Tucker's First Show

Tucker went on a little vacation! He went with Sarah, who own's Tucker's pappy and grammie, with her to Sacramento, CA for the SBTCA Nationals. So it was a little adventure for him and some down time for us which, given everything that's been going on, was much needed.

He got to meet his papa, Pirate! He's a sweet boy and Tucker seems to have inherited his sweet natured personality though, to be fair, his momma is a sweetheart too. Sarah also owns Tess who is Pirate's mom, so Tucker's gramma.

Left to right: Tess, Tucker, Pirate

It was neat to get updates from Sarah regarding Tucker's integration into her little pack. Tess can be a little snarky with dogs she doesn't know but she took to Tucker within 24 hours of his arrival. She went from "DIE!" to "Ok let's PLAY!" in a relatively short amount of time. The videos of the three of them romping together were adorable.

Tucker has a bad habit - involves lifting his leg and peeing on things inside the house, especially when excited and/or in a new environment. He peed on a dog bed in Sarah's house. I laughed. She bought him belly band.

I am so embarrassed

I have a few pictures of the dog show. Tucker did really good! He was handled by Dayna, his co-owner, and he did really good for her. She said he showed like a show pony. He was goofy and wiggly and eager to make out with the judges but he showed well and, most importantly, he had fun. So overall last weekend proved to be a good experience for the little baby jackass.

I just love the above pic. Clearly I am biased but I think he is very handsome. Show wise he did great! He's just a baby and turned 6 months on the first day of the show. He consistently placed 2nd in most of the classes he was entered (4 days worth of showing) and from what I've been told the competition was stiff. He placed 2nd in the 6-9 month puppy class at the SBTCA Nationals show day which had Sarah and Dayna pleased. His sissy, River, also placed very well as the weekend went on so overall both of the pups did very well for their first show!

Can I pleeeaaaase kiss the judge?!

Big thanks to Sarah for caring for her grandpuppy like one of her own, and to Dayna for taking time out of her busy show schedule to have him prance around the ring. Team effort to make it a great experience for the pups.

I'm meeting Sarah tomorrow to get my puppy back. I've missed the little twerp.

Dog Related Health Updates

It's been a while since I have updated Violet's knee surgery but that's because things sort of imploded on us at Staffordshire Manor. So to help this all make sense I'll start with Violet and work my way down.

VIOLET:
As noted in my previous post Violet had surgery on a painful luxating patella that was making her lame on a regular basis. I am going to make this story short by saying it was a difficult recovery. Very difficult for all who lived under this roof. Violet has lived in a 4 x 4' exercise pen for 10 weeks now and has only been out when on a leashed potty break or leashed walk, or for exercises and therapies. Lots of medications including injections are now a part of her daily routine. Stretches, walks, underwater treadmill sessions, laser therapy, and craniosacral massage appointments consumed my time.

Violet enjoying her massage

Violet's onderwater treadmill session

Despite living a strict existence there have been set backs. You think all is well in recovery land and then you take a few steps back. The knee started luxating again and she is still healing from a hot spot she gave herself on that knee. But things are getting better, the knee is stable, and she's now being allowed 15 minutes of off-leash play time (without Tucker) and we are slowly building up that time week by week. We're hoping that as long as she remains stable we'll be able to slowly introduce Tucker into the play time mix. That will happen in 2-3 weeks as long as Violet's recovery has no set backs.


SADIE:
As everyone knows, Sadie is crazy and has no respect for the natural limitations a living body has. This means all her teeth are broken to some extent or another. This was proven when she broke a tooth shortly after Vi's surgery (not sure how or with what she broke it on) and I got a few opinions as to whether or not it should be pulled. In the end two teeth got pulled, both bottom molars, and we were surprised to learn it was actually abscessed with Sadie showing no signs of distress, as per her usual. They inspected the rest of her teeth while she was under and she'll probably end up losing most/all of them over the course of her life. I doubt it will slow her down at all though - she's just happy to wake up every day no matter what life throws her way.

Sadie after she got home from the vet - she wanted to play ball. We didn't oblige her somewhat ridiculous request.

TUCKER:

The puppy was feeling left out so he decided to have GI issues that proved difficult to pin down. We ran fecal tests that came back negative and food sensitivity tests that came back essentially normal. He struggled with explosive diarrhea that kept him miserable and he had a hard time putting on weight. It's true I like my adult dogs lean but the same is not true for my baby puppies. Pups need a healthy layer of puppy chub and he was getting thin enough that I was worrying. Add the fact that his explosive diarrhea episodes were happening every day and all through the night, on top of the other canine health issues we were dealing with, something needed to change. We wormed him and treated him as if he had giardia despite the negative fecals. And just like that - boom! All better. His butt got better and he started gaining weight again. 

Tucker has a happy butt once again!

So in a nutshell that is what has been consuming all my time for the past 2 months. All three dogs have had multiple vet appts, follow up appts, rehab, fecal, urine tests... oh that reminds me. Sadie's BUN levels were high on her blood test (a kidney value thing) but she's on a raw diet and they run a little higher. We did a renal ultrasound just to make me feel better considering all the crazy I've been swimming in lately. This is what her kidneys look like in case you were ever wondering to yourself, "Self? I wonder what that lady's dog's kidneys look like." Well wonder no more!

Normal!