Jelly's day at the vet

Jelly made her annual trip (ok, so it's been more like a year and 4 months) to the clinic today. Since she has been historically hard to handle for blood draws, nail trims, etc. I elected to do everything on one day this year since she has to be sedated for bloodwork anyway. So she got a quick exam then an IV injection to put her almost all the way out. I trimmed her nails, drew her blood, placed and IV catheter and hooked her up to the anesthesia machine, monitoring system, and IV fluids and then we did routine dental radiographs (all good) and a thorough dental cleaning. Here she is getting her dental rads.

Before she woke up from her dental I have her a quick bath (she gets kind of dingy in the garage) and updated her vaccines. Here you can see she is unimpressed with the whole episode.

Normally we like to see the bloodwork before the surgery or dental but for pets that need anesthesia for blood draws it doesn't always work that way. These pets are usually cats. Sadly, mine included. But, she is home now, clean and happy. Her blood tests will be back tomorrow.

Cold

It's cold again here so I'll share some "Spring" pictures with you. She's really starting to enjoy hanging out in the living room and having a chance to really stretch her legs and run. All of the dogs are doing well with leaving her along although Icy slapped her on the head once.

And here is a picture from the "outside spring" that I took the other day when it was still warm.

And finally, remember Peyton? Here's a recent picture her mom sent me. She's grown a lot and is apparently very spoiled and the perfect puppy!

Babies

Big baby. My boss takes a zillion supplements a day, claims he never gets sick and will live forever. Guess who showed up crying about how sick he was and took off work before lunch to go the doctor and abandoned me with a bunch of sick animals and a packed afternoon of appointments? Now if you will recall I was sick for 3 out of 4 weeks about a month ago and never missed any work. Not only that but when we were slow guess who left early and guess who stayed until close? I'll bet you can guess.

Little baby. Remember that baby shower? Our little girl will be arriving sometime next week. Don't know what day yet but they are going to induce her due to pre-eclampsia. I don't know much about that stuff but I know everyone is very excited!

Great weekend

The weather here continued to be lovely and after a brief shower this morning it was warm and sunny all day. We ran a few errands in Springfield before heading down to Branson for the rest of the day. We visited the Home Show at the convention center which was not all that impressive and then did some shopping at the Branson Landing. I had coupons for a few stores and was able to get them all used up. We also ate at the Mexican Restaurant-Jerry's pick since his birthday is Tuesday. Then we walked along the river before making our customary stop at Kohl's before heading back home. Legend worked on agility and then we wore out all the dogs playing in the yard since we had extra daylight!

Our other big announcement is that Jerry make it onto a semi-pro (which I think really means amateur since they are not getting paid but whatever...) football team which is forming in Springfield and will be playing games throughout the Midwest. He's pretty excited-I think it will be fun for him to play and for me to watch some of the games and maybe travel a little.

A little more spring

It's balmy again today-about 70 degrees, but cloudy. So after work (stupid Saturday hours) I was able to get all the dogs out and run them silly. First I took Legend out alone and worked some agility. She's really starting to understand the difference in body language/arm position in terms of whether she should stay out and find the next jump or turn and come in to me. I have been able to start staying further away from her while doing this. So far I have not changed the arrangement of the jumps but eventually I will have to test her by moving them around. I have also been making her do the weave poles ahead of me-this has helped tremendously with her popping out at the last few poles. I guess it's because she doesn't see me right there getting ready to throw the toy? I have also started a little discrimination practice with the tunnel since she is having a problem sucking to the off course tunnels at trials. After we were done practicing everyone came out to play-even Barney!

Here's a cute shot of Zodiac from today. If you have been reading long enough, you know he hates posing for the camera so these good photos are always a treat (for me anyway, the rest of you may not care!)

Here are some cute shots I got of Sport today, he's still not sure what to do with all those other dogs running around. But at least he looks happier in these photos than the ones we took at the clinic when he was too scared to even move!

Snooters and Tongues

I was inspired by Sue's post to try this with my dogs. But since I tried after playing in the yard for an hour they all had their tongues hanging out and I thought the pictures looked cuter with the tongues included. So here they are...

Oreo-who had been clearly nosing around in the dirt before the "snoot shoot"

Zodiac-I though his snoot shot was too cute for words. But notice he's getting so gray that from this angle he looks a lot like Oreo. Why do dogs have to get old :(

And Legend-who was not too impressed with this process as it interrupted ball playing time. Notice how pink her mouth is-her blood was really pumping!

Also notice my hand in every photo holding all the noses steady!

A little bit of spring

Today was almost 80 degrees here (or maybe it was 80-since I was inside most of the day I don't really know). Anyway, it was so nice to go outside and not get hit with frosty air. It was actually warmer outside out house than inside when we got home. Here is a picture of some of my crocus coming up. I never got my bulb garden weeded out so now everything has to come up through yucky old grass. I hate weeding.

Sport has pretty much quit coughing so tonight I let him play with the rest of the dogs in the back yard. He was pretty excited about it but a little overwhelmed. My guys didn't care that he was there. Legend was too busy playing, Zodiac was too busy herding Legend, and Oreo was too busy either playing or just wandering around the yard being an old dog. But the good news he's about to be adopted by someone Jerry works with and a client at our clinic. So, he gets a good home and we get to keep seeing him.

And speaking of Spring-this time the rabbit-the pet supply magazine had rabbit stuff on sale so I ordered her a bunch of chew toys and treats and she was pretty happy about that.

This one's just for Becky

I didn't have anything interesting to post about today but I know Becky (she's one of those that lurks and never leaves comments) will be silently cursing me if I don't post so...

Here are some old pics of the boys I dug up off the computer. This is one of the first pictures I took when we got Zodiac. You can see his coat is not all the way grown in yet. When we got him he had been shaved and looked so awful I refused to take pictures. Now I wish I had so we could compare how handsome he turned out to be.
And here is a picture of Oreo from back in his agility days. I like this picture because he actually looked like he was weaving kind of fast-and he was never a fast weaver, ever. By the time he got to preferred he had mellowed out enough to be a really easy dog to run-I just had to run and point and he would go wherever. He was never really fast, put pretty reliable.

Crackhead of the week

Two weeks ago there was an appointment on the schedule for a dog whose owner reported "masses of ear mites crawling out of the dog's ears and burrowing under the skin." Ok-several problems here. 1-ear mites are microscopic. 2-they don't generally crawl out of the ears in droves. 3-they don't burrow under this skin. So this was shaping up to be an interesting appointment.

The dog arrives, has no mites, but does have a yeast infection in her ears. The owner is not impressed with this diagnosis as he was pointing out "mites" running all over the dog and burrowing into the skin during the whole exam. We tried to ignore this behavior as he was clearly under the influence of some illegal substance and informed him that the medication we were sending home would kill any mites as well as the yeast she did have. That was not the end of it.

He continued to call and complain that the dog still had mites, they were everywhere and she was just infested with bugs. He claimed if he poured alcohol on her then the mites would just go crazy and run everywhere. We suggested he bring in some of the mites for us to see. So in comes a baggie with some sort of skin flakes or scabs he has picked off the dog, but no mites.

So he comes in for a recheck appointment (with another baggie of whatever he has recently picked off the dog) and insists now that the dog has "sex crabs" and they are all over him and the house as well. Dog still has no bugs of any kind on her and I also tried to explain that "sex crabs" don't live on dogs or carpets. We let him pour alcohol on the dog so he could show us the bugs (mites, sex crabs, whatever they may be...) running around. All we saw was dead skin flakes turn into wet dead skin flakes. I informed him that all we were seeing was dry skin which was probably dry because he kept pouring alcohol on her. He insisted that he was a)not on drugs b)not hallucinating and c)even though they look like skin they are bugs he was just sure. So we took some to look at under the microscope and sure enough-skin flakes. We finally told him we could do one of two things. Treat the dog with a broad spectrum drug for common ectoparasites (mites, lice, etc) and have him call an exterminator for the house or refer him to a dermatologist. He decided to treat the dog and leave it to be boarded while he went to the hospital. I'm not sure what he was going for but hopefully for some mental help or detox (did I mention the sores on his arm he has from picking bugs off himself?). Oh, and on the way to the hospital he dropped off another baggie with something he picked up off the carpet-still not a bug.

The dog, who did not itch or shake her head the whole time she was with us was probably glad to have a break from all the alcohol pouring and picking.

We have not heard from him this week but I think it will soon be time for him to seek a second opinion.

Back to Sunday

Just now getting to post about the rest of the trial. Sunday-Standard run was really nice, about the best she's done except for the off course tunnel (again). Jumpers started out a little slow but then started to pick up but she missed the weave pole entrance and then we kind of got out of sorts and the rest of the course was a bit of a mess. Overall the weekend was way better than last weekend but still no Qs. Off to Carthage in 2 weeks. We'll see what happens there....