrated quickly. A week into his recovery he became very stiff and limping which we finally realized that he was severely dehydrated. More than we had thought, most likely due to this cold weather. So we whipped up some soupy canned food for him which is loved and chomped down. Getting some good food and hydrated well.
Of course, thats when the nightmare starts. His diarrhea started several hours after eating and just continued on into the night. After awhile there was nothing to come out but he was clearly straining to push something out. He was beginning to show signs of something like a kidney stone. Very similar to what happens to me, except, I tend to projectile vomit, and fortunately he never got to that stage. He started to refuse any food or water, so we were forced to hydrate him using a 3ml syringe and just squirting water into his mouth on a regular basis. We created a solution of Vitamin Water and regular water. This proved to be a good thing.
Of course this was over the weekend. We thought this might be a continuation of what was wrong with him last week, but it did seem different. He’s not repeatedly trying to pee. It snowed, so we can immediately see if there was blood in his urine. But there seemed to be a great effort in straining to go.
So, hydrating him every 2 hours of 9ml’s of Vitamin Water/Water solution and a vet visit for Monday. He’s doing good, Monday, but clearly in a lot of pain when the pain meds wear off. He’s still also on his anti-biotic. So, in the afternoon my wife takes him off to the vet. I finally get some time alone from this ordeal.
Could it get worse? Of course! His blood work comes back good. He’s hydrated fairly well (only 6%-8% dehydrated). Our hydration was working and was probably a very good thing. But why the straining of trying to poop? His prostrate appears to be swollen (enlarged). Great. It could be abscessed or worst case scenario, cancer.
So now he is on some heavy sedation, a stronger anti-biotic and an appetite drug to give him an appetite.
And I am about 80% complete with his web site. I’ve been drained physically and mentally to want to mess with it more.
What next? I can’t go farther back in the line when I am the last one.
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Cobar bounces back!
In my last post I had mentioned that my dog was sick. It took about 4 days for whatever he ingested to work it’s way through his system and be done with it. I hate not knowing what caused him to be sick, I will probably never know. Very happy that he’s for the most part, recovered from whatever this was. He’s back to the happy dog that he normally is.