Spending a night at the vets...

Well, Kaya is spending the night at the Vet’s tonight. Ever since we brought her home she has had a problem with frequency of urination. The doc thinks it may be cists or perhaps a bladder infection, but the surgery she had before she was adopted has left her with a very, very small bladder. They have not been able to get a urine sample through any of the invasive methods, so they are hoping she will pee through some grating on the floor of her kennel so they can get a readable sample. The frequency of urination had been increasing and she had been showing less desire to eat. To my surprise, she has actually gained a little weight, up to about 9.3 lbs which is a good thing. Ramzi is sure missing her, especially on our evening walk which we always do together. Hopefully it will just be one day and things will be back to normal.

We're going to be on TV!

Well I’ll be! We were contacted by the Oregon Humane Society and they would like to feature Kaya and Ramzi’s story during a short segment on their Telethon on October 18. Never would have guessed that our two rescues would end up on TV, but what a great opportunity to support adoption for other Kennewick Eskies.

HOT! HOT! HOT!

We had 104 degrees in Centralia yesterday – I’ve lived here for 49 years and have never seen anything like it. Today is predicted to get up to 106! Thank goodness for our one room that has air conditioning so we can get the dogs and us out of the heat for a while. The latest info from the National Weather Service extends the heat wave all the way through Friday before our natural ocean air conditioning gets turned back on. This is crazy for where we live – we are known for rain, cloudy skies, and people who drink too much coffee because of depression from lack of sun-light. Our usual forecast is pretty simple – it’s either raining, or it’s about to. When we hit 85 degrees we think we’re melting. 106???? I may have to take a Michael’s advice and head to New Orleans where it’s COOLER!

TOO HOT!!!

OH my GOSH is it ever hot! We are in day 3 of a predicted seven day heat wave. For those of us who live in western Washington, we are used to rain and average summer temperatures in the 70’s. If it gets to the 80’s, it’s considered hot. Well, boys and girls, we have 97 degrees outside right now and temperatures are supposed to increase daily all the way through Thursday! If we don’t see triple digits today, we will soon, so the name of the game is to keep the dogs cool and hydrated. Later in the week we will be heading on a camping trip to the beach which should help some. Please think cool thoughts for us!

Adventures

We’re all afraid of something, and now I know at least one thing that each of our dogs is afraid of. For Ramzi, we’ve discovered he has a HUGE phobia to large flying insects. Bees, large flies, it doesn’t matter – if they come near him he runs like the wind. My guess is the poor guy has been stung in the past and still remembers it quite well.



As for Kaya, Joan was doing some late evening gardening last night with the help of a large halogen lamp we have. The fur kids were out with her, and then Kaya decided to go up on our porch. The light cast a very large shadow of her on the house and when she saw it she froze and growled the biggest growl! Poor girl was scared silly of her own shadow!



And the headline – Dogs rescue Cat. Our cat, Noel, who has for her entire life been terrified to go out the door, to our surprise and without our knowledge decided to take the example of the dogs and go out just as we were letting the dogs out. She immediately got scared and somehow jumped down through a small opening (and I mean SMALL) between the stairs and the house. I noticed last night that I hadn’t seen her for a bit, but she hides sometimes when it’s warm. This morning, when she was still not easily visible, Joan and I began to worry. We searched the house everywhere and couldn’t find her. Then Joan remembered that the previous night Ramzi and Kaya had been very interested in the storage space under the stairs, although she had not thought about it at the time. I looked in the space, and there she was! How humiliating it must be for a cat to owe her search and rescue to the new dogs – isn’t life grand!



Every day that goes by we love these two pups even more than we ever thought possible. By far this is the best thing we have done in a long time.

Ramzi on the Mend

Ramzi is looking better this morning but is still having some nausea. He is also most definitely giving me the cold shoulder (how can I blame him – I’d do the same). He’s drinking water and trying to eat, however, and he generally looks better so I’m confident that he is on the road to recovery. This morning I called the vet and let them know about his severe adverse reaction so they can have the info on file and to see if there is anything else we should be doing – they said that we should just try to keep him quiet today. If the nausea doesn’t pass by Friday they will prescribe something, but considering he is showing interest in food and water they don’t think that will be the case.

Kaya has been very concerned about her big brother and is also very happy to see him on the mend.

Ramzi Update

Ramzi is back from his teeth cleaning with no extractions needed. He’s having a VERY tough time with post-anesthetic nausea – it just breaks my heart to see him so ill – I hope it wears off soon. On a brighter note, I had them run some precautionary blood work which came back looking good. So other than the Giardia, which we are in the process of treating, he’ll soon be a healthy boy.

Also, our local paper decided to do a news story on Kaya and Ramzi which came out in today’s paper. You can see it here if you’re interested:
http://www.chronline.com/articles/2009/07/22/ne ws/doc4a6748bd552ab955272503.txt

Good news - Bad News

First the bad: After taking Ramzi to the vet last week for a check-up, yesterday Dr. Remund called to tell us that the lab results of Ramzi’s fecal sample came back positive for giardia. Not surprising considering the conditions he was subjected to by Ella Stewart, but still an unfortunate bit of news. We’ll have him on meds today and he’ll be all better soon.

Now the good news: Dogs go off-leash! Both Kaya and Ramzi have bonded with us so well that I decided to let them off leash in a safe area and see if they would try to run off. It turns out that they behaved outside just as they do inside – like a couple of white shadows following me around. I repeated the experiment in different places, but the result was the same – Ramzi will walk off and sniff stuff and Kaya will run around like a crazy dog, but they never get more than about 50 feet away, and as soon as I start to move, they are back at my side. This really opens opportunities to allow them more freedom, and I have a feeling they are going to LOVE our next camping trip which will take us to the beach!

Camping Trip Update

After a weekend of hosting our niece and nephew and the bathing of two very dirty dogs, our house has once again returned to normal. The time has been one of growth and learning for humans and dogs alike. Camping was wonderful – Ramzi and Kaya both did much better than we expected. Ramzi, at the onset of the weekend, had quite an issue adjusting to the “small people”, and he treated us to his first barking vocalizations. By the end of the weekend, Ramzi’s patience had grown exponentially – I’m not willing to say that her “likes” little people, but at least he would be in the same area without barking. We’ll chalk that up as a victory.

Kaya and Ramzi both greatly enjoyed exploring their camping environment, and they both proved expert at finding every possible way to get dirty. They were more than happy to sleep in the tent, and once they adjusted to the “snap, crackle, pop” of the camp fire, they were quite content to just bask in the warmth. We discovered that while Kaya is better socialized to people, Ramzi is better socialized to other dogs. Hopefully the two can teach each other what they know so we end up with two well-adjusted eskies. We also discovered that Ramzi seems to have some muscle deficiencies in his legs. He is quite wobbly and seems to lack standard strength. While this may be congenital, it also may be that he was unfortunate enough to be in a very crowed cage for years and suffered some muscle atrophy. If that's the case, he should slowly regain strength over time.

Be sure to check out the updated pictures for some images from the trip. Since this excusrsion was a success, we’ll be doing another camping trip (without little people) to the beach in a couple weeks. I’ll add pics from both trips and probably put together another video.

Back from the Vet

Ramzi’s trip to the vet went well – all in all he’s in pretty good health. The Dr. confirmed what the foster folks at Lexi Log had suspected in that he has a clouding in his left eye which impedes his vision to some degree. The doctor isn’t sure whether it was congenital or from an injury. The doctor also said that Ramzi’s front legs are a slightly odd shape (which frankly kind of fits his quirky personality) and that he’s likely a bit older than three years. We’ve got an appointment for his first teeth cleaning for Wednesday next week.

For now, we are preparing to head off for a one-night camping trip to a nearby state park with the pups, my wife and daughter, and a niece and nephew. The temperature has been in the 90’s, so being outdoors and under trees will be a good thing for all of us. I hope Kaya and Ramzi enjoy it as much as we do.