Goodbye, Abby

We had to say goodbye to Abby today. We found her at the pound 12 1/2 years ago. She was a faithful member of our family to the very end. I always try to update this group when our pups struggle with sickness for any of you fighting the same battle. 

Abby was diagnosed with arthritis at around 8 years old. We've had her on glucosamine, chondroitin, and fish oil her entire life in an effort to prevent this but there is only so much prevention can do. 

Since we had luck with Meloxicam (NSAID) in the past with another dog, we put her on that daily until she turned 11 years old. This drug served us well. 

At 11, Abby began to struggle getting up and was just "slowing down". We swapped her Meloxicam for low-dose prednisone (5mg) and this pepped her up for about 6 months. Then we upped it to 10mg, then 20mg. By this point, the vet began trying different add-ons. Gabapentin did nothing except make her more wobbly. Tramadol had a minimal effect and codeine made her even more wobbly. 

By this past May, Abby could not get up without assistance. By June, she began defecating while she slept or attempted to stand. She also began peeing and pooping while she walked. Speaking of walking, all summer we have had to gradually reduce her nightly walk until last week when she could no longer walk without falling. She was now falling and "knuckling" every few steps. We had changed drugs again to Amantadine for a few weeks in hopes that something would improve but yesterday we came home to her yelping and not being able to support her own weight (and she had lost 20 pounds since May). It was time. We kissed her between the eyes this morning and said goodbye. 

You know the day you get them that one day, if you're lucky and bond to them, they will break your heart. My only solace is knowing that somewhere right now in a pound or rescue, there is another one waiting for me to find them.

Abby update

Recent news on Abby (July 15, 2021):

• Over the course of a few months, Abby began eating less. It started as a refusal to chew her bones and developed into eating less food.
• After a vet visit, we discovered Abby had dropped from 109 pounds to 90 pounds. The vet also noticed some swelling in her upper jaw/lip area.
• Abby was began a two week treatment of Clavamox for a suspected bad tooth. After two days, swelling was down and Abby began eating a little boiled chicken.
• Three days later, Abby was put under for a teeth cleaning and had two teeth extracted. The suspected bad teeth did not present any pus but the vet thought they were bad. Abby continued the Clavamox for another week and a half.
• During the week and a half, Abby ate very little and developed severe diarrhea. Even after her jaw had fully healed, Abby still was not eating.
• We stopped Clavamox and began prednisone to help with the diarrhea and appetite. Abby slowly began eating again and the diarrhea stopped. She also developed an increased thirst and regular incontinence.
• After three weeks of prednisone, we stopped treatment and the incontinence seems to have stopped as well. Abby is now eating again regularly and we are hoping she will gain some of her weight back.

Update (August 23, 2021):

• Incontinence continued so we but Abby on Proin XR every other day. She seems to be responding well to the drugs and not peeing in the house.
• Three months later, diarrhea returned. Immediately gave Abby 5mg of Prednisone. 36 hours later, Abby had a solid stool. Not sure if that is a coincidence or if the prednisone relieved an inflamed GI tract. We suspect IBS.

Puppy update a few weeks down the road

We've had Sebastian almost a month and a half now. Here's updates:

• We're now giving him 5 mg of prednisone once per day, not twice, and it seems to still be fairly affective at stopping the itching. He's still itchy, though, so we may end up having to take him to the vet anyway. Sebastian is also way less manic and ravenous. Usually. He gets super annoying around bed time or when he's tired.
• We've started him on one pill of fish oil per day. Hoping that might help with the itching too.
• He's finally losing his puppy teeth. He's very bitey still.
• He's pretty well house trained at this point. Messes are rare.
• He really likes squeaky toys.
• Oscar tolerates him much better, but I still wouldn't call them buddies. There are brief moments when I think it looks like Oscar wants to love on Sebastian or play with him, but it doesn't last long, and usually ends with Oscar hissing and/or swiping at Sebastian.
• Abby and Sebastian have finally started to play some in the evenings. They never play outside, though, which is weird. And most of the time Abby doesn't want anything to do with Sebastian; it's just sometimes at night when she gets a wild hair and decides it's play time.
• He sleeps really well at night. He's great in the crate. :D
• The diarrhea cleared up after a week or two when we first got him.
• We messed up and didn't continue his deworming meds like we were supposed to, so now he has worms again, and we're treating all the animals this time. Ugh. They'll all get a second dose in two weeks. And we'll continue treatment as directed this time.
• He's learning his tricks pretty well (sit, up, down, spin). He might be pretty smart!

Tummy Troubles

On June 25, Samson had loose stool and messed on the floor. For the next five weeks, Samson continued to have loose stools. When taken off of Ol’Roy and given rice, stools would improve. The veterinarian placed Samson on metronidazole and propectalin and continued the rice meals. Stools improved within the week. Samson was slowly started again on Ol’Roy. As soon as Ol’Roy was re-introduced, the loose stools would begin. Also, we began to notice Abby having loose stools. I threw away the Ol’Roy, cleaned the food container, and bought and new bag of Ol’Roy but the loose stools continued. That’s when I noticed the bag read “Improved Formula”. We switched to Purina and stools immediately improved with both dogs. We suspect that a change in the Ol’Roy recipe caused the gastrointestinal issues.

Abby + Benadryl = Crazy Dog

So apparently there are a small percentage of people and dogs who don’t get drowsy when they take Benadryl; they experience hyperactivity instead.

Such is the case with Abby.

It’s why she has been constantly pacing and acting nutty the past couple of days. Travis even slept in the living room with her last night so that she could pace freely around the house (he slept out there so he could prevent her from barking all night).

Fleas Bite

We visited Travis’ dad last weekend, and apparently their dogs had fleas. After we got home, we discovered that our dogs also had fleas. Great.

We gave them flea baths with some kind of “natural” flea shampoo, but I don’t think it did much. After a few days, Travis got the dogs (and Oscar) flea collars but it seemed to have very little effect on the dogs. So yesterday Travis washed the dogs with a new flea shampoo (Hartz Ultra Guard Rid Flea & Tick Dog Shampoo, active ingredient Phenothrin 0.27%).

The bath seemed to help Samson, but Abby has been manic ever since her bath: constant panting, pacing, and itching. She seems to only find a little relief outside.

We tried giving her enough benedryl for a 150lb dog, but it didn’t seem to help much. She got a little bit better over night, but she is still very uneasy, and she kept us up a lot of the night with her restless behavior.

The last time she acted like this was when we put some of the flea medication on her. It’s got to be some kind of allergic reaction to the medication. Hopefully she’ll get better soon.

Late Night Disturbances

Last night around 3am Samson woke us up head-butting the door and wanting out of the bedroom. It was at this time when Abby happened to barf twice on the floor in the bedroom (totally unrelated to Sam — he just wanted to lay in the hallway). That's the 2nd time she's done that within the last 3 or 4 months, and she's also had diarrhea on one occasion during that time.

Last night we ate bacon and pancakes for supper, and Travis gave her and Samson both a little bit of each, so maybe that had something to do with it. Another possible factor is that we changed to a new dog food (from Old Roy Large Breed to Iams Large Breed) within the last 6 months.

Anyway, just wanted to document.

How did she know???

So, here's a rundown of what just happened:

Travis said he'd cook supper if I took the dogs for a walk around the neighborhood. Sounded good to me, so I finished up my internet surfing, and 5 or 10 minutes later I got up and went into the bedroom closet to put on my tennis shoes.

Well, as she often does, Abby happened to follow me into the bedroom and as soon as she saw WHICH shoes I was putting on, she was instantly really excited.

I hadn't said A WORD. How did she know?!?! lol If I had grabbed my flipflops or heals or flats, there would have been NO reaction from her at all!

Dogs are so smart. lol

Howloween 2012

We had our 2nd annual halloween party yesterday. It was a blast. :)

Not so much for the dogs, though. We had to keep them pinned up in our bedroom. They behave pretty well, though. We gave them some chew treats, and pet on them whenever we walked by the door (we just had a tall baby gate blocking them in so they could still see all the goings-on).

Anyways, the dogs have been well. Samson has good days and bad days with his knee. Mostly good, I think, but he'll go through an especially "limpy" handful of days every now and then.

Abby threw up yesterday. She ate her supper then yacked it right back up. She later went on to eat a rawhide treat and had no trouble keeping it down, so I think it was probably nothing.

Other than that, Abby's been fine. Very happy and affectionate as always.

Splish Splashin'

We've been thinking of getting a little wading pool for Abby and Samson to enjoy during this crazy heat that won't seem to let up. We were worried that they wouldn't like it, though, so we hadn't bought one yet. Luckily for us, we happened upon a discarded wading pool that somebody had dumped on the curb in our neighborhood. FREEBIE!

So we filled 'er up and here's the results. :)

Samson After 8 Weeks of CM

We slowly weaned Samson off of his 8-week regimen of prednisone last week. He had his last pill Saturday, so he's been completely off of it for a few days now. He's still limping, but the good news is that the limping hasn't gotten worse since he's been off the pred. Keeping our fingers crossed that it stays that way, and he'll continue to heal. Hopefully he'll be back to 100% a year from now…

We continue to give Samson 4 pills per day of glucosamine+chondroitin and fish oil.

For the past couple of weeks Samson and Abby have been getting playful around 9:30 or 10:00 every night. It's hard making them not play because I know they've both got a lot of pent up energy. It's been FOREVER since we've taken them both to walk around the Square, and even though I walk/jog every morning with Abby, that doesn't help with Samson's boredom at all (and if I'm honest, it only barely helps with Abby's).


To tease you a bit — and to break up the monotony of all this news about Sam's bum knee — I've got a cute video of Abby that I'll post later after I've had a bit of time to cut out the dull bits. :)

Upset Tummy

Not the most savory of topics, but this blog is for documenting our dogs' quirky and funny behaviors as much as it is for documenting their illnesses and problems (if not more so for the latter). So here goes.

We came home to a mess in the living room this afternoon where Samson had gotten sick with diarrhea. It's probably nothing (after all, the same thing happens with people from time to time) and is likely due to the prednisone that he's taking. They say that prednisone can cause all kinds of little problems with the digestive system, so we're not going to worry until there's a need. And he's acting normal, so I don't think he necessarily feels sick. We've given him an imodium to help with the loose stool. Hopefully it will just pass and he'll be back to normal tomorrow.

Other than that, Samson seems to be slowly on the mend with his bum knee. We had a brief setback where he was completely tri-podding, but after about a week or two, he was back to his regular limping. This was about 5 or 6 weeks ago (April 15th). He continues to limp now, but we think it might be getting a little better. He's good to walk on it now, though there's still an obvious limp, but he rarely puts much weight on it when he's just standing. We've been a lot more strict on his conservative management since the setback a few weeks ago, and I think it's paying off.

We continue to give him 4 pills per day of glucosamine and chondroitin, 4 pills per day of fish oil, and 1 pill per day of prednisone.

I think the fish oil pills are really making Sam's fur super healthy. lol It's so shiny and soft now!

Abby has been shedding a lot recently so we gave her a bath last week. I think it might have helped...

WWHHYYYYYY???

I had originally intended to post an update on Samson's bum knee, but Abby presented me with a more upbeat topic:



"Why???" I ask. "MOMITWASSOMUCHFUN!" Abby says in answer.

She got a serious bath afterwards. It was so hard to lather up her fur with all of that gritty mud in it. It took almost a whole bottle of dog shampoo! Thankfully she's all clean now.

As for Samson, we think that we're starting to see some improvement in his walking. He's using his right leg to scratch more often now, so hopefully that counts. He still has a very prominent limp, but we think it might be getting a little bit better.

Torn ACL

Or CCL as it's known in dogs.

We've pretty much narrowed down Samson's right-side limping to a partially torn ACL/CCL. We had an antinuclear antibody (ANA) test done on him and it came back negative. This test checks for any kind of autoimmune problems from rheumatoid arthritis to lupus. Since it came back negative, it narrows things down to some kind of injury; and since we know there's no damage to his bones, it's a soft tissue injury.

Because he already had a bad left hip, he probably overcompensates on his right side which led to him being rougher to that side. I'm sure Abby helped too because she likes to tackle him when they play in the yard. She probably T-boned him one day, and it made him hurt his knee.

As treatment, the only thing we can do is "conservative management" (it's pretty much the equivalent of bed rest). The vet says no running in the yard, very limited activity and to keep him as sedentary as possible, like he's in a crate (if we had a crate big enough, we'd just keep him in it, but alas...). I've been taking him out only while he's on a leash, so that he can't chase anything in the yard. It's also easier to keep Abby off of him this way.

Poor Abby doesn't understand why we won't let her play with him, though. She wants to jump on him and run around with him so badly. I feel bad, but we'll have to keep it up for quite a while. The vet says that if our conservative management is working, we should start to see some improvement at about 8 weeks. He won't be healed in 8 weeks, but we should start to see some improvement by then. If not, then we'll have to pursue other more invasive options (a.k.a. surgery).

We are also supposed to keep him on glucosamine+chondroitin, fish oil and remadyl to both manage his pain and also to promote the growth of scar tissue to strengthen his joint.

Hopefully all of this will work. It's gonna be a long 8+ weeks...

A Little Sibling Rivalry

Not my dog and cat. lol

Samson and Abby had their first fight last night. Here's how it went down...

We're renting out our house this weekend for the football game, so we're staying at my parents' house. I had taken the dogs and Oscar to my parents' house yesterday morning before I went to work because our renters were going to arrive at our house at noon. The dogs had been at my parents' house all day and hadn't eaten anything yet (which is like their usual schedule anyway - they tend to eat just once in the evening), so Travis gave them each a rawhide chew to tide them over before we fed them when we went to bed. They ate the treat without any problems.

The trouble came afterwards when Travis put out some of their toys; a couple of the toys were ones in which we often put peanut butter or other treats (they didn't have anything in them this time, though). I guess the stress of being in an unfamiliar place was too much, because as soon as Travis set them on the floor, Abby and Sam just went at it! A lot of growling and barking and showing of teeth, but they never really bit each other (which is usually how most dog fights go anyway). We were able to break it up pretty quickly so the fight probably didn't last 30 seconds. Once they were quiet, we put them face to face with their treats between them, so they'd accept each other and make up. They behaved fine after that, so we gave them some supper (on opposite sides of the room just to be safe lol) to quell the Hunger Monster.

It was quite an exciting evening!

Garbage Diver

When she's bored, Abby will occasionally stick her head in the garbage, pull out a paper plate, and rip it to shreds in the living room. It usually happens when she can hear us outside in the yard or garage.

Abby also still digs when left to her own devices in the back yard. She dug this beauty a few weeks ago; I think she was after a mouse or something...

Samson is still limping. We can't tell that the glucosamine is helping very much. We'll give it until the bottle is used up, then I think we'll try a glucosamin+chondroitin combination and see if that helps any better.

Samson at times has a habit of licking, almost compulsively at times. He'll usually stop if I tell him "enough", but sometimes he just CAN'T stop and keeps licking the air! lol Anyways, we recently noticed a pattern: more often than not, he licks his left leg. I think he licks it when it's paining him, similar to how a person might massage a sore joint. I'm sure this isn't always the reason he licks, but I think perhaps this is a big reason for a lot of it.

There is a bunny living in our back yard. The dogs go absolutely NUTS when they see it outside munching on the grass. And the bunny will just sit outside the window and continue munching the grass while the dogs bark and growl like maniacs at the window 5 feet away. lol Peter Cottontail nearly bit it today, though. Travis was running some water on our deck under which the bunny apparently lives, and the rabbit took off across our back yard. Abby and Samson promptly took up the chase, and Mr. Cottontail came about a foot away from a grizzly death. Lucky bunny. lol

Annual Vaccinations

Gave Samson and Abby their annual vaccinations (not including rabies) today. We bought the vaccines from a Tractor Supply Co. and administered the shots ourselves. They took it like champs and acted like they didn't feel a thing; I think this is more a tribute to their animalistic mentality of "acting like I'm in pain just shows weakness," and not so much my amazing skills at giving shots.

Samson was limping again yesterday but we haven't really noticed it since then, though he has been acting really lazy and not wanting to get up off the floor. I don't know if it's the weather or if he's getting arthritis or what. Time will tell, I guess.

Checkup at the Vet

Samson Stats: 5 years old, 128 lbs.
Abby Stats: 1.5 years old

Samson's birthday was August 31st! Happy birthday, Sam! <3

I took Samson to the veterinarian today for a mini checkup so that we could get more refills for his prednisone (used to treat his allergies during the summer months). I came home on an early lunch break to load him up in the car and take him to the vet. I didn't make a big deal out of it, but Abby knew we were going somewhere and she got pretty excited. Unfortunately, she wasn't coming along. When I walked out with Samson and without Abby, she started barked kind of frantically as though she didn't want to be left alone. I felt so bad for leaving her, because after thinking about it for a minute, she's never been alone in the house --Samson has always been there with her -- so I think she didn't want to be left behind. I imagine she was also a little jealous that he was getting to go out and she wasn't. lol I don't know how long she barked after we left, but I don't believe she did it for very long; it's just not really in her personality to do that. By the time I got back from the vet, she was quiet and excited to see Samson. After a little while of greeting and loving on Sam, she noticed that I had come home, too.

As for the vet visit, Sam did ok. The vet is not his favorite place. Though he liked going when he was little, I think that all changed on a particular visit during which they clipped his nails and hit the quick a few times. He never enjoyed going there after that. And really, who could blame him?

Other than the anxiety he was experiencing, he behaved relatively well all things considered. He didn't try to bolt out the door or anything while we were in the waiting room, but he wasn't waiting calmly either -- lots of panting and restlessness instead. The vet finally came to weigh him and give him a good once-over. He weighed 128 lbs, and she said he looked good. So yay! New Rx of prednisone! :D

In other news, Abby likes to climb up on the couch a lot these days. She'll crawl up there usually when Travis is there on his laptop and she scoots close enough to him so that she's sure to be touching hm. It's pretty cute. And yesterday, she decided to just sit up there by herself for a little while. It was pretty funny:

A Walk in the Grove

We took Samson and Abby to the Grove on campus today. Coach Nutt was giving a welcome speech to all the incoming freshmen, so we thought it'd be a good opportunity to socialize the dogs. Anyways, we harnessed 'em both up and loaded them into the car and drove out to the Grove. Samson always sits patiently in the back seat and looks out the side window. Abby on the other hand stands up the whole time and sticks her head in between the front seats and looks out the front windshield. Once we got on campus, Samson started whining eagerly as he saw people walking around outside; he gets so excited. lol

After we parked and got out of the car, we walked the dogs around and Abby saw her first squirrel. I hadn't realized it, but she's never really seen a squirrel before! She wanted to chase after it, but she behaved and was easy to hold back. It was pretty funny, though.

Samson behaved really well as usual. He loves meeting new people. He usually wears out pretty quickly in this humid heat, though, and it wasn't even all that hot today. So we just made a small circle through the Grove, then headed back to the car.

In other news, Oscar kinda chewed up our camera. Nothing major, just superficial damages, but it really pissed off Travis so now we're in the market for a new camera. lol C'est la vie.

Summer Summary

Abby Stats: 1.5 years old
Samson Stats: almost 5 years old

Just a recap of how the dogs have been this summer. They've been really itchy most of the time, especially the past few weeks; I think it's the changing weather and pollen in the air. Of course there's also the usual amount of shedding, not better or worse, just pretty consistent.

The past few nights, we've noticed Samson limping a little and favoring his right back leg. He did this a couple of months ago, too, and it eventually went away. I wonder what it could be...