Good-bye Clara

Clara woke up her usual self this morning, but with-in a few minutes something went wrong.  An hour or so after that, she wasn't able to stand very well and it was clear she wasn't going to last much longer.  We were able to get the home visiting vet in, who was able to help Clara go.

It was awful, but I am glad we were able to do this for Clara, and that for her last few weeks Clara was perfectly healthy and happy.

My Saturday afternoon.

Dog with stitches removed.

Played with the dogs at the steam club and dogs are exhausted 

Stinky dogs are now washed

Beverage in hand

TV on

What more do I need?

Bad news

There has been some bad news here in Thornbury. Yesterday morning Clara didn't want her toast. This is most unusual. We also noticed she was a little pale (yes it it possible to tell if a black dog is pale) and a bit porky and firm in her tummy. All this added up to us having a heap of trips to the vet and finished with Clara going under the knife at around 5pm last night. There weren't going to be many good options to come out of the surgery and whilst we didn't end up with the best outcome, we didn't get the worst one either.  

Clara had her spleen removed and a mass of tumers around the size of a tennis ball.  Whilst we don't have the pathology back, the vet has advised us it is mostly like going to be malignant (cancerous) tumers.  These tumers had ruptured and were bleeding into her abdomen which was give all the symptoms. Unfortunately this was not the first bleed, it was just a larger one, so enough to give symptoms.  This means that there is a highly likely hood that Clara has cancer elsewhere in her body. Her outlook is not good. 

She is recovering well from her operation and is sitting with me here on the couch. Once she recovered from the blood loss caused by the bleeding she should be back to her usual self.  However long we have left with Clara is going to be very hard on us, but I plan on trying to make the time as special as possible for Clara.  

If any of you who know Clara would like to come around and see her, you are most welcome too, just give me a ring.  

Barnie

So the boys had a barnie today while we were at work. It seems as though Conner was the one to come out second best. This is a first. Guthrie has always been bottom dog in this family but this evening Conner has been even been a shakie dog. We have had to cut off a fair bit of one side of his beard. There are quite a few punctures in his face and a lot of red and bruised skin. He was very well behaved while we were tending to him with salt water and cotton wool. We will have to keep a bit if an eye on him for the next few days and he doesn't improve or he starts looking worse, it will be off to the vet for poor Conner. 

Best dog

Winner of best dog in today's STCVic show

Hard life for Scottie's at this house

Conner

Clara

Guthrie, had to move away from the heater, as he was too hot....

Wash day

Today was wash day in more than one way.  Firstly, the other week and the Westie Rescue night, I bought in the silent auction, 5 free dog washes, which is great in principal, but a tiny bit of a pain, since they are for a place in Bridge Road Richmond (ie: not a place you want to go anywhere near on a weekend).
Today I was a 'bit late to work' and took the whole three disgusting little monsters down there and washed them.  The photo below is of 'after' when they are still a bit wet (man were they unimpressed with the hairdryer?!?!) and looking all miserable.  Actually Conner, the one in the front, doesn't look that sad, but her was, really.  Clara is at the back and looks particularly sad.  There was hair everywhere.  When the man came to change the water over after I washed Clara he even said 'yes, she was dirty wasn't she' and that the man in a dog wash place!!! I was completely soaked by the time I was done. I took them home and headed to work, a bit late....

About 5 minutes after I got to work today, my new permanent standing desk frame arrived!! YaY! This mean I had to rearrange my desk and computer and about fourteen tones of shit to put it all in place in a permanent sense.  So I spent most of the day sorting out shit on my desk.  I haven't done it for a while so to say there was a back log was an understatement.  I even found some spray and wipe and cleaned the actual desk!! Whilst tidying, I found a few (alright 8) soy fishes.  Not sure what to do with them, to chuck them seems a waste.

All westie rescue

Went to a trivia night tonight, it was great.  so well organised, they had 3 times more people then they expected. They had TONES to prizes. Really great effort, and I hope they raised a shitload of money. We got a blanket and some dog washes from the silent auction and came 2nd. Go us and the other people who's table we joined, cos the whole Scottie club left me in the lurch and there was only Neil and I there....

backlog

I've meant to post for ages, so I have a bit of a backlog of things to catch up on. Lets see if I can remember them all.

• We finally had a blind/shutter installed on the west facing lounge room window. Today has been the first really hot day since it went in and so far it's making a massive difference and i think it has proved very worth while.  
• The scottie club had the black and white match a couple of weeks ago, it was a good day, the weather started off a bit shit, then it turned fairly warm. Guthrie won a ribbon, with some competition, and actually beat another dog! Go Guthrie :)
• Mum had a birthday party, the first for a very long time, it went off very well.
• I had a massive day of caching down Hastings way, with Neil. We found a lot, it was very very hot. (ooo that rhymed, I am a poet)
• I was very clever and worked out how to sync my work calendar to my google calendar, which means it also syncs to my phone!! Yay I'm so clever, Lotus notes sucks.
• Mum and Kate and I went down to Port Fairy to do glass bead making for mum's birthday present, we all made some pretty beads and and now have a greater appreciation for the ones other people make. it's harder than it looks.
• Dog school has closed it's indoor venue and is moving to delivering classes in a different format :( not sure how I feel about that yet.
• Bronwyn and Sarah (my two pregnant friends) are now 2 and 6 weeks weeks away from having their babies, i had really better get knitting!! 

The dogs have been being good. Neil is outside working on someone else's car, on a 37 degree day. Mad.  I have also been good, but my hip hasn't.

Sad day

I know this is really quite old news now, but it has taken me a while to write this port. On the 21st of October, we had to make the decision to have Molly put to sleep. Molly was approaching 16 years old, and with the exception of the last two years, had not had a single health problem her whole life. Her run ins with Cushings Disease and having to have her eye removed had both knocked her in the last little while, but even so she continued to be a happy girl, and to boss the pupps around. In the end, she wasn't in any pain, but her kidneys had failed, she had developed a very evil sounding cough and was mostly sleeping all the time. Neil was with her at the vet at the end, as I was in Canberra. Neil made her a lovely box and we have buried her in the front yard.

I will always miss her, and am glad to have had her with me for such a long time.

This is an older photos of Molly, looking the way I like to remember her.

Dog diary and I at a meeting

Scotties

Look at the sort of things I have to put up with. And this is all on my side of the bed

The mess after 1 Scottie jumped on the bed

The mess after a second, obviously much wetter Scottie jumped on the bed.

my Scottie babys

Clarra
Guthrie
Conner

My scotties clearly have a hard life

Not spoilt

These are the pan cakes Neil made especially for the dogs. I don't think they are spoilt at all

Molly the one eyed westie cross

So there has been a fair bit of pressure from some areas for me to put up a photo of Molly in her newly edited format: ie with on eye. She looks both good and bad. A lot better than I was expecting but still fairly awful. From one side she looks almost normal (if you don't count the bucket hat/Elizabethan colar). From the other side she looks a lot like a chinesse crested dog, with a missing eye of course. The stitching that has been done is very neat. I'm sure that by the time the fur grows back she will look quite in-offensive. Right now..... Not so much.
For our upcoming Eurovision party (gibe me ring if you want to come, it'll be ace) I am thinking we might need to rig some sort of eye patch for her. I know that she will fell a lot better with out the eye, even if she doesn't already.
Any way. I'm not keen to put up a photo, cos she really does look yuk and I don't want to embarrass her. Any one can come and visit if they want to.

Meet the new mower

Don't you love the way the dog paths show up so well, even after mowing them

Bad Bad News

Before I start let me just tell you that everything is now fine.

On Thursday I took these cool photos and on Friday evening I was going to write a really inane post about them
Instead, just as I was getting ready to leave work on Friday, I got a call from Neil asking me if Molly was out the front of the house for any particular reason. After a few confused minutes of conversation, it turned out Guthrie was also out the front. I hung up from Neil and told him to look for the others and give me a ring right back. It took a few minutes for the badness of the situation to sink in. Eventually, I rang Neil back. The dogs were missing. I felt sick. They had literally ripped TWO bits of wood off the back of underneath of the house OFF with their TEETH (we had teeth marks to prove it) and squeezed into a small hole under the house, then there are quite a few places they can get out to the front of the house and away. Again at this point I mention the feeling sick. I rang the council, who were unhelpful.
I left work and rode my motorcycle home, I got home, changed and left the house to start searching for them, which Neil was already doing. I walked around the parks we normally take them for walks in. I looked in the creek we walk beside, hoping not to see black fuzzy bodies. After an hours or so of walking around, calling out to Clara and Conner, I went home. I called the council again, who were closed by this time and spoke to the after hours man, who was even less helpful, bordering on rude. I rang the lost dogs home and left a message on their answering machine. By this time, I had an enormous blister on my heal. I had to change into sandals for my other aimless depressing walks around the streets. I continued this, looking for little black fuzzy bodies, when I was in the street, until dark. Neil ordered pizza for us, our normal Friday fair. I could only eat two bits, again with the feeling sick. Neil continued to search, with a torch, until ten. At this point we went to bed, there was no real sleep here, as both of us got up a number of times to check if the dogs had returned to the front door and we trying to get in. It's amazing the sorts of noises you can imagine.
In the morning we got up around 7, ate and went looking again. What else could we do? The lost dogs home didn't open til 9am. I made it home again around 8.30am ish, my feet where hurting quite a lot my this point, as walking the streets and parks in sandals isn't really a great plan. The phone rang, it was the lost dogs home and they had Clara. Relief at this point is somewhat of an understatement, but oh my God, where is Conner! We jumped in the car and headed of to North Melbourne, arriving just before they opened their doors. After a whole lot of paper work, and a very upsetting look around the small dog cages to see if Conner was there, but miss identified (I could only walk down two isles before I was too upset and Neil had to do the rest), we got Clara back. To be honest, she didn't even seem pleased to see us! When we started driving home, the reason for this became apparent. She was exhausted, I don't think she had slept at all or at least, not much. Poor thing, she is used to her queen sized bed, not a blanket on concrete!
We were able to find out where she was found, and decided to start a new search there, as we assumed Clara and Conner would have hung out together. This area is nearly 1km from our home! (I'd put in a map, but you might be a burglar or strange stork-ie person, and I might not want you to know where I live).
So the search started again, but this time it must have been 10.30am or so, so there where heaps of dog walkers out in the park, I spoke to 20 or so. Neil, who was walking in the direction of our place spoke to heaps as well. After walking the park for ages. I walked an S shape of all the streets between the park and the street where Clara was found. I checked on google maps this morning, I walked about 3km, in this park and the streets nearby that morning. This was my 3rd or 4th trip out, I think I have worked out why my feet are so sore, I was carefully avoiding looking at them, so I wouldn't know how bad they were and I could keep looking. At around lunch time we went back home, getting increasingly despondent.
I was sitting at the computer, having been looking for more numbers to ring, and the phone rang. It was a Vet in East Hawthorne, they had my dog Yellow, what the? Then I remembered, when I micro chipped the puppies, they didn't have names yet, so we gave them their colored wool names, they had Conner (all this took .3 secs in my head, it ok) It turns out a man on his way home from work had picked Conner up, from the same area as Clara was found and taken him home (to East Hawthorne). He spent the night playing with the mans Pug. The man was ready to keep Conner and took him to the vet to check if he had a micro chip (thank god he did!) What a relief! At this point I rang my Mum, it was her birthday on Friday and I didn't want to give her a whole lot of worry as a present. So we drove to East Hawthorne and picked up Conner. He also didn't seem that happy to see us either, little bugger! I was really happy to see him though.
When we got home, Neil got to work repairing the dogs little bit of house renovation. Now if they want to get out, they will need to have a cordless drill and perhaps a crow bar.
So it's moral of the story time:

• Don't go to work EVER
• always stay at home with your dogs
• maybe my dogs should wear collars, even if it will make a mark in their fur
• make sure your dogs (and cats) are microchipped!!!

Keeping Scotties out the way

I have finally found a way to keep the scotties tidy and out of the way! So far this morning they have been 'helping' me tidy the front room. In there I found place to keep them, all neat and tidy! Here we have Conner, Clara and Guthrie.

Clara update

Last week Clara had to have an emergency hysterectomy. Se was very sad for quite while a afterward,a s she had been quite full of nastiness (I could go into details here about what was wrong with her, but I won't cos it's very yukkie) Then the antibiotics kicked in and she improved out of site. She went back to playing with the puppies and being her normal self, which was a huge relief. Anyway, I am getting a bit worried again, as she seems to have a bit of a lump in the area where the chop was. It seems to be getting bigger, so we will be off to the vet again in the morning I think. I will give them a ring and see what they think at least.
This dog is such a worry!!! Oh NO! I have 4 for them! I don't think I ever get to stop worrying now! All you parents out there, including mine: Wow, I don't know how you do it (after all humans live a bit longer than dogs.)