Seagull Shadows (& Requiem for a Purple Dinosaur)

Abby is continuing to do really well. Last time I mentioned some tummy issues, which have been continuing off and on, but overall she's fine - and was well enough on Sunday that we did indeed get to go for a Flying Dutchman at In-N-Out. She loved it! She is not usually much of a chow-hound/beggar, but she was totally counter-surfing when we brought that little bit of cheese-and-meat-heaven home.

We've been going to the beach pretty much every day. It's the only place where she smiles. The rest of the time she has an expression pretty much like this on her face:

"Well? When are we going to DO something?"

But when we go to the beach, she looks like this:

"This place is AWESOME!"

Happy, beach-bound girl!

And when we get there, she's even happier:






Yesterday at the beach, this old man that I often see there walking his pooch, came up to me and shook my hand and introduced himself (Chuck - and his dog, Elton. Great name for a dog, eh?). He said, "I see you here all the time and I just wanted to say how much I admire you both." Both? I get that Abby is very admirable, running around like nothing's wrong, laughing in the face of adversity ("Hahahah! Stupid Adversity!!") but I'm not sure why he says he admires us both. I'm just there walking with my doggy, like all the other "regulars." Anyway, it was very sweet. And chalk up another admirer for Abby.


Toenail update: In my last post, I had her taped up into a sock trying to help her torn toenail heal. Well, it is still bothering her a little bit, but she chewed holes in the sock, so sock therapy had to stop. It seems to be getting better though and she doesn't lick it as much. At any rate, it's not slowing her down one bit. Here is video evidence of how she still races around. I captured her this morning at Fiesta Island chasing seagull shadows. (Remember I mentioned that she goes nuts for flashlights and candles? Well, it's the same for pretty much all reflecty/shiny things as well and fast moving shadows. She's nuts.) You'll see in the video that the seagull flies by on my right, but Abby takes off to the left - chasing the shadow instead of the low-flying bird. (You might want to turn the sound down or just mute all together - it was really windy today so the sound is not great, plus there's my squeaky voice cheering her on.) She runs SO fast and so far away that you can barely see her. Not the greatest quality video - but I just used my little iPod Nano to shoot it. [Amazing that you can carry something so small around and record videos with it! Thank you, Steve Jobs and may you RIP.]

Barney update: In Barney news, Abby has successfully managed to kill him dead. In the last photos I posted of him, he had been turned into a uni-pawd with a colostomy bag but he was still hanging in there. With the exception of his small and large intestine, most of his internal organs were still intact. Well, the other day I got up to find these remains of Barney (careful... these are gruesome and not for the squeamish...):

No limbs. No eyes. No lower jaw. No innards. He's toast. But he still insists that he loves us! What a chump. Thanks for the good times, Barney.

That's pretty much all the news from Abby-land. Thanks for reading.

Eleven Months!

Today is Abby's 11 month ampuversary! Boy, the time has flown! We went to Fiesta Island this morning and I told this old guy walking his German Shepherds that it was her anniversary. He was very impressed with her and gave her some loving and called her "amazing" and "a princess". That's for sure! We don't call her Tripawd Warrior Princess for nuthin'!

There will definitely be an In-N-Out Flying Dutchman in her near future to celebrate. She's been having just a wee bit of a tummy issues (not a 100% "solid citizen" as my brother-in-law would say) so we probably won't do too much in terms of food celebrations today - but there will be lots of loving and tummy rubs. (Luckily she is not that much of a chow hound, because in my personal opinion, a celebration without special foods is like a day in Abu Ghraib.)

"I'm not thrilled about this..."

In addition to her tummy issues, she's been having a problem with one of her toenails. It's sort of torn, way down near the quick and she's been licking it like crazy, so we've been trimming it a tiny bit at a time (she hates having her nails trimmed!). I put some neosporin/pain killer ointment on it the other day and then taped her up in a little, old slipper-sock of mine. She was not thrilled about the sock - but she looked pretty cute sock-hopping around here.



In other anniversary news, it was our 15 year wedding anniversary last week, so thought I'd throw in a pic of us from that day, back when we were so much younger/cuter. Oh, and we both had a lot more hair back then! Darn... just had an awesome idea... we should have tried to recreate this pose for our anniversary. Hah! Oh well - maybe next time we are in Flagstaff, or for our 20th anniversary...



Not much else going on around here, so I'll just end with some cute pics of our girl. Here she is, waiting by the garage entrance door because she heard Daddy coming home:

"Is that my daddy??"

And here she is loving on Daddy. She's such a ham. They were being all lovey, so I got my camera, and when she heard the camera she turned toward me. She's always ready for her close up! [Oh, and if you were wondering... No, he does NOT care if he gets dog hair all over his nice work pants. Much to my chagrin. I have to chase him around with the lint roller!] 

Back to the Beach

We went back to the beach today for the first time since the "toe incident" last week. Abby was more than ready to go back after four days sans-beach! The first day went OK, because we were busy - she had to go to her oncologist appointment and then we went to visit our friend Mazli, plus we had our little Arby's picnic at the park, so all that tired her out. Day Two was OK as well - she was a little tired from the pain meds and content enough with just a wee walk in the neighborhood and a photo shoot (she always enjoys a bit of modeling):

"How cute am I?"

Is this what they mean by "get a long little doggy"?

Chilling & watching mama make dinner

But, by day three she'd had enough laying around! She took her frustrations out on Barney, starting with turning him into a tripawd:

Day Four she turned him into a uni-pawd with a purple colostomy bag. (That little bag actually holds the remains of his music-box-innards. Luckily we no longer have to hear that song!)

So today I pretty much had to take her back to the beach or there's no telling what she might have chewed next. Here is a very short video to show that she was feeling fine. (Ignore my high squeaky voice... In fact, you might want to turn the volume down so it doesn't pierce your ear drum...)

It was pretty quiet at first, as you can see from the mostly empty beach in the video, but we did run into some of her friends later and she had a good time playing. She did stumble once on some of the softer, deeper sand, so I think her toe might still hurt a wee bit, but she is not about to let it slow her down. I wish she would be a little more careful with herself, but that is not part of her plan.

One last little thing - remember Lylee, the Tripawd Warrior Princess with her pink cape who I mentioned in my last post? Well, we found out last night that she is the lucky latest stop on the continuing Kill Barney Tour. Check out the link for some cute pics of her and her Monkeybutt siblings with the box o' Barney. [If you missed it, I explained Monkeybutts here.]

Thanks for reading and for the well wishes for Abby!

And Yet More Worrying!

Let me just cut to the chase and say Abby had a good check up. But not before scaring us, yet again.

This latest round of scaring started last night. We were watching the Rugby World Cup (which is INSANE and so interesting to watch, btw. If you've never watched rugby before, it's pretty fascinating. You can't believe the things that happen to these big beefy dudes and how they throw themselves at each other - and yet, no one ever gets carried off on a stretcher! At least, not that we have seen yet...) Anyway, we were watching US v. Russia - nothing like a good old cold war rivalry - and the US was doing well*, so Mike yelled "Go!", and Abby went.... She started racing up and down our long stretch of hardwood floor and spazzing out, and then suddenly pulled up lame. She flopped over onto the area rug and held up her lone good front leg out as if to say, "This hurts really bad!

Panic set it, but after a few minutes of resting, she was up and hopping about again. Then in the night I heard her get up to bark at something. She must have re-hurt herself, because in the morning she could barely walk. I attempted to carry her around all morning (she insists on being in whatever room I'm in), which was just barely doable. She is "only" 45 lbs, but rather unwieldy.

I got her oncologist visit rescheduled to an earlier time, got the Tripawds folks busy sending positive thoughts (or "pawsitive" as we like to say on the site - yes, we are silly that way), and hoped it wasn't a case of the cancer spreading to her good leg.

At her appointment, Dr. V. messed with her shoulder, ankle, wrist and toe and the only time she fussed was with the toe. Hooray! He said it doesn't seem swollen at all so is probably just a mild sprain. He said it is very very rare for OSA to spread to a toe, so not to worry. He said to give her tramadol for the pain and only do short leash walks in the neighborhood for a few days. No beach. But that is good timing as Fiesta Island is closed for 3 days because of some big silly boat race thingy, so we couldn't go there anyway. If all goes well she can go back to the beach next week. :)

In other good news, he listened to her lungs for a good long time and said they sounded great. He said if we didn't know the mets were in there (damn Boris & Natasha!) he wouldn't be able to tell there was anything wrong with her. In additional good news, she weighed 47 lbs, which is great as we are trying to get her weight up just a bit. To celebrate all the good news, Abby and I stopped at Arbys and got a roast beef sandwich for lunch. We stopped at the park and shared it. :)

Next appointment will be for x-rays to check on Boris & Natasha on Oct 28 – just one day shy of her one year ampuversary!!

Sorry I have no pics of Abby to share today. I hate to have a post without any pics, so I'll just post this drawing I did that I put up on Facebook and on the Tripawds site, so most of you have already seen it. We've been joking lately on the Tripawds forums about "Tripawd Girl Power" and how our hero girls needed some pink capes, so I did this drawing of some Tripawd Warrior Princesses (TWP) - that is Abby in the middle. 

One of the ladies ran with my idea and made a pink cape for her TWP, Lylee. Here is Lylee modeling her cape (with sparkles even!) at a Tripawds get together in Northern California. Wish we could have gone!

Unfortunately, Abby didn't have a pink cape to wear to her appointment today, but she wore her Tripawds bandana instead, and I'm sure it brought her good luck. 

Thanks for reading and thanks for thinking good thoughts for our girl! 

* The US won! The matches are on Universal Sports Network - you should check one out. It makes American football look like powder-puff girls.

Flashlight Madness & Swimming Bears

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. Not too much has been happening with Abby, so there hasn't been a whole lot to write about. She's doing well, after that little scare she gave us (in my previous post) with the combined tummy trouble/toe problem/heat issues. We've been taking her to the beach and she runs like her usual nutty self. Her energy and appetite still both seem to be really good, so we are pleased about that!

"Woah, it's dark out there."

You probably all heard (and some of you lived through...) the Great San Diego Blackout of 2011. Well, we missed all the excitement. We left town that day at exactly 3:20, missing the traffic chaos by twenty minutes. Whoohoo! We went to spend the night at my sister's, so Abby stayed with aunt Terry and uncle Jon and cousin Lou, the Corgi. We called that night to check on Abby and to see how they were doing in the blackout and heard a LOT of barking in the background. That was when I remembered that Abby goes nuts for flashlights. She has "a thing" for lights and reflections of any kind (sort of an Overly Attentive Light Disorder), and flashlights especially make her crazy. Apparently so do candles. :) So my sis and brother-in-law had the fun of trying to keep her calm with all the flickering lights and flashlight beams!

"Aunt Terry, the flash is too bright!"

Exhausted from the blackout madness.

On the plus side, Terry said they had a lovely walk at dusk and everyone was out and about in the neighborhood (cuz there was nuthin' else to do). Abby was apparently quite the topic of conversation with neighbors they had never met before. Ah, three-legged dogs... bringing folks together. (In that picture to the right, she is resting on the daybed that she's not supposed to sleep on without a cover on it, but she gets away with a lot since she is the sweet cancer puppy... Besides, she looks cute on it!)

In other non-Abby news, but in cute-photo news, Mike took Tuesday off and we went to the zoo. I was a little worried it would be boring since it was mid-morning by the time we got there and sort of warm, but the heat was a good thing since we saw a lot of animals in the water, even some of the elephants which was very cool. The best were the polar bears, so we watched them for a long time. The one bear had a bone that she was totally batting around underwater, like it was a volleyball.

Dropped the bone and had to dive for it.

 

This big ol' polar bear grabbed a mouthful of carrots off a rock and then sat in the water right in front of the window eating them. If you click on the pic and see the bigger version of it, you can see what a slob he is -- there are carrot crumbs all over his tummy. I can relate to that. Although, with me it is usually something more like cookie crumbs...

That's about it for news around here. Abby has a follow-up appointment on Friday. It shouldn't be a big deal - no x-rays this go round - but keep fingers and paws crossed please that when Dr. V. listens to her lungs and heart everything will sound good!

Ah, the Ups & Downs...And Monkeybutts Explained

Downs
OK, so... it's been a bit of a stressful week. In my last post I mentioned we took Monday off from the beach because I was worried about Abby's leg and lack of stamina. Well, Monday night, after having a bad bout of tummy trouble, she was suddenly her old self - racing around, play bowing, jumping on me, etc. She seemed totally fine, so we met up with her buddy, Dakota, at the beach on Tuesday like usual. She was OK at first, but then started stumbling again. We turned back way early but she still was stumbling and breathing a little heavy and laid down several times, which is NOT normal. I was very upset the whole way home and imagining terrible things…

Ups
While I was waiting for Dr. V. to call back, she started furiously licking one toenail and then she jumped up to race around and chase a fly! So, I figured either she is the most stoic dog ever, or there's no spread of cancer to that leg (which is what I had imagined)… Dr. V. thinks it is just a combo of things all hitting at once: the heat sapping her energy, bit of a tummy issue (maybe ate/drank something funky at the bay) also sapping her energy, plus a problem with her toenail and/or a strained wrist. I think she may have slightly torn a toenail at the base, which if you think about it, would hurt like crazy on the uneven surface at the beach - not to mention the sand and salt water getting in there. So the last two days we have just done short walks in the neighborhood and she's done OK with that. Tomorrow we will attempt the beach again, but plan to take it a little easy.


Monkeybutts
It's been a rough couple of days, but as usual the folks at the Tripawds.com site help you through these things. One of things I love about the Tripawds community is that there are some darn funny people on there. (Gee, using humor to deal with adversity... who'da thunk it??) Well, one of the funniest folks on the site made Abby a special video for her 10 month ampuversary, which I've included below. But before you watch it, I have to explain about Monkeybutts...

Monkeybutts (Latin: canis monkeyanticus familiaris OR canis lupus jealousicus) are other dogs (or cats or ferrets, etc.) who live in the house with a tripawd and get up to all sorts of antics due to their jealousy over all the special attention tripawds get - like car rides! (trips to the vet) and treats! (pills hidden in food). The Monkeybutts try to stir up friendly trouble with the AMBF (the Anti MonkeyButt Forces) on the Tripawds site. Abby is a proud member of the AMBF! The Monkeybutts' leader is this little tyke pictured to the right: Rocket, aka "Monkeybutt-Bunny Vampire Pirate". He is the one who made the video for Abby - which is why (as you'll see) it is not the...er, love message you might be expecting.

Abby explained to Monkeybutt that she saw the hidden message in the video... Just like god backwards is dog, she figured out that NOT backwards is TON and that Monkeybutt-Bunny was really trying to say that he likes her a TON! (I may have left you all with the Barney song in your head a couple of posts back; now just try to get this ditty outta your head!)

One More Little "Up"
Today Abby and I went and got sandwiches and then hijacked Mike from work and took him to the park for a wee picnic lunch and a nice stroll/hop in the sun. It was very nice.

And One More Big "Down"
Hate to end on a sad note, but I wanted to mention to please send good vibes out to Chili Dawg's family. Chili Dawg was the tripawd golden that we sent Barney on to. Sweet Chili didn't make it. (You might not want to click this link unless you have tissues handy...) He had an appointment with heaven that he couldn't miss. He didn't even get to have much fun with Barney, and had to let his monkeybutt brother, Finchy the boxer, try to kill Barney. The Tripawds folks are all very sad about the loss of Chili, a great Tripawd Warrior.

Double Digits!

Today is Abby's 10 month ampuversary - that's right, she has made it to double digits! Whoohoo!

Unfortunately, we are not having a super celebratory day... Normally we would have gone to the beach this morning, but yesterday she gave us a little scare. We took her to the beach for a walk/run, like we always do on Sundays, and as we were running down the hill at the far end of the beach, she face-planted. She got up and immediately face-planted again. That second one was a little more worrisome. Then she acted a little strange at home – hopping around quite slowly and just not seeming like herself. (She didn't even terrorize me at night like she normally does - chewing my toes while I try to lay on the couch and relax.) But... yesterday was pretty much the hottest day we have had here yet (it's been a cool summer at our house until just the other day) so I'm hoping it was just that the heat got to her and that she maybe tweaked her leg a little when she took the tumble.

Of course, as soon as I decided today that she should stay home and take it easy, she started racing around chasing a fly – so I'm assuming the leg doesn't hurt or she wouldn't do that, no?? Anyway, it is supposed to be hot again today so I think we will just take it easy and hopefully be back at the beach tomorrow.

I can't help the sinking feeling that the cancer has spread to her good front leg… I keep looking at it seeing (imaginary??) strange swelling, but hopefully that is totally not the case (and is just my paranoia). And hopefully Boris & Natasha are still all alone in there…

We will at least break out a Frosty Paw to celebrate making it to DOUBLE DIGITS!!! Whoohoo! This was a big one – I really wanted to hit those double digits… Now our next BIG goal is ONE YEAR. Come on, Ab, you can do it!

On a brighter note - Friday was a great day. It was National Dog Day so we went to the beach for an extra long time. I took a lot of pics of her:

"I ran with some big dogs...

...and a little dog that kinda looked like me."

"I looked for my friend, Gopher, like I always do."

"Mom took a gazillion pics. She likes this one best."

Abby also got a Frosty Paw that day. It was a good day to be a dog - but then, every day is pretty much Dog Day at our house.