Belated Merry Christmas!

Had intended to do a pre-Christmas post, but since we had an offer on our house on the 23rd (Hoorah!), things got a little crazy-busy and I never got around to it before the Christmas festivities began.

Abby had a lovely Christmas, as the photos below will attest. She got to come along to the family Christmas Eve celebration at my sisters as well as to Christmas Dinner at my brothers by playing the cancer card. (Mike kept saying, "She can't stay home alone on Christmas - she has cancer!")
At my sister's, she jumped up at the noise of the self-timer on the camera while we were trying to do the group shot. As you can see, we are all cracking up, thinking it was going to be a close-up photo of her nose. Instead, it caught all of us laughing and her tail.


On Christmas, Abby got to open her present -- a Skinneeez un-stuffed beaver, which she hopefully will not tear apart since there is no stuffing to get at. I realized after she opened it (since I bought it online and hadn't actually seen it) that it has no forearms, so it's sort of an appropriate gift for a missing-forearm girl. 

Today, we took her to Fiesta Island, where we ran into Dakota and her parents. It was a great surprise. With all the rain we've had, Abby hadn't been to Fiesta Island or the dog park in ages and hadn't seen her friend since before Thanksgiving. They had a great time playing. As you can see, Dakota took advantage of her two-front-feet status to throw a right cross at Abby (she is a boxer after all) and try to gain the coveted stick.

 All in all, it was an excellent holiday. Hope yours was great as well!

Spreading Tripawd Cheer (For a Fee?)

Abby, Mike and I have been exploring our new neighborhood a bit. Most of the streets are quite hilly. She looks so cute going uphill: she has to take smaller hops, and her ears bob up and down and it's quite adorable. It's also quite the workout! Especially since it's apparently easier for her to run than hop uphill, so she often breaks into a run. She runs so fast I can barely keep up with her.

The other night we were out walking/hopping along our street, and we saw a man coming up the hill of the side street, head down, staring at the sidewalk. He stopped and said, "Oh!" when he saw Abby, and leaned forward so she could sniff his hand. Then when he saw that she only had three legs, he said, "Awwwww!" I was trying to keep her from jumping on him and kissing him, (as she is wont to do with everyone) but he got down on one knee and let her totally kiss him. He asked us a lot of questions about her, and kept petting her the whole time. He would massage her back for a while, then she'd attack him again with more kisses all over his face and neck.

He told us about how he'd lost his beloved 12-year-old Rottweiler six months ago, and he can't get over it. He still walks the same route every night that he used to do with her. He gave us his business card (he's an electrician) and said, "If you ever go away, I'll watch her for you. And I'll pay you." We could use a little electrical work at the new house, so . . . maybe we can work out a deal. For every hour of work he does for us, he can have/love on Abby for an hour. Fair?

I don't have any new pics of Abby, so I'm instead attaching a picture of this cutest pup that I got to love on at Helen Woodward today. It was my volunteer afternoon. They don't have that many older dogs right now, so all of them had been walked by the time I got there, so I spent my shift doing laundry - to get in out of the cold, wet day - and loving on puppies. This little guy is named Butterfingers. His ears are so cute! If you try to fold them down, they just boing right back into place. Adorable. And such a cuddle bug. I'm in love with him. He better not still be there by next Monday, or Abby may end up with a little brother . . .

Halfway Done!

Hello! So sorry we've been gone for so long. As I mentioned, we're in the middle of moving. Just finally got internet re-set up at the new house a couple of days ago, so I'm finally back in the blogging mode. 

The biggest Abby news since we've been away was that she had her third chemo treatment three days ago, so we are at the halfway point. Hoorah! Can't wait til we are done. The oncologist said that we are doing everything we can (max dosage, aggressive schedule, feeding her well) and that she's doing great so far (no weight loss, extremely minimal side effects, great energy, blood lab work continues to look good), so we're hopeful. He said we got the vast majority of the cancer out of her when we had her leg amputated, so there are only microscopic bits of that crap still in her--which we are blasting with the chemo. So... we'll see. And we'll see soon, because the next time we go in for chemo (Dec. 28), he's going to do another chest x-ray and we'll see if her lungs still look clear. I'm a bit nervous about that, but hopeful. Please keep good thoughts for Abby and we'll of course post what the results are after that appointment. 

Will post more tomorrow about how Abby is enjoying the new neighborhood, but for now, here is a picture of her enjoying the view. (We live on a canyon now, which I'd said before I didn't want to do--but, now, here we are. Of course, I also said I wouldn't do chemo on a dog, so I guess you should probably pay no attention to the things I say I'll never do.)

Very Quick Post

Sorry I've been remiss in posting lately... We are in the midst of moving and are constantly running back and forth between the two houses. We don't have internet yet at the new place.  Abby seems to love the new house. Will post more--hopefully tomorrow, along w/ pics of Abby. 

Open house today - wish us luck!

Will It Grow Back?

This Sunday, we took Abby to Fiesta Island again. Some little boys came up to us and were interested in her. One of them asked if her leg would grow back. That gave Mike the idea to attempt splicing lizard DNA into her cells, so that her shed limb could be re-grown. If only we had a gene-splicer!

She continues to do great, post-chemo. She's been very spunky - although, I must admit, this was the first time I ever saw her lay down at Fiesta Island. She played so hard with this one little puppy, chasing her up and down the hill, plus chasing birds (videos of both below) that she was wiped out. She had to have a little rest in the sand before we made it all the way back to the car. In the puppy chasing video, you can hear her snarling at the puppy. She gets frustrated when she can't catch another dog, and will try to grab it by the tail as it flies by. (She was that way pre-amp as well...)

Also this weekend, in non-dog-related events, I went with my sister, Jean, to my other sister's house, to paint windows. It's a bit of a tradition that we get together to paint Kath's windows every Christmas. Each year the windows feature Kath's dog, Indy. This year the theme is "A Christmas Dog Story." The windows came out pretty darn cute, if we do say so ourselves.

Chemo-Shmeemo

Abby continues to breeze through her chemo! Hoorah. She had her 2nd treatment on Tuesday and we've had no side effects (other than the popcorn not agreeing with her). This time we didn't even have to resort to feeding her plain pasta--she ate pretty normally at every meal. (Although she has not eaten a bowl of just plain ol' dry kibble-which used to be her standard diet-since her update-to-tripawd surgery on Oct. 29. She always gets a little extra somethin' in there now. With all the leftover turkey we've had, it's been easy to entice her to eat a bowl of half-kibble, half-turkey.)

Since she's doing so well, she'll go to an every-two-weeks schedule now, so her next treatment will be Dec. 14, which will likely be the halfway point. 

This time when I took her in, the oncologist said they would check her blood before administering the chemo. If things didn't look good (white cell count I guess) then they would have had to delay the chemo, but he said she was doing great. He also looked at her incision really well. She has this little nubbin (as I like to call it) now where they tied off the sutures on the inside. He said once the sutures are fully absorbed it will go away - which is good, because I'm constantly saying to her, "stop licking your nubbin!" It's already looking a lot better, and her hair continues to grow back so she's looking pretty great.

 Yesterday was her first visit to the dog park (just a regular dog park - as opposed to Fiesta Island, where there's the ocean and MUCH wider open spaces). There weren't too many other dogs. At first it was just Abby and her good friend Dakota, who you probably remember from their play date a while back. Then Pasha showed up. She had a great time! 

I finally got my camera back, as evidenced by the dog park photos. Posted below are a few belated photos of Abby and Leo at Thanksgiving. As you can see, they love each other:

Here they are kissing

Here they are hugging

Here they are begging.

Post-Chemo Popcorn - Not As Good An Idea As You Might Think

Abby had her second round of chemo today. I think she enjoyed it as much as the last visit. She loves the fuss everyone makes over her there, and she loves giving them all kisses. 

Hopefully her reaction to the chemo will be as minimal as last time. She certainly seemed to have tons of energy afterward! She did throw up a very tiny bit this afternoon – but I think that was because the post-chemo popcorn I gave her didn’t go down well. I guess post-chemo popcorn is a bad idea, and will remember that in future. I need to get this posted and then go see how she feels about dinner tonight. Hopefully she’ll have an appetite. I’ve got everything in the house to tempt her with: turkey, salmon, cottage cheese, and good old plain pasta.

The oncologist said she’s doing great, so we are going to move her chemo appointments to every two weeks instead of every three. Take that, Cancer!

Not much else to report. Crazy busy around here. Think I forgot to post a follow up to my mention a few posts back that we'd put an offer on a house. Well, it was accepted, so now we are busy busy busy trying to get our own house ready to go on the market and getting things lined up for the new house. We have the inspection of the new place on Thursday, so if all goes well with that, it should be a done deal. Oh, and you may recall that I mentioned in that same earlier post that we'd written a letter to the owners and mentioned how much we wanted to get a one-story house since our pup got cancer and had to have her leg amputated. I was a little worried that maybe the people wouldn't be dog lovers - but not to worry, they are! In fact, they sent the nicest letter back. She wrote, "Whether it's a person or an animal who is afflicted, cancer has a way of changing your outlook and changing your life," and wished us all the best with Abby. Sweet, huh?

Sorry no pics today, but if you link here my bro posted a bunch of pics of Abby and Leo playing in their yard on Thanksgiving day. Many action shots!