Texas Lady

Wow, when it rains, it pours, doggy-injury-wise.  Zoe goes back to the vet Tuesday morning.  They’ll sedate her and do more x-rays to check her hip.  Hopefully it’s all back in place and stable and she can go on living her young life.  Took Dusty in for his pain issue and found out it wasn’t his tummy but he has a pinched (or somewhat injured) nerve in his spine close to his neck.  So he’s on NSAIDs and pain meds now.  Also, vet says he’s too fat and has small bones so has to lose serious weight.  They sent a chart home to Ronnie of his weight gain, so he will stop feeding them so much crap.  Then, Diego got between Bandit and the food bowl and got nipped on the ear and neck so he’s on pain meds, too.  Yikes!

Zoe seems to be doing fine except she wants to be carried everywhere and held all the time (so what else is new? LOL).  But it’s understandable that she doesn’t want to walk much with her back legs tied together, so we’re humoring her.  Hoping that that is removed for good on Tuesday and she’ll be back to zipping around everywhere again.

Dusty is doing better, finished his pain pills today and still has a few days left on NSAIDs.  Also spoiled but that’s not new either.  He does seem a bit happier and is in less pain so he feels better all round.

Diego is feeling better and is moving around more but he’s still quite traumatized from the attack.  I don’t/wouldn’t wish injury on him but maybe he’ll realize in the future that, at only 5 pounds, he can’t just jump on the big dogs and expect to be king.  He needs to calm his butt down and stop playing so rough.  The big dogs don’t realize that they can hurt him very easily and Diego didn’t realize it either until this happened.  I really hope he’s learned a lesson and slows down now.  I don’t want to see him injured worse the next time.  His little ear has two puncture wounds in it so I may have to take him in to get antibiotics but otherwise he’s good physically.  You can’t move too fast or he screams and runs, so he has a little PTSD going on.  Poor baby!

Daisy is doing great!  She seems very happy and is calmer all the time.  Her wounds have healed and she’s doing great health-wise.  We’re still having some resource guarding issues with food bowls though.  Tonight we started feeding them all in their crates and moved some crates around so there’s no crate beside Daisy’s crate when she eats.  It seemed to work out; wish us luck!  We’ve had her out of her muzzle quite a bit but with Ronnie home on the holiday weekend there’s just too much excitement for the dogs to handle, so she still wears it for part of the day.  We make sure she has time out of the crate on her own without a muzzle and personal cuddle time, too.  We do the same for the little ones but for the most part they are all out together most of the time if Ronnie and I are both home to keep an eye on them.  It wasn’t this smooth when we had Daisy before; wish we didn’t have so many dogs and could keep her but I don’t see that happening.  We still have her listed for adoption and I updated her listing tonight.  Fingers crossed!  I’d love to find a good home for her.

I’ve got to get these dogs well because I have another foot surgery scheduled for June 4th.  I went Thursday for pre-op testing and lab work so everything is in forward motion.  These fur-babies have got to give me a break.  Otherwise I’m feeling well, and with all that’s gone on lately it’s a good thing.  I wanted to sew while Ronnie was off for 5 days but that didn’t happen either.  The house is cleaner (at least it was–Ronnie is a slob and leaves everything wherever and I refuse to clean up anything else until he goes back to work Tuesday.  Not worth it!  But the laundry, linens and all the dog crates/blankets have been laundered.  The fish tanks are clean, groceries bought, vacuumed and moved furniture and vacuumed under it and inside the closet, etc., so it is/was better for a while.  I got to a point where he was messing it up as fast as I cleaned, so I just put on the brakes.  No sense making work for myself; I have enough as it is; I’ll be so glad when he goes back to work!

Well, I’ll get my “Debbie Downer” butt off here and get ready for bed………

Things have begun to look up around here now that Daisy is home once more.  We decided there were things we approached erroneously the first time we brought Daisy into our home.  We let the little dogs dictate the mood the first time not realizing that we, as the pack leaders, should have been in the lead.  (Hindsight is 20/20!)  This time when Daisy came in the door I could see her visibly shaking as she planted her feet on the rug inside the door.  We had already decided that the little dogs would have to toe the line this time; they would have to learn the word “No!”.  And they are learning it somewhat late in their development, but learning it they are!  Mimi and Jolie are still quite vocal at times, but they are called down immediately and are responding to the command.  Daisy is still trying to be the boss.  She gets in the middle of everything we do, shows domination traits (putting herself higher than us, against us, over Bandit’s back, mouthing us with her teeth during play, walking between our legs, leaning into us, etc.) and a little resource guarding of her toys and food.  We do not feed them together and haven’t bought any new toys for her to guard as her own.  She seems to have grown up some since she’s been gone.  She’s calmer, she chews up less toys and doesn’t chew up her blankets like she used to.  Hopefully some of that was stress-related and her still being a puppy and having that chewing urge that puppies have while they’re teething.

Daisy is in her crate only while the littles eat and at night (as are Bandit, Gypsy, Mimi and Diego because either they potty in the house and/or to keep them out of our bed).  She wears her muzzle if she is out of the crate when the littles are out.  We put the littles in so Daisy has free time and gets to eat several times per day just as the littles do.  It’s working well.  We’ve had 2 short temper tantrums: once Mimi thought Daisy was too close to “her” daddy and she started to nip at Daisy, of course, Daisy jumped back, but we stopped it mid-tantrum and that was that.  The other time Daisy and Bandit had “words” (not physical, just barking and growling) in the living room which I stopped and crated both dogs…no more issues there either.

I am careful to watch the interactions closely and am thinking that over time, Daisy will find her place in the pack and the pack will find out that Daisy is no threat as long as they are no threat to her.  Eventually we’d like to not have to put a muzzle on Daisy at all, but only time will tell on that issue.  I think we’re going about it in a better manner now; it is very much different from last time and the stress level is much, much lower already.

On another note, last Monday our little baby, 4-pound Zoe hurt her hip–don’t know how because I didn’t see it when it happened and saw no evidence of any issue.  I let the dogs out of their crates in the morning so they could go potty, walked into my office to pick up my cup I’d left in there the night before and when I walked back into the kitchen Zoe was headed back through the doggie door holding her rear leg up high and squealing.  I picked her up and comforted her but she would not be comforted; she was in pain and wanted me to fix it for her.  I couldn’t tell if anything was broken or out of place, and she has tiny bird-like bones in her legs so I thought it prudent to call the vet ASAP.  I put Daisy back in her crate and took Zoe in to the vet.  They kept her and started pain meds IV—then I was really scared!  They called me after her pain calmed down and said they were about to sedate her and do x-rays.  That showed that her left hip was out of place and they planned on putting it back in place once she was fully sedated but by the time the sedation took effect the hip had slid back into place on its own.  I picked her up that evening and brought her home on pain meds and NSAIDs.  She has a “hobble” bandage attached to both back legs to keep her from slipping the hip back out before it heals.  I’ll take her back to the vet on Monday to make sure we’re headed in the right direction with our baby.  She’s not walking much on her back legs and has been quite the spoiled little pill.  Either Ronnie or myself has carried and held her all week.  If we can’t hold her we put her in Diego’s crate so she is safe and can survey her world properly.

Dusty had his nervous stomach flare up again last night so he’s back on his liquid stomach meds again.  He was bloated up like a balloon last night but it’s gone down a lot by today.  They told me his stomach issues could be stress-related so I’m assuming it’s flared because of the situation with bringing Daisy back into the pack.  He screams in pain when it flares up and is hard for us to handle him.  It breaks our hearts!  But the liquid medication has an almost immediate effect on his symptoms and in a few days he goes back to his normal Dusty self so I’m expecting that to happen this time, too.

Daisy has been found!!!!!!!!!!!!

As the poster says, Daisy is back home, safe and sound!  The sanctuary people found her walking down the street as if nothing was out of the ordinary and scooped her up.  They called me at 8 AM with the news.  Ronnie took off work before lunch and picked her up in Alvin where someone from the sanctuary met him with her so we wouldn’t have to drive all the way out to Danbury.

She is home, knows who we are and acts like she’s never been gone and nothing has ever changed in her life from before she went to the sanctuary at the end of 2014.  She loved on both of us, played in the yard and remembered Bandit (and he her).  She and Bandit are able to be out together though we’re still keeping an eye on them because Daisy is trying to dominate him and we don’t want that to even get started.  The “littles” don’t want her to even breathe the same air as they do, so nothing has changed there.  It’s going to take a while to get them all on the same page but we’re committed to doing it eventually.

She has a few abrasions on her legs and ankles but none of them are deep or infected, and don’t seem to bother her at all.  She’s going to the vet Friday morning for a complete check-up and to get some new Trifexis which she takes for heartworm and flea prevention.  Not expecting to find anything major though.  She has lost a few pounds from when she originally went to the sanctuary but she was up a few pounds then anyway.  She is slender but not bony or anything so she has been cared for sufficiently.  She doesn’t seem to have any psychological scars either so it seems they’ve cared for her well.  The gentleman today said everybody out there loved Daisy and were heartbroken when she came up missing.  I didn’t know if I believed that when they said she was gone, but, after seeing her today and talking to the staff lately I’m beginning to believe what they’ve been telling us.

Welcome home, sweet Daisy!  Mom and Dad love you, sweetie pie, and are so happy to have you home safe and sound!