Why the Dino?? (& Abby Stuff)

Thought I would take a short break from the actual events of this stop on the Kill Barney Tour (KBT) to 'splain a little bit more about Barney and what the KBT is all about. I explained it a bit a while ago, but folks may have missed that, and also I didn't explain what I think Barney means to the Tripawds community.

The very same Barney that we are now hosting once belonged to Jerry, who is now known on the Tripawds site as Spirit Jerry since he's no longer with us in the flesh. Jerry was the Original Tripawd--the dog that inspired his pawrents to start the Tripawds site. Jerry has been gone since 2008, but his spirit lives on in the Tripawds community, which has been a really amazing place to go for support and answers during all of this. Everyone on there is very nice and very helpful - and some of them are damn funny.

Which brings us back to the KBT. If I'm counting stops correctly on the KBT map, we are the 25th house to host Barney. Barney travels with a journal and everyone who has hosted him writes about their tripawd pooch and a little bit about Barney's visit. Here is what one woman wrote, which I think sums up nicely why we are all spending time doing silly things with a stinky purple dinosaur:

"I cannot begin to express my gratitude over this Barney. I believe he carries strength from all the tripawd and quad-pawds he's visited. He has been a great source of comfort to us during his visit."

Here's what I'm planning to write in his journal:

"It’s been an honor to host Barney. The Tripawds family has been so great and supportive and it’s nice to have something tangible we can all share that brings a good laugh along with it. Barney is a great symbol for sharing our strengths, our hopes and even a laugh in the face of tough times."

So hopefully that explains why a grown woman is playing with a stuffed dino. It's nice to bring a little silliness to the sucky roller coaster ride that is canine osteosarcoma. I mean, really, how can you not look at something like this and at least crack a smile?

In other news (many of you will already know this from Facebook)... remember this drawing I did of Abby?

Well, the Tripawds folks are putting it on T-shirts and gifts and such, and you can customize the items with your own caption. I ordered a bunch of stuff today, most of it with the caption: Tri to relax. Can't wait to get it!

It's All Happening At the Zoo...

...including carrying around a stinky stuffed dino in a backpack and whipping him out every few minutes for a photo op. My sister, Kathy, went with me to help me take the pictures. We had a good time, giggling as we set up our shots. I think Barney had a good time too - even though we kept stuffing him back in the bag and were generally embarrassed to be seen with him. He seemed oblivious to all that though. (I think because he is a few fluff balls shy of a full bag of stuffing!) 

Anyway, here he is at the zoo. 

First stop: the flamingos

Barney loved the hippos. (Same body type.)

The leopard totally ignored Barney...

...but I'm pretty sure the polar bear wanted to eat him.

Barney thought the polar bear wanted to eat him too and attempted to flee the scene

Later he found solace with this sloth

...and found a little something with this elephant statue as well...

He needed some water after that.

And he demanded another massage. (Spoiled!)

A giant eagle tried to fly off with him!!

But Kath intervened just in time and saved him. Phew!

 

The irony of the dino skeleton on this little Ranger Rick guy's jacket was lost on Barney. (Is it any surprise that Barney doesn't get irony? I don't think so... He's basically a complete moron.)

We also stopped at the gift shop and let Barney pick out some items for the box that he travels in. (There are lots of mementos from his other visits.) He selected a nice picture frame and a panda bear pin. He saw these guys while we were shopping and had to stop for a moment; he said they were his "peeps":

We had such a good time at the zoo that afterwards we took him to Balboa Park as well.

Hanging at the Lily Pond

Chillin' by the fountain

"Look, I'm Godzilla! I'm going to knock down the Bell Tower!" (He thought that was hilarious. Such a tourist.)

Up next: the beach - and Abby brings the hurt.

He's Heeeeere!

...which she immediately started to destroy

Last time I posted it was the day before Abby's 2nd birthday. Before we get to the Big News, here's a quick run down of her extended birthday celebrations in photos:

On her bday, she got a new toy...

The next day, she got ANOTHER new toy - this one from her Aunt Terry...

...and she did not want to give it up!

The *next* day, she got a new bone.

Have to be creative when chewing these!

 

THEN... she got a box full of goodies...

...including Barney!

Yes! The Kill Barney Tour has arrived in San Diego! A shout out to the Oaktown Pack for sending Barney our way, and especially to Codie Rae (who is a star tripawd and seen in a real live music video. She is kinda a Big Deal and is Abby's idol.) You may recall I blogged back in June about how we were Begging for Barney, [and if you don't recall, you may want to check that post out because it explains all this Barney stuff...) and now he's here!

Barney has been to see a lot of Tripawds and he's getting a bit...odiferous. Abby gave him a very thorough sniffing.

She sniffed him ALL over.

And then she started to eat him.

 Now, it is the KILL Barney Tour, but I have plans for him first... so I had to get him away from her:

 Then I had to put him up where she couldn't get him:

He travels with a box full of goodies - some memorabilia from all the places he's been, plus a diary that journals his travels. There is also a stamp pad to add your tripawd's paw print into the journal. Haven't done that yet.... Should be interesting. Anyway, the stuff he travels with is getting pretty stinky too, so here is Abby looking for Barney - in vain - amongst his accoutrement:

Here's the thing... I don't think we should just leap right in and kill him. I think we should lull him into a false sense of security. And THEN kill him. Remember that scene in Marathon Man when Dustin Hoffman THINKS he's being rescued by William Devane... but then William Devane just drives him right back to Laurence Olivier for more torture?? Well, think of me as William Devane, Abby as Sir Laurence, and Barney of course will be playing the Dustin Hoffman roll. Is it safe, Barney? Oh yes... he thinks it is!

Here he is having a recovery nap after the Oaktown Pack had their way with him.

Here he is unwinding with a nice massage

And the ultimate in relaxation: a nice long steam shower

He's resting comfortably in the other room right now. Next: we continue to lull him into relaxing and completely letting his guard down with a trip to the zoo. (Heehee. He thinks he's just here to unwind in San Diego; see the sites! Little does he suspect...)

Whaddya think, Barney, is it safe?

Happy Birthday Abby!!!!

It is Abby's 2nd birthday on August 1 (hooray Abby!) so we started celebrating today. 

It didn't start out all that great, however, but it improved afterwards. I'll let the pictures tell most of the story.

First, Abby ran to get the paper to check the contest results...

Then she got depressed, cuz she didn't make it in!

She stayed depressed until...

... we got to Fiesta Island. Big smiles then!

We met a silken windhound (which I'd never heard of before...)

I decided to take a video of her playing, to show that Boris & Natasha are not slowing her down one bit! [As for the pic above of the "windhound" I'm not sure I get the name. Should be the "canthandlethewindhound" cuz the thing was cold in the breeze so they buried it in the sand, where it was completely content to remain. Abby clearly thought that was a weird idea.]

On the way home, Mike and I stopped at this little cafe we'd never been to before to grab something to bring home. While we were waiting for our order, we got Abby out of the car and were sitting in front of the cafe. The pretty French gal who works there came out and gave Abby a half a slice of bacon, which Abby found to be an awesome birthday present. We will definitely be going back there again!  

Once home, she got a Frosty Paw!

...which she very much enjoyed!

Good to the last drop!

We are going to stretch her birthday celebrations out over a few days. Up next, a trip to PetSmart to pick out a new toy. Oh, and we are canceling our subscription to the stupid newspaper. We really appreciate the support and the votes, but we only made it to the web site under the "Top 25 vote getters." The stupid editors obviously don't know a gorgeous special pooch when they see one. And they also did not appear to understand their own contest, since the "editor's picks" included some photos with absolutely no relevance to the "dog days of summer." Oy.

Feeling Even Craftier

A couple of weeks ago, I posted that some of my sisters and I had been feeling crafty and had gotten together to Forced Craft and "felt" some bunnies (and a bunny-turned-rat). Well, we have attempted it two more times since and, after some moderate success crafting a Bailey beagle - as evidenced below - I was ready to tackle a tripawd. [BTW, I do not know why it is called "felting" since you use a type of wool called roving. Seems like it should be called "wooling."]

Angel Bailey

The Gang of Four that my sisters & I made

The good news about felting a tripawd is that the legs are quite hard to get right when you make a dog, so I only had to make three! Whoohoo! The bad news is, it's a little harder to get the animal to stand up on only three legs, but if you tripod them it all works out. I took a ton of pictures, excerpted below. I think Ab looks quite cute with her little doppelganger. Now that I have crafted versions of her in "paint" and wool, I'm not sure what I'll try next. Maybe clay. Or marzipan. [BTW... the Tripawds folks are having a caption contest for that painting I did of Ab, so if you have any suggestions, email me or leave a comment. So far I like: "I'm too sexy for my leg." Or "With a body like this, you don't need four legs." Hopefully my drawing will soon be gracing Tripawds T-shirts and other merch!]

Ab's not thrilled with this pose...

"See Ab, isn't she cute?"

"Don't eat it!"

SO cute together! (If I do say so myself...)

In other non-felting news, I'm upping her artemisinin dosage, since I realized there are MANY different dosage levels recommended and we were at the extreme low end of the recommendations. Upping it slowly and so far she is doing fine on it. In theory, it should act to cut off the blood supply to Boris and Natasha. [Speaking of the Badenovs, someone on the Bone Cancer Dogs listserv reminded me that Boris & Natasha were never very good at carrying out their evil plans to foil "Moose and Squirrel" - said in my worst Russian accent - so hopefully our Boris and Natasha will be the same inept baddies.]

That's about all the news for now. Don't forget you can still VOTE for ABBY here up until the 28th. [The vote totals aren't showing on her page anymore, but you can see them by clicking on "View Gallery" and searching for "tripawd". You can also vote from that page that comes up, but it is a two-step process from there.] Will let y'all know how she does in the contest. She just better make it into the paper, because I have Abby's Army voting for her!

No Contest

Plotting evil in Ab's lung

Well... the follow up x-ray was not great. The Met formerly known as Lone has (a) gotten bigger and (b) found himself a little buddy, or a girlfriend, or a little sibling, or whatever the hell it is. So we won't be having a "Rename the Lone Met" contest. For now I'm just calling them Boris and Natasha (unless someone has a better suggestion), and even though Natasha was bigger than Boris in Rocky and Bullwinkle, I'm going to think of the bigger met as Boris, since in my opinion he was always the nastier piece of work.

Dr. V. said that it could be worse, and that Abby could still have a decent amount of time left, but it's still not good news. He said he was really not expecting to see another met. He was getting a little red-eyed as well as he told me all this. :( 

He said, overall, considering how crappy and aggressive this disease is, she's still doing good. She feels great still: has great energy and a good appetite (well, as good as it's ever been, which has never been great; she's just not a big eater). Also, her lungs and heart sound really good - no sign of strain on the heart or fluid in the lungs. Her blood work was also fine. He said there is no sign of mets anywhere else in her lungs and Natasha looks to be a chip off Boris (they are sort of nestled right up against each other). And he said that, as mets go, Boris has grown pretty slowly. We first saw Boris back in December, and now 7 months later he's about the size of a golf ball. (That sounds big to me, but Dr. V said that because of where it is, it can get really big before it starts to be a problem.)

Hopefully the new pills (the Artemix, which is the hollistic thing we just started her on last week) will make some difference. We have to give them to her every night and then in 2 months do another x-ray to see if they are helping at all. It could happen that they would make a difference... So all hope is going into that now.

He also said that if we wanted to try to be more aggressive, we could try another type of IV chemo, which would not cure her, but would maybe slow things down. I don't think we'll do that... I think instead we'll hope for the Artemix to do its thing, but I'll have to talk to her pop about that. 

In a bit of good news, the "Dog Days of Summer" contest is going well! Abby is already into triple digits with her votes! Not bad for being in the contest a mere 24 hours. You can vote more than once, so if you have a sec, click on the picture below and vote for her.

In the grand scheme of this fricking disease, I know we've actually been kind of lucky. Some folks don't get to have their doggies with them this long after diagnosis, or don't get to have them be so energetic. It's nice that she still feels fine and her body has no clue that she is sick. Hanging on to that, and hanging on to hope for the Artemix. Come on, Artemix! Do your thing, Artemix!