Color Stories Inspiration Case 110

Wow… another case file is up already at CSI.  This time it included a sketch by Emma Stafrace:

This sketch and theme was a tough one to do for me.  But one of the great things about CSI challenges is they force me to get those photos and stories scrapped which may be in the too hard basket.  This was one of them.  Last September, we said goodbye to Indy our retrospoodle,  I wrote about Indy before having a shunt in his liver which meant he couldn’t process toxins properly.  If you know anything about liver disease in humans it can make you quite grumpy.  Well in Indy’s case it certainly did and he was getting increasingly anxious and very needy – didn’t liked to be away from the family at all.  Indy also really didn’t like Aimee and growled a lot when she was nearby.  I’m not sure why as Aimee really loved Indy and was excited to see him. Aimee was also his main source of food for Indy with leftovers going over the side of the highchair for him.  Unfortunately, I had to often keep the two of them apart which was difficult at times.  Then the day after Gary’s birthday last year Indy was sitting under Liam who was on the computer.  I thought in my head, Aimee was outside and happily playing I won’t put Indy away just yet.  Whilst I was in the kitchen, Aimee walked into the lounge and I don’t quite know what happened next but Indy barked out loud and he had rushed Aimee and nipped her on her arm just above her elbow.  It was just enough to break skin but nothing more.  She wasn’t doing anything to antagonise Indy but for some reason he felt threatened by her presence.

We never really knew how Indy was feeling inside as obviously he couldn’t tell us but I honestly felt that in the last few months prior to this incident he was feeling worse and his behaviour was getting more difficult to manage.  We had to make the tough decision to have Indy put to sleep.  There was no way I could trust he wouldn’t try anything again and with his health conditions it just wasn’t possible to re home him.  The kids came first.  So this layout is us saying goodbye.  I have never had to put an animal to sleep, it was the toughest thing I have ever done.  Indy was always at my feet at home he followed me around, he was our vacuum cleaner and a huge part of our family.  It was certainly hard to take him to the vet and say goodbye for the last time.  Indy loved going to the vet, he was always so excited to go – this time was no exception, Liam said goodbye before going to school and the girls and Gary came with us to the vet.  Gary and the girls said their goodbyes and I stayed with Indy whilst he ate his last ever dog treat as he drifted off to sleep.  I am so pleased he got to eat some yummy dog food (which he wasn’t normally allowed due to his liver condition) as his last supper.

The next few days/weeks were weird, it is amazing how much a dog can influence your world, from walking him, to leaving the blind half way up so you could let him outside easily if he needed to go to the toilet, to making sure you didn’t leave food lying around to close to the edge of the bench otherwise it would get scoffed when you left the room!  You even expected to open the garage door in the morning and find Indy waiting right there to greet you.

I hope Indy is now finally at peace and enjoying playing with all the doggies in doggy heaven.

I have also included some hidden journaling and an extra photo in an envelope under the doily. Thanks for stopping by today.  

Mxx

 

Busy Busy

Loads of things happening around here at the moment.   Not much time for blogging or creating just right now I’m afraid.

The major thing is that we are MOVING!~

After almost 5 long years I have finally worn Gary down and we are on the move again.  Our house took no time at all to sell… sold it twice in fact.  The first offer fell through on finance and the second offer wanted to get an extension on their finance but the first offers finance came through so we told them they couldn’t so they went unconditional!   Yes, they do say that selling your house is one of the most stressful things one can do.

So we are staying local… about 5 minutes away.  It is a bigger house, bigger land and it comes with a GRANNY (or an Aunty Nicole in our case).    Liam can’t quite walk to school but it is only a short distance away. 

As a result of selling above house, it means we move in less than 3 weeks. So it is busy packing packing packing around here.  Unfortunately, 5 years has meant that we have acculumlated a WEE bit of stuff… mainly it is hidden in the attic so it has been a mission to clear all that out and figure out what to keep and not to keep!   See moving is a VERY good idea so you can CULL out the junk that you accumulated over time.  

The new place doesn’t have an attic… hmmmmm. 

Hmmmmm, so what else is happening

Taylor turned 11 months… not long now till she is a BIG 1 year old.  She is on the move big time and doesn’t really seem to understand the word no.  Will do another post just all about her turning 11 months old.

Indy is doing well… he is definitely putting on weight and his coat seems more healthy and soft. 

Liam has almost finished another season of winter soccer. An up and down season for him.  He either plays really well or he decides that he doesn’t really want to play at all.  Which can be kinda frustrating to watch. 

I’m sure there are other things happening!  Just can’t remember them right now!   Right that was my packing break!! 

Til next time

Mxx

Busy….

Woah…

Crazy busy…

having mid winter Christmas get togethers with lovely friends, good wine and great food!

Chasing Taylor around wherever we are.   I don’t remember Liam being so amazingly quick and so amazingly interested in his surroundings.  She is now walking around everything, including the walls and climbing into and under everything she can find.

Catching up and having baby cuddles with my cute little nephews, Mako and Roman and their gorgeous Mummies (Shannon and Juliet). 

Chasing down Plasterers/Painters for quotes to paint the side of our house as part of the sale.

Numerous phone calls to Universal Homes, our Lawyer and our Real Estate Agent.

Preparing for another open home and clearing, cleaning and de-cluttering again!

Sorting out Indy with his Lactulose regime, his antibiotics, getting more tinned food and numerous phone calls to the Vet.  Indy is doing amazing… a different dog!  He is eating really well including the dry food and he is bouncing all over everyone again!   Fingers crossed he will be fine from now on.

Hopefully, tomorrow the conditional sale on our house will get a step closer to being finalised so I can cross that off my list.  If I had time to actually write out a list!! 

Until then… will leave you with some cute photos of Liam and Taylor which I just LOVE!   They are blurry from movement and slightly out of focus but I love the essence that it portrays… my too gorgeous kids enjoying themselves!

Portosystemic Shunt

Hi,

We have had an eventful few days with our gorgeous Indy doggie who hasn’t been that well.   I thought I would blog about it as we are pretty sure that he has a very rare genetic condition called a Portosystemic Shunt.  Which basically means that he doesn’t process toxins in the liver as he should.   We have been doing loads of research on the web and there doesn’t seem to be all that much literature on real life cases where dogs have been diagnosed with this condition at such a late age (Indy is about to turn 4).  Usually, it is picked up in small puppies where they fail to thrive (as they get sick from their food) and develop vomiting and  hepatic encephalopathy symptoms which can include being unable to stand up properly, weakness, depression, lethargy, and odd eating behaviours.

Unfortunately, the only way to cure him is to have an ultrasound to see where the shunt is (it could be out of the liver or inside the liver) and depending on where the shunt is located — the costs of surgery are quite high (in the thousands).

Indy having a portosystemic shunt would explain several things !! 

• He has always been a fussy eater, he would try a certain food and eat it for a few days and then refuse to eat it.  In hindsight, he probably tried the new food and then it made him sick so of course he doesn’t want to eat it anymore! 
• He has always been skinny and not interested in his dog food.
• He has this weird habit of walking against the back of the couch and rubbing his head… which is common in dogs with a shunt. 

Nevertheless, up until a month ago he has been a pretty healthy dog, always particularly bouncy and so happy to see everyone.  But if we look back about 6 weeks ago he started to be less active.  Probably in the last month he has hardly needed to be walked.  He looked just a bit sad.  Then after trying a new food (which he loved!), he had an episode of lethargy, the wobbles and he just couldn’t relax as well as dribbling excessively.  We took him to the vet and they diagnosed him with having a possible gastrobug and they gave him a jab for nausea and a new dog food for sensitive stomaches to try.  Which of course we struggled to get him to eat.  At first he was just on a rice diet to make sure he had cleared out any bugs in his system. 

He seemed to bounce back a bit, but perhaps not quite his usual bouncy self!

Fast forward to last Friday, he destroyed his bed, totally eat the inside bits of it, I also discovered that he quite liked the look of the central vacuum hose and he nibbled on that a bit.  He only did this at night, during the day he would just lie down really not much enthusiasm for anything.  He was wobbly on his feet again.  On Friday night, he decided he liked the look of the central vacuum hose that he completely destroyed it and I also tried to eat the masking tape I had used to repair the early damage he had done.

So on Saturday I sent him along to the vet with Gary.  Unfortunately, they just decided that he was sick again and gave him the nausea drug but also took bloodwork but no results til Monday.  On Saturday afternoon, Indy ate 3 bowlfuls of food, he was hungry as, we thought oh no he has been starving and felt sorry that we hadn’t been giving him much food.

On Saturday night, he completely destroyed the garage, washing everywhere, he had chewed through boxes and eaten the roll of masking tape.  He could hardly move, he was drinking excessively and he didn’t even have the energy to lift his head out of the dog bowl.  He wasn’t eating again.

So on Sunday, Liam and I took him to the after hours vet (a  different one this time) and got his blood work done again and they processed it on the spot.  He had a really high white blood count so he was fighting an infection of some sort.  They kept him in over night, put him on an IV, started antibiotics and I had to go and pick him up on Monday morning at 7am to take him back to our normal vet. 

At 7am I picked him up, he seemed reasonably chirpy, dropped him off at our normal vet.  He seemed to be doing well.  They discovered that he had cut his mouth (probably on the vacuum cleaner hose) and that had become infected and he possibly had a bladder infection as well.  The vet rang to talk to me to say he was doing really well.  But then they fed him mid morning and after being reasonably happy he completely deflated, he wouldn’t even lift his head when his name was called.

That lead them to think that he  had a reaction to the food because of the shunt. 

The three bowlfuls of food he ate on Saturday afternoon was a high protein based formula for dogs with sensitive stomaches which  is quite possibly the worst thing that we could have done.  As high protein causes more ammonia to go to the brain and hence he had such an episode on Saturday night and it obviously made him feel awful.

So what to do… well it is possibly to medically manage his diet, low protein, raw fruits and vegetables etc.  But that is such an unknown path.  Firstly, if we did decide to take  the path of surgery then he has to be stablized first anyway.  He will also be on a lactulose to help him stay regular and help him process food properly.   Surgery may not even be possible or an option anyway.  I have read online that most dogs don’t last long after diagnosis 3 to 10 months is usually the norm. But really there arent many documented cases of medically managed Portosystemic Shunts.

You would think, if he has had this since birth that if diet made him feel so awful fixing his diet might just make the world of difference to him.  But ultimately, we don’t know how much an impact it will have and I guess only time will tell.

This morning we saw him at the vet and he appeared happy to see us and pretty normal.   Today he has had 3 meals of liver diet food and seems not to have reacted so hoping that Indy will keep eating it long  term as well.  Although, being the sceptist, in the past he has eaten new foods no problem only to develop problems further down the track with no eating it.

I will be picking him up shortly, before I do, popping in to Animates to buy him a crate to sleep in… at least then I know he is safe at night and can’t get into any mischief in the garage!!

It has sure been very quiet around here… with no doggie under  my feet as I sit on the couch, on greeting us at the garage door in the mornings, or sitting on Liam’s bed whilst I go get him from school.  I used to think that it would be so much easier to not have a dog (and it probably would be) but at the end of the day, I miss him more than I thought I would and actually all the extra work is kinda worth it to have him around.  

So that is our little sick doggie story.  The main thing is that he isn’t suffering and at the moment he doesn’t seem to be.  Will definitely write more in the coming weeks to tell his story in the hope that someone else might find our journey useful as it would have been for us searching the internet for answers to a relatively unknown condition.

Mxx