Change of Plans

We thought there was only supposed to be a 10% chance of rain today but it rained almost all afternoon. So that means we did not get all our yard work done as planned after work. I did get a little mowing done in the horse corral so they aren't in a jungle at night. Instead we got some stuff done around the house-cleaned out closets and stuff. We threw a lot of things away-it's amazing the stuff you hang on to for no reason. For example, I still had 2 drawers full of vet school notes-most of which hadn't been touched in 4 years. So away they went. Anyway, now I have room for more stuff that will eventually get thrown away. Part of the reason we had to clean out closets was to make room for the extra litter boxes in the cat closet. I had to move some other stuff from that closet to the computer room closet. We now have 4 litter boxes with 3 different litter options for Jelly (and Icy, who doesn't care and always uses the box). We have also replaced the drop cloths on the couch with carpet runner-pokey side up. This is much less unsightly than the drop cloths and also inhibits her from even walking, sleeping, or peeing on the couch.

Icy is free in the house again and we are trying to get her back on her regular eating schedule. So far this is going pretty well. I was still offering her some canned food to supplement her regular dry (it's formulated for sick and recovering animals) but she won't even touch it-I guess she's telling us she's not sick anymore.

Here is a picture of Wiggles-this is what he looks like when he sheds. He looks even funnier in real life. In other news Legend and Zodiac appear to have ceased the relentless killing of stuffed toys, so now maybe they will last longer than 15 minutes!

Nothing too important

Here is a picture of Oreo from vacation since I have not been posting many dog pics lately!

Icy seems to be back to acting herself, I would like to see her eat a little more but she was not a big eater to begin with so I guess I can't expect too much. I will keep monitoring her weight as I try to get her back on a normal eating schedule as we prepare to turn her loose in the house again soon.

Jelly peed on the plastic covering the couch today. Darn. I collected some to take in tomorrow for a urinalysis but I don't have high hopes of this being a purely medical problem.

We are still trying to catch up on yard work from being on vacation so our weekend is shaping up to be really fun I'm sure. The dogs are still feeling neglected since we have not been doing any agility or much of anything else outside with them for that matter. But hopefully now that the cat is doing well and things are starting to slow down a little they can get back into a training routine.

Here is a picture of Spring trying to stay cool-not that the house is that hot but I guess she wasn't taking any chances of being too ambitious!

Three

Yep. Three. That's the number of scent articles Zodiac can now do successfully-and he's not just getting lucky and grabbing the right one either-he's checking them all and then choosing the scented article. Maybe he can do this after all! I'm very excited about his breakthrough. The other exercises are coming along too. Maybe I will be able to enter utility at the specialty (notice I didn't say "qualify" just "enter").

Legend was very disappointed that class got rained out tonight but we did get to work on some obedience. I may try her in Novice again this fall to see if she has matured enough to get through the exercises. I also have her entered in 3 days of agility at the specialty and one day of Rally. Hopefully we will get some Excellent legs. We will be also be doing Novice Fast-we're late getting into that but we had a fun time the last time we tried it-which was our first attempt.

And now for the cat news-if you have been reading for dog/agility stuff you have probably been pretty bored lately as the cat has been consuming our lives! Anyway here is Icy before she got sick...
And here is poor Icy now. She has lost a pound (but ate well today) is matted and ratty where she does have hair and is clipped on her belly, sides, legs, neck, rear end, and underside of her tail! Oh well, it grows back and we can bathe her. I have let her out of the bathroom tonight to mill around the house and she has enjoyed that. Jelly is very disturbed that we have allowed "that thing" to return home!

Or not

I was thinking that I should have received Zodiac's NAP and NJP certificates from the AKC by now so I checked the website to see if the last trial had been recorded. It had, but apparently I managed to set it up so that he earned all 3 legs on both titles under the same judge instead of the minimum of 2. So he has not finished those titles after all. I guess I will enter him one day at the specialty this fall and see if he can "finish" them again.

Icy had her staples and feeding tube pulled today. I was going to leave her IV in for a few more days in case she needed fluids but it started leaking this morning so I pulled it too. Now she is down to just her e-collar. Her infection is still draining some but so far no fever. She did not eat well this morning but I think she's kind of mad about all the stuff I did to her today. She did eat a little tuna when we got home and I have her another pain injection since she seemed crabby and sore.

Setback

I spoke too soon. Last night Icy wouldn't eat and was running a fever. Today at work we examined the site around her feeding tube and found it was infected. We also took an x-ray to evaluate her abdomen but it looked good as far was we could tell. I'm so glad there does not appear to be any infection on the inside! We got the abscess draining and started her on 2 antibiotics and this afternoon her fever was gone. She was still pretty fussy but after some more pain medication and her appetite pill she seemed to feel much better and ate some canned and dry food while we were out tonight. She was even howling about being locked in the bathroom-which she wasn't doing last night.



Jelly seems happy with her new pee box-she already used it. Hopefully we will be able to uncover the couch soon.

Weekend

Linda, Leslie and I attended the Gretchen Wilson concert at the Ozark Empire Fair on Friday night. It was super hot but we had a good time. My pictures still turned out a little fuzzy, even though we were in the 6th row-the best one is below. My parents spent part of the weekend with us and we had a good visit-despite the heat. This was their first time to see Spring, who is getting bigger all the time. I need to see how much she weighs now.

Icy is very much tired of staying in a crate so we went ahead and moved her to the bathroom. It gives her more space and us more sleep! There are a few things she can jump on and off in there but hopefully she won't get too rowdy. I think I will be pulling her IV and feeding tube tomorrow. She's eating pretty good, not much interest in dry food yet and I am still giving her appetite stimulants but I don't think at this point we will be in danger of needing the tube.

In other news Jelly has peed on our couch. This has made me very unhappy and promptly got her locked in the bathroom for most of the weekend. She has always had a fondness for peeing in laundry and dog beds and after multiple attempts to break her of this we just kept all the laundry locked up and got rid of all dog beds. She has never used the furniture before now but I guess all the other stuff she liked is gone. She has also used our chair but we rarely use the chair so that didn't bother me as much. So we gave in a filled a large litter box with a blanket and put it with the other litter boxes and have limited her access to the rest of the house and will be covering the couch. Hopefully we can get the cushion clean and hopefully she will like her new pee box enough that we can someday go back to normal. I do need to check her for a bladder problem but I suspect that is unlikely since she has always had something of an issue with this.

Still doing ok

Icy is doing fine-she did not eat well yesterday but has no fever and her bloodwork looked good today so I tried her on appetite stimulants and she had 2 reasonable sized meals. We had to replace her IV in her other leg-I hope it is still working tomorrow. Hopefully we are well on the road to recovery!

In other news Zodiac is back to working a little obedience this week since agility was cancelled and he actually seems to be getting the scent articles now. I have been using 2 dumbells and he brought back the correct one consistently after checking both of them out. Yeah!

Icy is Home

I got Icy home this evening. You can see in the picture she still has her IV in case we need it (covered in pink) and her feeding tube in-although it has never been used, but just in case. It's the white thing coming out her side. You can see most of her incision in the photo but it does extend futher than you can see in both directions! She may look unhappy in the photo but she had just been let out of her carrier, flopped on the floor and started purring. She seems very comfortable on her pain meds and is not terribly excited to be confined to a dog crate!

Update

Thanks to all Icy's well-wishers. She is doing better today. She is out of the oxygen cage and has had her chest tube pulled. She is eating well and her bloodwork today looked good. If all continues to go ok I will be picking her up tomorrow afternoon!

Icy's Saga

We had a week of unusual cases and weird diagnoses at work that culminated with my own sweet Icy. Friday night she became suddenly very ill-we returned from a few errands to find her acting painful and breathing hard, very lethargic, not eating, etc. Saturday morning she was no better so I brought her to work with me. I started her on pain medications and antibiotics and took an x-ray. The film showed a large gas-filled stomach similar to a dog with bloat. I tried to pass a tube to relieve the pressure but was not able. We gave her some Barium ( a liquid that shows up on x-rays to show movement through the GI tract) to see if she was just swallowing air secondary to another source of pain or if the stomach was somehow obstructed. No barium moved out of the stomach in an hour so we decided this was a surgical problem and the girls rescheduled some of my Saturday AM appointments so we could do surgery. I was still unable to pass a tube even when she was under anesthesia so we proceeded with an exploratory surgery where I made the surprising diagnosis of a diaphragmatic hernia (a hole in the muscle between the abdomen and chest cavity) and that her stomach was trapped in her chest! This is not a problem we are able to handle so I closed the incision, quickly saw my last two appointments and drove her directly to the Vet School in Columbia ( a place that consumed most of my life between 2000 and 2004!). The surgeon on call was actually one of my classmates who had returned for a surgery residency and she did a great job. She was also unable to pass a tube and so in addition to her abdominal incision she had to make a small incision into her chest to decompress the stomach. They then put all the abdominal contents back where they belonged and repaired the hole in the diaphragm. Part of her stomach and spleen had to be removed as they were too damaged to save. She also had eaten a large piece of hay (from the rabbits) that was looking like it might not pass through the intestines so they took it out just to be safe.

Icy is still in the ICU and in the oxygen cage just to be on the safe side, has a chest tube for drainage, a feeding tube in case she does not eat well, and an IV for fluids and medications. She is stable but still not out of the woods, although we have passed the biggest hurdles already.

How this happened is still a mystery-usually these are a result of a trauma but Jill seemed to think it was pretty recent and not related to her previous accident. So how a house cat managed to get that kind of injury is unknown. Leave it to Icy!