Be yourself

What Beagles Think

Velvet was barking out the window the other night, so I was telling her to get down from there.

This was her reaction.

Velvet: "You talkin' to me?" 

 {{{thinking}}} "I'll just hide here."

At this point, I'm just repeating "Get down.  Get down from there.  Velvet, get down."

Velvet: "What?!"

"Whatev's, mom."

Cushing's Disease update

Its been nearly a year since I wrote the first post about Velvet having Cushing's Disease, and wanted to share what's going on with her now.

What ended up happening last year after that post was that one Vet said it was Cushing's Disease, another Vet said it was Kidney Disease, and a third Vet said the tests were inconclusive. (There are 3 vets at the office where I take her.  I imagine if there had been a 4th one, I would have had a 4th different opinion.  The last vet wanted me to take her to Cincinnati for an ultrasound that would hopefully be more conclusive (the other 2 vets weren't 100% what was wrong with Velvet either, so still, no medicine).  I told him, that was just too much.  I'm not taking a 15 year old dog, on an hour+ drive to have a $200 test that may or may not give me a conclusive answer.  Velvet sheds like a I-don't-know-what just going from here to the vet.  By the time we would get to Cincinnati, she would probably be bald.

So, I did my own research.  I found that she has a lot of the symptoms of Cushing's Disease, and not so many of Kidney Disease.  She has the distended stomach, diluted urine, unable to control it sometimes, going often, losing a lot of fur, and drinking a lot of water.  More recently she has developed weak muscles, is panting a lot and seems more hungry (if that's even possible, haha).

What I did last year was change her food and treats to ones for older dogs, and with fewer ingredients.  Once she had finished her antibiotics (ended up being about 6 weeks worth), she was like a new (but still old) dog.  So, for a year, everything has been been fine, or at least manageable.  We taught her to use pee pads for when we're not home, and take her out more often.  She always has water available and I try to keep an idea of how much she drinks each day.  Some days she doesn't drink at all, so I add water to her food.

A few weeks ago, I woke up on a Saturday morning to a very sick dog.  She was panting non-stop, very shaky, and very lethargic.  So I took her to the vet, thinking "this is it."  It turned out to be an infection, and the Dr. said "due to her unresolved kidney disease."  I know he just said that to explain why she had the infection, but I couldn't help but feel that he disagrees with my choices.

More on that later.
To be continued...

*Note: these are just our own experiences and what we have learned.  Please don't take it to mean that I am knowledgeable about this subject, only how it affects my dog.

Cushing's Disease

The Vet called today and said that Velvet's blood tests indicate that she is not in renal failure (kidney failure), but that it looks like she has Cushing's Disease.  From what I understand, Cushing's Disease is the result of a benign tumor on the pituitary gland.  The symptoms seem to be very similar to kidney disease, but this has a much better prognosis.  Since she is doing so well on the medicine for her eye and ear infections, we're going to continue her antibiotics for a second week and then do a new urinalysis after that and pray for better numbers.

For more information on Cushing's Disease, I found this article to be very helpful:
Cushing's Disease in Dogs

I’ve had a bad day

I’ve had a bad day.  Not bad in a significant way, just more of a Murphy’s Law kind of way.

Sometimes when I get up in the morning, I’m just able to tell that its going to be “one of those days.”  I even contemplate going back to bed, but I never do and always regret it later.  This morning I woke up to foamy, white, little puddles of dog bile on the rug.  I looked at the dog.  She looked at me.  I decided I needed a cup of coffee before I could deal with this.  Then I fed her and took her outside where she proceeded to choke herself trying to get to 3 different locations of frozen poopsicles from the previous day.  I dragged her back in the house and had some more coffee.  

My intention this morning was to do a few computer things on my pc, like upload files to dropbox and update my iphone os.  I knew it would take a little while for it to warm up, so I had some coffee, checked some emails, etc. on my laptop, all the while, Velvet is making these choking/gagging noises that made me think she was going to throw up, but she never did.  In between she sat there and stared at me, like she was trying to use telepathy to get me to feed her again.

Trying to ignore her, I looked at my phone and there were two notifications for breaking news; both involved traffic accidents with trucks.  My BF drives a truck for a living, so my heart always stops for a second when I get these alerts.  Read them, they weren’t him, I breathed a sigh of relief.  Then I went to check on the pc, but it still hadn’t finished booting up.  So, I figured, there would still be time to do everything, I’ll just go ahead and take a shower.  When I finished, I went to my pc and it had finished booting up, but there were windows everywhere, wanting me to upgrade this, search for missing plug-ins, renew my virus software, make recovery discs, etc, etc.  By the time I finished with all of that I didn’t think there would be time to get the other stuff done, so I turned it off.

After breakfast, I cleaned up the puddles of dog bile on the rug, (note to self:  clean rug, or just be sure to wear shoes in there), then went outside to shovel up the poopsicles using a very old, heavy, and awkward shovel; I swear its made of cast iron.  Then I took Velvet out, little determined hound dog that she is, she went around to the 3 places where there once was poo and ate the ice where the poo had sat.  How desperate can she be?  Back inside, she started making the gagging noises at me again.  

Before I left for work this morning, I decided to check my account balance.  I never do this on a Monday because everything over the weekend goes through on Tuesday.  I log in through my phone and the screen turns blood red.  Big, bold alerts, and exclamation marks covered my screen.  I could hardly understand what was going on, but in my mind, I could hear sirens going off and the robot from “Lost In Space” twirling around, flailing his arms, shouting, “danger, danger Will Robinson.”  When I finally sifted through all of the warning signs, I discovered that I was seriously overdrawn.  A transfer I had initiated on Friday was trying to go through 3 times.  That’s just great.  I decided to contemplate what to do over another cup of coffee.  Then, another breaking news alert showed up.  A house fire.  By now, I’m really starting to consider going back to bed, but I think, things happen in threes, so it should be safe to venture out.  I almost forgot to call in my prescriptions.  Got that done, scraped the ice off my car, listened to some calm relaxing music, then realized, I can’t pay for my prescriptions, because my bank thinks I’m overdrawn.  And, one of them I’m completely out of.  

I get to work.  I call the bank about the transfers.  The customer service lady was very nice.  I explained to her that I hit the submit button just once, but then it seemed stuck, so I hit the home button.  The home button took me to the homepage, but then started loading the transfer from where it had been stuck before, so I (guess), I hit submit again.  She said they’ve been having trouble with their system and she would take care of it.  A couple of minutes later she came back and said it was all fixed.  I was so relieved.  This is how the rest of conversation went (all of her responses are said with a smile on her face; I could just hear it):
Me:  Thank you, so the money won’t come out of my account?
Her:  Its all taken care of.
Me:  So will the money transfer?
Her:  It should stay where it is.
Me:  Where is that?
Her:  The correction is immediate.
Me:  Ok, good.  Thank you.
Her:  You’re welcome.  Please allow 2-3 business days for the correction to show up.
Me:  So the money will come out of my account and then be put back in?
Her:  No, it won’t come out.  This is immediate.  Your money will stay where it is.
Me:  Where is that?  Your institution says pending that its coming in, and my bank account says pending that its coming out and looks like its going to overdraw my account.
Her:  Yes.  That’s correct.  Is there anything else I can help with you with today?
I hesitated, but thought this is going nowhere, like the “Who’s on first” bit by Abbott and Costello.
Me:  No.  You’ve done enough.
Her:  Thank you.  Have a nice day.
I hung up and imagined my money floating around in the clouds, like in some kind of internet banking purgatory; a black hole of particles, pieces of data that just linger in the atmosphere until a computer with the correct id and password, with 3 security questions, pulls them into a server somewhere in India.  Just then I get another alert on my phone; this time from my bank.  It says that my bank account balance is below the $100 threshold that I had set.  I thought that was a really nice way to say ‘you’re nearly $900 in the hole and there’s nothing you can do about it’.

Since I was at the office, I decided to get some work done.  I had a project that needed to be finished for an early morning meeting tomorrow.  I was making excellent time on it and everything was going great until around 4:15.  I sent the drawings to the printer and they came out with streaks and little pools of ink everywhere; they were a mess.  It took about an hour to fix the printer, and amazingly, I did it without getting ink on me.  So, I just needed to make about 15 minutes of changes to the drawings, print them, and then I could run my errands, go home, and then relax.  The printer ended up taking 15 minutes to check what I did and make sure I did it correctly (some nerve).  Then, as happens every time I’m trying to get a project out in a reasonable amount of time, everything starts to choke up.  The computers, the printers, the network, one by one begin to fail me.  I lose work that I had done; I tear out my hair waiting for a drawing to open.  It is so stressful.  Two hours later, I’m finally finished.  I decide to go home first before running my errands because I figure by now, Velvet is probably sick and is probably crossing her legs waiting on me.  I get home, and amazingly, there is nothing to clean up.  So, I feed her and take her outside.  While I’m waiting for her to do her business, I look up and see that a gutter nail is working its way out.  I envision it breaking there, allowing all of the snow to filter to the weak point, eventually breaking off the entire gutter.  But, there’s nothing much I can do about that right now.  Back inside, I opened a package I received today.  It was a ring that I’ve been waiting for.  I was so excited it was here.  It is so pretty, and, its too big.  Big disappointment, but just really a drop in the bucket at this point.  

So, then I decide to nuke a frozen meal for dinner.  Every meal says to pull back the corner of the plastic cover to vent, so one would think that the plastic should be strong enough to be able to be peeled back.  Not today it isn’t.  This one takes me like 5 minutes because every place I peel, it tears into small pieces.  At this point, I’m laughing, a bit of a crazy laugh, but I figure, at this point, there’s nothing I can do about it.  I do decide not to leave the house again today, just in case the Universe is trying to tell me something.  I followed the frozen meal with Weight Watchers ice cream (and I may be having about 5 more of those tonight if things don’t improve).

Finally, I’m in my jam-jams, have a beagle curled up next to me snoring like drunken sailor and I’m thinking, this would probably be a good time to call it a night.

Good night everyone.  Prayers for a good Tuesday.

This song always makes me feel better...