Bender is a secret Greyhound (and goodbye to Olive, again)

I can hear you all rejoicing because the Furkid Palace Official Photographer has returned to provide much better imagery for the blog!

Having a DSLR camera gives you a different perspective of your pets. There is so much that you miss when you are just throwing a ball and watching them run. For instance with Bender, we miss his almost double suspension gallop.... here he is in the 'tuck' stage....

here he is at full stretch.

Bender's not a young pup anymore, he's 7 and a half and he has slowed down significantly in the last couple of years. People who don't know him think he is still doing well but we can see the difference. The problem is that her will never stop going hard at the ball.

After a slide like this you can guarantee he will be missing skin from his paw pads. We had to go home after a mere half an hour at the dog park today because he was bleeding, as usual. We don't think he will ever learn to slow down.

At the park you can see why Olive didn't make it as a racer. She isn't a super competitive doggie and she doesn't run around at top speed just for the sheer joy of it. In all the photos she is level with Bender or just behind him. Barbie likes to run as fast as she can for no apparent reason. She doesn't have to be chasing anything. She doesn't need anything chasing her. She just likes to go! Olive just keeps pace with the dogs she is running with and doesn't run random 'hot laps'.

After our little trip to the park, Olive's new owner came to pick her up. I was very sad to see her go, but for her sake I tried not to show it. Olive's new family has recently lost two toy poodles - I met one of them a few weeks ago but unfortunately he had to go to the bridge, he was blind, deaf and very arthritic but he was still so sweet and brave. I expect Olive will be providing them with plenty of distraction and cuddles to help them through a difficult time. It was very strange waking up this morning without a dancing white greyhound standing over me, poking me in the face with her nose and repeatedly bashing her tail against the bedroom door. Hopefully she will 'stick' in this home because if she gets bounced again it would be very hard to let her go for a third time.

We are going to miss her and her silly tongue.

We are taking an enforced break from fostering now with the exception of Olive if she is bounced as I couldn't bear the thought of her going somewhere else. There will soon be construction going on at the block next door. They need to build a retaining wall so they will be taking down our fence temporarily. The good thing about that is the fence will be more secure and far less ugly once it is replaced. I will be less concerned about it blowing over in a squally storm so that is a plus. Barbie's recovering leg has already gotten me into the routine of doing potty breaks on leash and I should be able to add Bender to that pretty easily. It will be all the better when Barbie can walk a proper distance. They will be totally spoiled with 3 walks a day!

There are also a few things that we need to do around our house and those things will be easier without an extra dog. Of course some of these things will have to wait until Barbie's foot is healed as well. The control-freak part of me wants to draw up a chart.

Barbie's leg - update (and praise for the Medipaws boot)

We went back to the surgeon today and he was happy with how her foot was healing. She has a solid layer of granulation tissue and now the little skin cells have to link up over the top. She is off the antibiotics, so unfortunately for her, no more breakfasts!!


Not feeding breakfast will at least make my mornings a little easier when I am trying to get ready for work. One less step is all the better.

Every morning I have to fiddle around with an IV bag and elastic band to put on her leg and keep the damp grass away from her dressing.

Then there are the people who want to talk to us when we are out walking. Everyone looks at her and goes 'aaaaawwww so cute, what happened to her foot?' They seem to want to stop and talk all the time, even if their own dog is a bit freaked out.

I signed up for the greytalk forums when Barbie went in for surgery and a couple of the members there suggested I order a Medipaws boot. I had to order it online and wondered if it would get to me in a timely manner. It only took a week so it looks like we will get plenty of use out of it, I can now ditch the IV bag and elastic band.

The other good news is that the surgeon has approved an extension of walk-times from 5 minute walks to 10 minute walks. The boot will keep her dressing nice and safe, clean and dry. We might even be able to resume our cafe visits this weekend! 

"Excuse me, can I please do my business in private? K THNX BAI!"

Barbie's foot injury saga

For a few months now Barbie has had an issue with her rear left foot. It started off looking a bit like this after we had a good run around the park. I noticed it was draining a bit of clear fluid and blood, and took her to the vet. We tried a couple of courses of different antibiotics but it didn't fix the problem. It would heal up, the fluid would accumulate and it would open and drain again.

After the antibiotics I thought perhaps we would have to take more drastic action, so I consented to the vets doing surgery to see if they could find a foreign body in her foot causing the problem. They made a small incision though they needed many stitches because there wasn't a lot of skin for closure in the area. 

The vets didn't find anything in there on this first try and believed that they had cleaned it up enough that it would just heal normally. We had to change our weekend activities and Barbie spent more time riding in the car with us to visit cafes and go on very short walks.

Unfortunately a week or so after her stitches were taken out, I took her for a normal leash walk and her foot puffed up and was quite swollen. It was hurting her too, so I took her to the vet that night. A shot of Metacam bought it back down, but the skin on the bottom of her foot split open and it weeped quite a bit of fluid. N took a photo of it when it was particularly weepy. By now it was being referred to as a 'chronic draining sinus'. 

Our vets put her on a long course of Baytril, which was a third antibiotic. Unfortunately it didn't change much and so I went back in for a referral to Perth Veterinary Specialists to do some imaging. 

She was off the antibiotics for a week when she was admitted for a CT scan. The contrast dye didn't move very far from the local area but they didn't see the foreign body either. 

The surgeon then told me the next step was surgery.

His plan was a more aggressive debridement of all the damaged tissue in her foot, at the same time taking samples in case of an a-typical infection and looking for the root cause of the damage. I looked him up on the internet before I said yes, he has a very long string of achievements in his specialty, so I decided I could trust her with him. 

Unfortunately he didn't find the foreign body, but the superficial nature of the damage gave him some cause to be optimistic but he was overall quite guarded in his prognosis. He isn't the kind of Vet to tell you what you want to hear. The skin on the bottom of her foot was too damaged to close so he had to leave an open area, which means that she is going to be in a bandage for a couple of weeks, or longer.

They tell me she did well at PVS, and she stayed three nights in total. When I took her back in on Saturday for a bandage change she was pretty happy and seemed to want to go out the back. I don't think she enjoys their crates though as she has a sore bit on her nose, I think from shoving it into the bars. She does really enjoy all the attention from the vet nurses, and now she is home I am pretty sure she loves all the sympathy she elicits when people see her out on her toilet breaks in a cone, with a big bandage and a plastic bag on her foot. 

Her next checkup and bandage change is on Tuesday. The surgeon will be having a look at healing and adjusting the stitches as well. I believe she will have to go back one or two more Tuesdays after that, depending on how it is going. 

At the moment she is supposed to be contained, the rules are NO running, NO jumping, NO stairs, NO playing, NO getting on the furniture...etc etc. The only way to get into the Vet surgery is to go up stairs, so I have been carrying her in directly from the car. It has also been raining frequently and heavily so I have been spotted jogging through the car park carrying a totally ragdoll floppy 26 kilogram greyhound. I am only 158cm tall and it must be a pretty amusing sight. All the rain has made timing our toilet breaks very important at home as well and it doesn't look like letting up any time soon with rain forecast all week!!

I'll update on Tuesday when I get more info from the vet and I'll try and get a photo if it's not too gorey. I am not sure exactly how many stitches she has but I think there are a lot! 

Barbie's sore foot and long eyelashes...

Barbie has had an abscess on her foot for a little while now. We went to the vet and she gave us antibiotics, but once the course was over it opened up again, so we had to go back.

This time the drainage hole is much bigger and the vet said it doesn't look very deep, so we are going to try more antibiotics and some cleaning with saline water - hopefully it heals as I don't want them to have to do surgery.

After the Vet visit, we walked a couple of blocks to the nearest City Farmers where I got a big Kong Wobbler for Zelda, and one for the cats as well. As we were walking, Barbie gave her sweet doe eyes to a young lady who was walking next to us. The lady couldn't resist, and said hello and tried to pat Barbie, but Barbie pulled her head away. Big tease. I apologised and she thought it was cute. 

Once in City Farmers, I was looking for the kitty Kong Wobbler, and Barbie caught a few people's attention. Some people are just drawn to her like a magnet, and she accepted pats from most of them, especially if they gave her a scratch under the chin. 

I am not sure it was a big enough outing for her but until her foot heals she is going to have to be happy with boring on-leash adventures. Oh, the poor princess!