Too Many Dogs

Lately my bank account has been whispering in my ear of an evening, telling me that I have too many dogs.  My bank account is right!  So I decided to do something about it, and started experimenting with some genetic mutations.

I tried splicing Dexter and Spring together.

The crazed 6 legged result was not the smooth melding I was hoping for.

I can’t recall what my goal for Piper was, but I ended up with a gimpy, half bald mutt.

Everyone say it with me: “Le sigh.”

I dunno what’s going on with my doggie universe, but we’re having another run of bad luck ’round these parts.

First there was A Wootie Hole you’ll remember from a couple of weeks back.  (And no, I’m not cleverly insinuating that Wootie is an A Hole.)(Even though he is.)  The porky little fellow is all healed up, though none the skinnier for the experience.

This would be a kind of poignant photo, if he didn’t look like he swallowed a hot air balloon.

(Though he is not as fat as these dogs, so I guess that counts for something)

He healed up just in time to pass his bad luck on to Piper, who for the first time in 10 years decided to nurture her very own hot spot.  I have never before had a dog with a hot spot, so I was very caught off guard.

The damn thing spread like wildfire in a dry BC forest too; I couldn’t keep up with it until I had shaved nearly half her back, and part of her tail and thigh for good measure.  She was ripping out her own hair in CHUNKS to get at it, so I figured I’d save her the trouble and shave it off myself.  I slathered her with a variety of topicals until we finally stumbled on something called Vetericyn, which dried it up like a hot damn and put an end to its insidious spread.  I was so impressed with how well it worked that I tried it on Dexter’s hot pink, hairless grass allergy chest and his skin returned to its regular colour after just one application.  I’m a convert!  I just wish Cesar Milan wasn’t plastered all over their website.

Between my ailing dogs, and last week’s meltdown over Phoenix my foster puppy – who is doing MUCH better now, btw.  Here’s what she looked like the day before I transferred her to her new foster home a few days after I posted about her:

So much better, right?  Even though she kinda looks like a Mexican Day Of The Dead doll.  Turns out she had a nasty staph infection, and the right combination of antibiotics and painkillers started healing her right up – well, the scabby infected bits anyway.  The gimpy legs are an other story altogether.  I transferred her to Hugabull Rescue, a fantastic local pit bull rescue group who works hard to help pitties in shelters all around BC.  I figured that a little baby pitty deserved to be raised and placed by people who are pitty pros.  As a breed rescuer, I have great respect for the knowledge that responsible, reputable breed rescues squirrel away in their overworked brains, and I think they are generally better equipped to help the dogs of their chosen breed.

And while I’m on the subject, I should take a minute to thank you all for your kind comments on last week’s rant too.  Sometimes a gal just has to have a meltdown, and since I can’t have them at work, you get to be the lucky recipients ;-)  It was a pretty shitty week or two though – Phoenix was just the scabby icing on the crap cake of inhumanity that samba’d through the shelter, and I was kind of losing hope in anything good happening ever again.

I know there are lots of good people in the world, along with the bad ones.  A lady brought the shelter staff cupcakes when her blind, ancient dog was picked up by Animal Control and spent the night in in our kennels – she was THAT grateful he was safe.  Those are nice times.  But some weeks, everyone who comes in is a giant douchebag, or at least they act like it.  And it wears a bit thin, you know?  I was starting to feel like this:

Working 6 or 7 days a week for about 5 weeks straight probably wasn’t helping either.  This week I finally got two days in a row off, and the first and most important thing I absolutely had to do was take the dogs to the beach before winter revisits us for another 9 months or however long it lasts here on the West Coast.

Dexter thought this was an absolutely fabulous idea.

He made me some wonderful photos!

The WooTWoo were happy, naturally.

Even though it was the beach, and therefore had a large watery percentage,  TWooie nevertheless enjoyed himself.

And Spring never. Stopped. Running. The whole time we were there.

Spring has the best zoomies-for-no-reason of any dog, anywhere, hands down.

What a beautiful day!  Mid September and the weather is still sunny and in the mid 20s.  There was nobody as the beach except for us.  It almost a perfect day.

Except I missed my main man, Tweedles :(

Who was at home, in a crate, feeling sorry for himself.  Probably being called names by my bank account, just to add insult to injury.

Those of you who are fans on Facebook joined me yesterday in begging the Universe not to give Tweed bone cancer.  See, about a week ago Tweed’s regular, everyday “I haz a little limp” turned into a slightly more serious “Ouch, dude, my foot really hurts.”  And with every passing day, his limp got more serious until Wednesday night when he wasn’t putting any weight on his foot at all.  I took a good look at it in the morning, and saw that it was not his foot that looked bothersome, but his his wrist, which was all swollen and puffy looking.  To me anyway.

The amazing Dr. Bowra has the same days off as me, so when I called to see if he could squeeze us in if I took off from work early, he kindly obliged.  I was REALLY hoping he would tell me it was my imagination when I explained that his wrist felt “squishy rather than pointy.”  But instead he said “oh my” when he looked down at Tweed’s leg.

That’s about as awesome as hearing your tattoo artist say “oh shit.”

We took x-rays of his wrist that showed some significant changes and/or damage to his wrist joint, but Dr. Bowra was unable to say what they might be, so he had to send them to a radiologi$t.  He said he didn’t think it was bone cancer, but he wasn’t going to totally rule that out either, and wanted a second opinion.

In the end, everyone agreed that Tweed does not have bone cancer.

Yay!

But there is definitely something wrong with his wrist.  It looks like it might be cracked/fractured, or possibly a small piece of bone has splintered off.  We had a nice long chat about various options, and Dr. Bowra said something I actually liked to hear, which was “even if you won the 649 and wanted to do all the surgical intervention possible, I would still recommend against surgery at this point, as we don’t really know what we are looking for.”  Finally, a chance to NOT spend all my money!  Because you know if Tweed needed surgery, I would sell everything I owned to pay for it.  I’d probably sell YOU if I could get away with it.

I’d *definitely* sell the WooTWoo.  BY THE POUND.

Twooie: Whaaaaat?

Wootie: Relax dude, she’s all talk.

So Tweed is in a cast/splint for a couple of weeks, hopefully rest and anti-inflammatories will heal him up reasonably well, and if not, we can at least get some new x-rays to see if we can identify the root of the problem once all the swelling has gone done.

I am bummed that Tweed missed what will probably be the last beach trip of the year.  But I am THRILLED that he does not have cancer.  Because as I have stressed many many times before, Tweed is never allowed to die.  Period.  He must live forever.

So he will :)