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What to do about Lucy

June 24, 2008 – 4:52 pm

Lately Lucy has been having some problems. We don’t think she has cancer…. well, the vet doesn’t think so, anyway. Which is good. She probably has calcification of the lungs. Which, really, shouldn’t affect her life.

But the last week or so she has been eating and drinking, and then throwing it right back up. Not all of it… some stays down, or she eats it again, as dogs will do. And she has been pooping, though it’s been very small.

We took her to the vet last week and they think she could have a partial blockage. That girl will eat anything, dangit. But if it’s partial, then some food is getting through, and she’s not loosing a lot of weight so that’s good. We had xrays done, and they couldn’t see anything. But last night after giving her a little kibble (she’s been on white rice and canned for a few days) she had a bad bout of hacking stuff up again. And it’s so hard for me to sleep when she is throwing up! I feel bad putting her out of the bedroom, but I don’t know what else to do and I feel so helpless I can’t help her in any way.

So my husband called the vet back and scheduled an ultrasound. So hopefully if there is something in there, they’ll find it, and be able to take it out.

My husband is running low on money, too, and he hasn’t been able to find a job yet. So this is not a good time financially for us for this to happen. But we’ll work it out. I do wish I could put the dogs on my health insurance!

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Cynthia Blue [My Barks!] | Posted in Lucy | Also tagged Health | Comments (14)

No Cancer in Lucy

May 21, 2008 – 3:32 pm

Well, we took Lucy to the vet on Monday and had her re-xrayed to see if the stuff in her lungs has changed at all. Well, the good news is that there was no change in the xrays!

So the vet is fairly certain that, instead of cancer, she has calcification of the lungs. They said that if it were cancer, even a slow growing type, that there would be some change. And there was no change at all.

When I left the vet it was like a weight off my chest. A weight I didn’t even know I’d been carrying around for some months. I am so excited! Yay! Lucy is okay!

Of course she is still 9 years old, so we watch her health pretty closely. But this is great news! And she is acting the same as she has been for months. So we are very happy for sweet Goosey Lucy!

Now I need to get more blogging done, using our used cisco that we got off ebay!

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Cynthia Blue [My Barks!] | Posted in Lucy | Also tagged Cancer, Health | Comments (0)

Easy Weekend and Tatum Training

May 17, 2008 – 9:27 pm

Well, I’m taking it easy this weekend. I have no dog sport competitions. I wanted to have today be dog-training free, but I ended up having a private lesson with Tatum and my obedience instructor. We took her to a local dog park and walked outside the fence to start to train her to pay more attention to me, instead of other dogs. Both for comfort and for training.

She got very stressed. Enough to come home and go after Angel.. which Tatum does when she’s stressed. But Tatum needs to learn how to be pushed a little bit, and that it won’t hurt her, she won’t die. She needs to learn to deal with pressure and then come back from it quickly, and preferably, with me. Currently when she gets stressed she will recover faster, and better, with the other dogs. And I want her to trust me so that she will recover with me.

I have read a ton of dog behavior books and they have helped me tremendously to understand dogs. Though I have more to read… but I’m kinda tired of them now, and just want the practical application. So me and Tatum get to work together on this. It will be a challenge, but I’m confident we can work through it.

An example of Tatum’s stress is.. this morning after breakfast the dogs played, like they always do. And Tatum was playing with a toy and I want to encourage this. Well, Chase is a toy hog so I put all the other dogs in the kitchen and take Tatum outside and play toy with her. Tug and chase and fun stuff. She ran around, ran by me, and hit me in the arm. It didn’t hurt me at all, but I don’t know how much it hurt her. She immediately shut down. Her tail dropped a notch, she did her nervous trot, and no longer wanted to play.

In order to bring her back to her happy self, I could have brought the other dogs out. But I want her to understand that she is not going to be hurt. She doesn’t have to be afraid, and she can trust me. I think this will come. And I’m willing to work through it.

It’s like having a child who was abused, or suffered some awful thing when younger. Tatum was abused as a puppy, and did suffer some awful things. Coming from a hoarder/collector who had 50 collies running amok, she has issues we need to work through and overcome. And she is smart and spunky and has already come so far, I know she can come even further!

Anyway… after that my husband went and saw a movie, Iron Man, it was good! And now I’m relaxing. Tomorrow I’m going to my parents for a late Mother’s Day, and then flyball practice. Then Monday is hectic with agility practice, getting my nails done, taking Lucy and Levi to the vet, and then going to see a tax guy. Whew. Then Memorial day weekend I have a 3 day agility trial.

Lucy will get re-xrayed to see if she has cancer, or calcification of the lungs. Let’s hope for calcification.

So this weekend isn’t is activity free as I would like, but hey, it’s nice to not do a dog sport!

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Cynthia Blue [My Barks!] | Posted in Daily Posts, Tatum | Also tagged Socialization, Tatum, Training | Comments (10)

Still Tired from Camping

April 22, 2008 – 8:43 pm

Today, I am happy to say, the dogs are still pretty tired from camping. Yay! Though they did play some when I got home, they are mostly still sleepy and resting a lot. And Levi isn’t even complaining about being on the couch, which is, actually, quite odd.

This is a cute picture of Muffit checking out the hole that Chase was digging. Chase must have really loved digging for the gophers down in Richfield when we were visiting! When we went down there I didn’t get us any travel health insurance, but we didn’t really need any.

And Lucy did great camping, too. She is getting a bit old, and a bit slower… she is 9 now, but she had a good time. She often found shady spots. But she did run around with the younger dogs a bit, too. I am sad that she is getting older… I keep telling her she is not allowed to get any older, but dangit, it’s not working. I love my Lucy girl, she is the oldest of the pack now. She is our cornerstone. We will be taking her back to the vet later this month for another xray, to see if she really does have cancer or not. We sure hope not.

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Cynthia Blue [My Barks!] | Posted in Daily Posts | Also tagged Camp, Muffit | Comments (3)

Cancer or Calcification?

February 25, 2008 – 7:20 pm

I took Lucy in to Dr Hennemen today. I just love Dr. Hennemen. I feel very good energy from her, and she really knows what she is talking about. We are so lucky to have her in our little part of the country.

So anyway Lucy does have a lot of striations (I hope that is the right word) in her lungs. More so than spots. It reminded me of Mars and all the alleged canals that people used to think were up there. But Dr. Hennemen was not convinced it’s cancer. But we are going to treat her like it’s cancer. She did say that it might be calcification. She also said it looked like one of Lucy’s ribs had been broken a long time ago. Goodness… dogs. Man, they can hide pain so well. I wonder if it was when we had our rollover all those years ago in the snow. That’s the only thing I can figure, since she’s never been on her own really, except the week we went to Maine and put her in boarding with Levi and Angel. Hrm.

Anyway Lucy has lots of calcification on her bones in her rib cage, too. Now I’m just saying what i remember, and my memory isn’t all that great. I like it when my husband comes because he remembers better. But anyway…

So we are going to strengthen Lucy’s immune system, Vitamin C and E. Antioxidants too. And I’m going to give her more whole foods in her diet that are seasonally appropriate. And some cooling foods, too, like Celery and Duck. I wrote more things down and they are in my purse. But we are basically gonna see about getting her as healthy as we can. And then, in a couple months, get new x-rays and see if there is any more growth of this stuff in her lungs.

So we have some hope. Oh.. and while I was gone, our regular vet called and my husband answered. They said they had someone look at Lucy’s x-rays as well and he said it looked, to him, more like calcification than cancer… so, I am a bit excited. However, still worried. Lucy’s energy level is still very low and she’s being cranky. But Dr Hennemen also said her lymph nodes are swollen and we have to keep a close eye on her.

So that’s the scoop so far.

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Cynthia Blue [My Barks!] | Posted in Lucy | Also tagged Angel, Cancer, Health, Levi, Snow | Comments (19)

She’s not Dead Yet

February 23, 2008 – 1:01 pm

Just a quick update on Lucy. She is doing okay. She is pretty low energy, and I do think she is lower energy than she has been before. And the swelling in her legs comes and goes. I hope it doesn’t hurt her or make her uncomfortable.

She and I have been talking a lot.. before bed, or in the mornings. She likes to come and lay on me and we have a nice chat, ear rubs, and ear licks. I do the chatting, she does the licking, and I do the rubbing. She is such a good girl I want her to be happy and healthy for as long as possible. She is slowing down, but she still seems pretty happy for now. Let’s hope it stays that way.

One of the things I fear most is regrets. I have regrets about Kip my shepherd mix… I wanted to give him more, spend more time with him, and I feel bad that I dragged him with me from bad relationship to bad relationship. But he was always there for me. And I feel bad that I made him go lay down too much instead of snuggling with him. He panted so much, it was an annoying habit of his.. but I loved him, pant and all.

So I am afraid of having regrets with my current dogs after they die. I think I just have to have confidence that all my dogs have had good lives, and they are loved and they have given me more than I can even have hoped to give them. I love them all. I love Lucy, she is my heart girl, and she will always have a big piece of my heart.

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Cynthia Blue [My Barks!] | Posted in Lucy | Also tagged Cancer, Health | Comments (9)

Beautiful Lucy

February 20, 2008 – 8:20 pm

Lucy is our beautiful smooth collie girl. She does seem to be slowing down… with her cancer diagnosis and all. But she got to chew on a Kong a lot today, and carry it around and guard it, and guarding is one of her favorite things. Though she doesn’t like it quite as much as Levi does.

Lucy is doing okay. I watch her closely now and I think that her low energy is because of her cancer. But my husband says she is still the same. I just wonder. I worry about her every day. Monday I am taking her to the holistic vet to see what she can do, if anything, and get her opinion.

The rest of the dogs are doing well. I took Muffit and Tatum to Sugarhouse Park today for a walk. I haven’t taken Muffit out until now because he was sick. He’s done with his meds now and he is much happier, he is even enticing Tatum to play. He wants to play with Chase, too, but Chase isn’t ready yet. Having yet another new dog in the house has thrown Chase out of whack, but Chase is doing well and he hasn’t instigated any fights, which is nice. And we are helping him and making the other dogs respect his space, which is good and will help Chase adjust.

I’m please to say that Muffit ignored the people we walked by, sniffed everything, and seemed very well adjusted.

Fortunately we don’t need any eca stack around here to lose weight, but I am cutting down Tony’s food as he is a bit chubby now. And Muffit gets a lot to eat, since he is still too skinny.

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Cynthia Blue [My Barks!] | Posted in Daily Posts, Lucy | Also tagged Cancer, Chase, Collie, Levi, Muffit, Park, Play, Tatum | Comments (17)

Good days and Bad days

February 15, 2008 – 5:07 pm

I guess I’ll be up and down for a while with this diagnosis of Lucy having cancer. I have managed not to think much about it since Wednesday… thinking about it now just makes me cringe.

Wednesday was a bad day. I was really down all day after the vet appointment on Tuesday. Even though it wasn’t too bad… what.. what am I talking about? Any cancer is bad! Ugh. The vet said they had ‘good news’ so we were really hoping to go in and have them say “It’s not cancer!”. But they did not. They just said they could not find a main tumor. I didn’t think that was good news at all.

Anyway, Lucy gets to go to Dr. Kim Hennemen on the 25th so that will be good. I like her a lot. Her limp is doing okay… as is mine. LOL. I need some posture correction, and some ankle and knee therapy, it seems.

I have agility all this weekend, both Saturday and Sunday. I hope it goes well. I’ll try to get and post up some videos. I run Chase and Levi. It’s AKC. I have to really be serious about it… get the Qs! Bah.. just have fun, eh? Yeah, just have fun. And hope I don’t hurt my ankle or my knee anymore.

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Cynthia Blue [My Barks!] | Posted in Agility, Info, Lucy | Also tagged Agility, Cancer, Chase, Levi, Videos | Comments (15)

Foster Dogs over the Years

February 13, 2008 – 3:11 pm

For the last few days I’ve been loading up my dog pictures from my old album backups and into Flickr. Flickr is very convenient and easy to use, and it helps me not use up lots of my server space.

We have helped a lot of dogs. I am proud of what we have done. Some of these dogs are no longer alive, but hopefully we were able to touch their lives and make them better in some way.

We have to take a break from rescue for a while, with Lucy’s cancer and her health a concern, my husband not having a job right now, an us just being overwhelmed. So no more foster dogs. I will try to coordinate collie rescue when I can, but that is hard without any foster homes. *sigh*

Click on the image to see all the sets of our foster dogs. I know one is not there… Alice, she was cute and I can’t find any pictures of her. Bummer.

All these dogs with the exception of Bria are from 2000 and later. Bria was at my old house pre 2000.

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Cynthia Blue [My Barks!] | Posted in Daily Posts, Rescue | Also tagged Cancer, Collie, Health, Rescue | Comments (7)

Muffit is Better

February 13, 2008 – 7:30 am

Well good news, after a couple of days on the new meds Muffit is much better already. His breathing sounds clear, no more snuffling and no more major green nasal discharge! Yay! He is eating well, and starting to play, too. Still a bit low on energy but that will come.

I’ve started him on the clicker and he doesn’t quite understand yet, but he will soon. We’ll start with what he knows, sits and downs, and add the mat work. Tatum really liked starting with the Mat.

So the days go by, we wonder what to feel and do about Lucy, and we just plug along.

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