December 2008Monthly Archives

Sasha Has Pemphigus But Is Healing!

Happy Sasha

Well I am very happy to report that Sasha is doing so much better! I went to visit her a couple of days ago, and dropped Lily of to her new home (yup Sasha’s foster wants to keep Lily!) and I was amazed by how much Sasha’s nose has healed up.

Sasha looks so great! She even has hair starting to grow back. And it hasn’t been that long. The biospy of her nose came back, and as the vet feared, she has Canine Pemphigus. However, it appears to be one of the milder forms. It’s an autoimmune disease and she’ll have it her whole life. But the vet is hoping (and so are we) that we will be able to control the outbreaks with tetracycline and vitamin B3.

Sasha’s foster Mom has been putting neosporin on her nose and that, it seems, has helped too. Along with a healthy diet and a good environment, we all think Sasha will be just fine! I’m so releived and excited.

It is possible she could get worse, not better… and then she might have to go on steroids. However, with her already healing up, I think the possibility of her on steroids is quite low. And we have someone who may be interested in adopting her, too. I have been honest about her condition (I couldn’t be otherwise, lol, since I’m scrapbooking her progress here on my blog), but hopefully her condition won’t dissuade a potential adopter.

I’m just thrilled that she is doing so well. We did get her prescriptions filled from the doctor, and her foster Mom is giving them to her. Eventually we will back her medications off to see what the minimum acceptable dosage is to keep her collie nose outbreaks under control.

Otherwise, Sasha doesn’t care she has a scabby nose. She’s as happy as a clam and such a cute wonderful collie girl! We still are a bit behind on funds in Utah Collie Rescue, we haven’t quite covered her bills, even with donations. Hopefully her adoption fee will help pay for some of her medical as well.

Yay for Sasha!s

Cynthia

December 31, 2008

Rescue

6 comments

Collie, Rescue, Sasha

Keep Those Nails Trimmed

Lily's Nails

Rescue still pisses me off… I wonder if anyone would buy a small business for sale… Utah Collie Rescue? LOL okay I’m not quite ready to sell yet. I got some pictures of Lily’s super long toenails. Another thing that makes me pretty angry about rescue dogs. I trimmed a few of them this morning, and I trimmed off a lot. I saved the clippings and I’ll take pictures of them a bit later. For now you just get to see how long her nails are.

Lily's Teeth

And I was able to get a picture of her nasty teeth, too. You can hardly see the white of her teeth, they are so covered with gunk. Poor dear. I tried scraping them off with my fingernail a bit, but nothing would chip off. Her gums are a bit red above her teeth, too. For comparison, here’s a picture of Levi’s teeth:

Levi's Teeth

Levi doesn’t have the best teeth in the world, but you can see his teeth! He does have a little redness on his gums too. However, the vet says he’s okay. He has had a few teeth cleanings over the years. Lucy, on the other hand, has excellent teeth and has never had a cleaning. She is a lucky girl!

Pretty Lily

On a good note, Lily seems happier today. She played a little with Muffit and Tatum. She ate all her breakfast, her poop is solid, and she had big drinks. I had to bring her in from eating snow outside. I’ve never seen a dog down that much snow before. Which suggests to me that she was an outside dog, and her water froze so she had to eat the snow. Poor girl. Inside she has lots of water to drink and lots of love to receive.

Keep Those Teeth Clean!

Lilly Girl

So when it rains it pours, however, it’s not quite pouring rescue collies, thank the gods. But I just went and picked up another rescue collie girl. She was found down in Saratoga Springs, which is about 30 miles south of Salt Lake City. I took Tatum and Muffit to Tanner Park first, then we drove down and picked her up.

Lilly and the Pack

But anyway, as per the title of this post, dangit, why is it that so many of the dogs that come into rescue have horrible teeth? Okay okay, sure, I know, they are in rescue, right? Which basically means their homes did not care for them. But it makes me mad. My dogs get regular vet visits and their dental care is one of the most important things, and we make sure their teeth are clean and healthy. And don’t have any mesothelioma either!

So even though I will try to find this girls home (no microchip, no collar, matts in the rear and awful teeth) first, I would hope to get her healthy and make sure her teeth are cleaned up.

We are calling her Lilly for now. She’s sleeping peacefully on a dog bed in the basement near us all. Have I said recently, how badly I hate rescue? I do. I don’t feel good about doing something good for the dogs anymore. Well, I like to see them get healthy and happy. However, I just get angry that rescue has to happen. That so many dogs are homeless, neglected, abused, unwanted and unloved. I love them all, and wish I could keep them all.

Sasha’s Nose and Medical

Well, Sasha came back to stay with us overnight on Monday night for her vet appointment on Tuesday. I haven’t had time to post, been running amok with Christmas stuff since then. But here she is after she came back from the vet.

Sasha's Nose

Ouch… they took two spots of skin to biospy on her nose, and as you can probably see they stitched them back together. Poor dear. She looked miserable when we got her back from the vet. Her ears were so compacted with gunk they had to clean them all out, too. She’s kinda cute with wet ears though…

Sasha's Nose Ouch

Sasha also had three teeth pulled. Which wasn’t, actually, as bad as we had thought. When I looked at her teeth after she got back, they looked sparkly clean! I think her mouth and ears will feel much better now. Though her foster Mom did pick her up Tuesday night, and I haven’t talked her since then.

Sweet Sasha

I want to thank everyone so much for all the donations Utah Collie Rescue has received for Sasha! Her surgery on Tuesday cost over $350, and when we had her in before for bloodwork and a general checkup, that was $140. We have raised over $250 so far to help with her medical bills, and it all helps so very much!

Sasha is so precious and such a wonderful girl. Hopefully I’ll visit her again and get some more pictures in the next week or so.

I do hope everyone had a good Merry Christmas and Yappy Howlidays! I’m taking it easy, which I love to do, taking care of my neck that doesnt’ hurt too much anymore, maybe I should look at a shoulder pain pump and see if that might help too… hrm.

So, one more week of 2008 and then it’s 2009! Wow, the time goes by way too fast.

Collie, Rescue, Sasha

Sasha Needs some Help

If you can help, we would greatly appreciate it! Thanks so much!

Collie, Rescue, Sasha

Sasha in the Snow

Well.. I haven’t posted about it, but Sasha went to stay with another foster family. We miss her… I shed a few tears as I drove away last week and she barked at me as I left. But I went to visit today, Tatum came with, and Sasha is doing so well and is so very happy!

Sasha Playing

How can you deny that sweet happy face? LOL she is such a doll. I miss her, but my husband is right, had she stayed here we might have fallen too deeply in love with her and just had to keep her. UGH fostering collies is so hard! I love them all!

Sometimes you just get lucky with a picture and I think this is one of those really lucky ones! I just love the look on her face. She is one sweet happy girl.

Tuesday she goes in to get her teeth cleaned and to have her nose, ears and eyes biopsied. We get to have her Monday night, then my husband will take her into the vet on Tuesday morning. We hope she doesn’t come back with something awful with her nose… but we are prepared. If necessary, if she’s terminal or something awful, we’ll just keep her and love her for the rest of her life.

Bonnie in the Snow

While I was there I had, of course, to get some pictures of the foster home’s other gorgeous collies! Above is Bonnie, she’s a black tri and isn’t she just gorgeous? Tatum loved playing with her. She’s a spunky sweet collie girl!

Tatum and Roughs!

And above is Tatum with all three of her collies. They are so pretty! I just love collies, dangit. I just fell in love with the breed years ago and now always will want a collie or three or four in my life!

Now I’m feeling a bit sick again… I’ve had a bug the last few days, no need for Lipovox but I have been eating poorly so probably gaining some weight. Ugh. Oh well. I’m going to crash on the couch and watch some bad Sci Fi movies… and rest, and drink some eat. As the dogs all sleep around me too.

Fosters, Rescue, Sasha, Snow, Tatum

Lucy and the Muffin Tin Game

We read about this game from our friend Marie, who heard about it from Astrid’s blog.. and we thought we’d give it a try! As you can see, Lucy is doing pretty good. She’s eating better again and I do want to keep her engaged and give her things to do. So here, there are treats in the muffin tin under every tennis ball. And she has to figure out how to get the balls out to get to the treat!

Lucy is a very smart girl! She gets them out in just over two minutes. With her megaesophagus we don’t give her many treats, as we are afraid they will get stuck in her throat. So after she plays this game she gets to go eat her liquid diet so it all gets washed down!

I have videos of the other dogs playing the game too, they are uploading to youtube and I’ll post them later!

Games, Lucy, Megaesophagus

Lucy Had A Bad Day

Lucy didn’t have a very good day yesterday. We always worry about her when she doesn’t eat, and she skipped two meals yesterday. She ate her first morning meal and her second noon meal, but after that she just didn’t want to eat. And she seems to drop weight if she eats less than four meals a day, and we don’t want her to drop weight.

Lucy and Tatum

My husband reminded me of how her organs might end up shutting down… starting with her esophagus, and maybe now her bladder. She’s doesn’t want to go out to pee much. And so she leaks in the house. It could be just because we have snow outside now and she doesn’t want to go out. But we worry that it could be something wrong with her body, too. The megaesophagus could be just stage one of her falling apart… she needs some new performance parts instead of her old falling apart parts… but that is too sad to think about and so I just love her and hope she has a few more years left with us. This first picture is kinda cute… Lucy is eating in her Bailey’s Chair and Tatum is thinking she really wants to take a lick. But Lucy usually gives a nice solid growl and Tatum keeps her distance. Lucy is a good girl and is very appropriate with her growls. We love it when Lucy eats well.

Lucy Likes to Eat

Fortunately this morning she ate all her breakfast and even some raw honey, keifer, and coconut oil. All good things that, hopefully, will keep her strong and as healthy as possible for as long as possible. She also ate her lunch meal and she seemed to be hungry for both, yay!

Lately we’ve been changing our dog beds. We have to have washable beds now. I did buy a water proof liner the other day, and so now perhaps we can buy a cheap dog bed from Costco and put the liner on it so Lucy won’t ruin it. We can’t have dog beds with cedar in them, because we can’t throw them in the washer and they get ruined.

Anyway, so yesterday was a bad day, today seems like a better day. She’s eating and keeping her food and water down. Going out to pee a bit more than yesterday too. All good things that we take advantage of with our healthy dogs. We do love Lucy and we do all we can for her as long as we can.

Health, Lucy, Megaesophagus