It's a hard life I lead!  
I have to take my man for a walk every morning or else he'd get lost and wander off.  
I spend my days helping my woman study for her smelly stuff classes.  
I have to keep things like cats and squirrels and UPS trucks from stealing the house.  
I have to blaze trails and play with friends.  
I have to go swimming every other week.  
I have to turn people who don't like dogs into lovers of the Puppy Butt.  
I have to stop at the vet office and the training place by my house ​so the people can give me treats.

Sometimes a girl just has to curl up with her leopard skin rug and take a nap.

Tomorrow is swim Sunday!  I'm supposed to swim every other Sunday but my people were sick for the last one.  My people say I'm supposed to rest up today so I'll be all ready for tomorrow!!!!!!  Every time I open my eyes after I nap, my people have to tell me it's not tomorrow yet!

I went to the rehab vet yesterday for my regular check up.  
It was a good thing because my woman and I had an "incident" Thursday.  We were going to go out front through the garage and she decided to grab some stuff off the kitchen counter to take to the garage to throw away.  She thought I was behind her but I was in front of her.  She kneed me in the side hard enough for me to slip sideways then she started to fall.  I thought I was going to die but she managed to leap over me as she was falling.  By the time she got up off the tile, I was on my bed where it was safe!  She made sure I was OK then we went out.
My rehab vet said I had some issues that were "consistent" with what happened the day before.  One of the things that happened was a "right translation of the occiput."  My woman knows what the "occiput" is but didn't know what the rest meant.  It means my head slid from the impact!  
See - she tried to kill me!!!!
Other than that, I had very few issues.  I got all fixed up and am ready to swim!!!!

I've been exploring the dried up wetlands/duck pond.  Someone (we're pretty sure we know who) took out the beaver dam (which is illegal).  I've also been finding new trails in the area.  My boy even found a way to go from 1 trail to a big open spot I can explore!

My woman completed the 1st level of animal aromatherapy training so she's been staying busy.  There's 5 or 6 more levels to complete and the 1st one looks like it's the shortest one.  She's already used what she learned to help me when I was having leg spasms due to tweaking my pelvis romping in our big snow in January.

I just lost my bestest friend.  He had something called Lymphoma.  We'd known each other my whole life.  He wasn't much older than me.

Our first meeting, he bit me and made me go "yipe."  I looked at his man, his man looked at me and said "You bite him girl" so I pinned my ears back, put my snark face on, jumped up and bit him with my puppy teeth.  He went "YIPE!" and we were best friends after that.

We liked to run around in the park and our yards, wrestle, and pull on each other's lips to say "Hey, let's play."

He liked to drink out of my canteen even when I tried to swallow his head.
 
He was afraid of my stairs for years then he decided they weren't so scary so he'd come in and play with me.  Then he realized he could open my front door so he'd let himself in.

He was the only dog I would share my food with.  
But I wouldn't share my spiral tendon. He found that out the hard way when I tried to turn him into a CPR dummy.  He got up and decided the direct approach didn't work so maybe a side approach would.  He would walk toward me sideways a few steps, stop, walk towards me, stop.  That didn't work either.

I'll miss laying on my bed, looking out my window, and seeing him laying on his bed and looking at me out his window.

Hi everyone!  I hope you had a great howloday season.  I did.  

I chased after some mail thieves and would have caught them if I was allowed to run in the street.  The police caught them though.

We got snow, lots and lots of it.  And it stuck around for a long time but not long enough.  The last snow we had was over 2 weeks ago and all of it just melted from our yard.  They said a trace to 4" and we got about 12"!!!!

I showed my woman where the beavers live, played with friends, made new friends and blazed trails.

My rehab vet said I could go swimming again so I went last weekend!  I was so excited I shook like a paint shaker and started barking and yipping when I realized we weren't going to the rehab vet.  There was a woman in the pool to make sure I didn't jump or overdo it.  It's been over 16 months.  

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Dogmas 2016​

Happy belated turkey day to everyone in the USA!  My man had 4 whole days off!!  I barely survived.  

I helped do a project in the house, raked up more leaves from the back yard, went for lots of long walks, went shopping at Home Depot for the 1st time, hung up some holiday lights and put up our Yule tree!
I don't understand why so many people like Home Depot.  There are no trees and shrubs to sniff.  No balls and toys to look at.  No treats to sniff.  No critters to watch or Barneys (garter snakes) to track.

I've made a few new friends since I last let you know what I've been up to.  My woman had a birfday and I helped make her dinner and a cake.  She also started classes to learn how to use essential oils, infused oils, hydrosols and stuff like that with animals.
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Hi everyone.  My people say I'm back!!!  My woman finished up her massage stuff and can do things like Manual Lymphatic Drainage and circulatory massage and massage to relieve inflammation.

A quick catch-up.

I changed vet clinics.  They took my blood but didn't run the senior wellness panel bloodwork.  And we have found out that the blood pressure they took on me wasn't able to be used for anything because it wasn't a true blood pressure.
My new vet clinic sent people to my home to do my blood draw and do another exam.  I liked that!  They even have a vet that is trained in Traditional Chinese Medicine and they can get all my special supplements I take for my Lupus.

I've still been seeing my rehab vet about every 3 weeks.  She's done some acupuncture on me a few times.  Starting last Friday, I'm going every week for TENS treatments because I hurt myself and was having muscle spasms in my rear legs.  I usually have muscle spasms in my right thigh when I move it a certain way and those stayed away for 4 whole days after the TENS treatment!

I have a new immune-mediated eye disease called Episcleritis.  I could either get eye drops or an injection into the eye to treat it.  My people chose the eye drops so I had to get eye drops in my right eye 4 times a day for 7 days, then 3 times a day for 7 days, and now it's 2 times a day until the redness goes all the way away.

I've been getting to play more as my knee continues to stay stable.  My people have been playing chase games with me and letting me play "police dog" where I attack my woman's sleeve.  I have also been playing with some of my friends.  I've even been able to tree some squirrels!
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I've been to lots of vets lately!

I see my rehab vet every 3 weeks.
She kept reviewing my x-rays from the e-vet because my heart looked weird to her.  She is pretty sure that I have something called a Persistent Right Aortic Arch.  This is something that should have gone away before I was born but didn't. 

My esophagus goes through that arch so it has kind of strangled it which means my esophageal stricture is actually something called Megaesophagus.  This means the part of my esophagus in front of that part looks like a saggy balloon and makes it hard for food and water to get down to my stomach.  So far, water isn't a problem and I can eat still eat my raw food like normal but I'll probably have to change how I get fed my raw food.  When it comes up, it can go down the wrong tube and end up in my lungs and cause pneumonia.
My certified small animal massage practitioner woman is supposed to massage my diaphragm when I get neck burbles to relax that and stop it from irritation the nerves on my esophagus.

She's still happy with my CCL progress and my woman is making sure to get all the massage pointers she can for all my issues.  I still get my daily hind quarter and spine/rib cage massage plus patellar massage, pin and stretch of the sartorius muscle, compression of the lower limb, patellar tendon stretching, hip leans, incline stands, 3 legged stand bounces, tail traction, spine "wiggle", circle walking, humeral glides, and front limb figure 8's.

My last appointment she said she thinks my Long Digital Extensor Tendon came loose on my left rear leg.  My woman says there's a fancy word for it and uses really strange words to describe where it came loose from.  The rehab vet said it's not something they worry about doing surgery for but, if I had surgery of the left knee, the surgeon would reattach it.

And, that's the latest from my rehab vet!
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I had my yearly eye doctor exam.  My Lipid Keratopathy and Non-Ulcerated Ocular Lesions looked good.  But she said I have:

1. Pannus (an auto-immune disease) and had my people do my eye drops lesions eye drops twice a day and told them what to watch for.
2. Cataracts - she saw some tiny cataract spots but said I'm already getting the supplements she would put me on.
3. Possible Vascular Disease - she said something about cholesterol which indicates leaky blood vessels and she wanted my blood pressure checked.

My next eye exam is next year unless I have problems.
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I had my senior wellness exam Friday and had my blood pressure taken.  That wasn't fun and took about 30 or 40 minutes!  The vet said it looked good though.  My heart worm test came back negative and we are waiting on my blood work to see what next to figure out the vascular thing.  
The vet probably has the results but she doesn't work today to review it.
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I'll talk more about my non-vet adventures next time!

April 3, I went to the e-vet.  The night before, I started acting like I was scared of something I was smelling then I got over it.  I acted the same way before my walk but got over it.  I ate breakfast and then started acting nervous.  My woman went over to the neighbors' to look at a couch they were offering us for free and, when she got back, I was acting like I couldn't tell where the steps were.  I acted like I was afraid of my car when we got in.  
We spent 3 or 3.5 hours at the e-vet and they drew blood, took a bunch of x-rays, and checked me for pain and bloat and vision problems.  I cooperated with them and even willingly let myself be separated from them so my people knew something wasn't right with me.
The only thing they saw was I was a little dehydrated so the gave me fluids under my skin, gave me some tranquilizers for anxiety, and sent me home.
I was doing better so my people decided to see if I would get over my anxiety and didn't give me any pills.  I only had 2 more short episodes that night and was all better.  
After we had all eaten and had a chance to relax, my man said it was like I was hallucinating like he did after the ambulance took him away and he spent all that time in the hospital 2 years ago and the drugs they gave him for pain made him see things come out of the walls!

April 4, they called my vet and the vet called back and said he thought it was a pinched nerve and maybe I should see a chiropractor.  My people were sure this wasn't what caused it, and I'd been to my rehab vet the day before this started, but my woman called the rehab vet and they got us worked in that afternoon.  
The rehab vet checked me over real good, got the timeline of what happened and the things I did Saturday up to when everything started.  She thinks I may have gotten part of a mushroom when I picked a stick to chew on in the park.  Enough to make me hallucinate but not enough to cause internal problems.  
She also reviewed the x-rays while we were there and said I have spondylosis on several vertebrae and that tells her those areas suffered trauma.  This means I have bone bridges between some vertebrae.
My heart also looked abnormal but, based on past history, she said it was "congenital" instead of recent.  My woman says "congenital" means I was born that way.
My injured knee was sore but she said there was even less fluid in the joint and it was probably all the pacing I did on the 2nd and 3rd since I was only supposed to be walking just over a mile total each day.

April 5, I turned 9!  I didn't get to go out to get my friends any goodies due to my e-vet visit.  I had a good day though.  My woman said she will post pictures when she gets a chance to get them off all the devices.

April 15, I went to the rehab vet for my regular recheck to see how my knee is doing.  She said the x-rays of my heart looked funny to her so she kept going back to review them.  She said it looks like I have a congenital heart defect called a Persistent Right Aortic Arch.  This has caused something called "megaesophagus" to develop.  This is why I've had problems with regurgitating food, especially if I swallow normal sized hunks of my food.
After we left, we stopped by my vet and talked about options.  We're still thinking about them.

Yesterday I got to go to the garden center and pick out strawberry plants and soil.  Since we can't go on vacation this year because of my knee, we're going to try growing tomatoes and strawberries again!  And they said we're going to plant a tree in my front yard too.

I saw my rehab vet Friday.  The good news - everybody brought cheese!  My people had a cheese stick for me, the vet tech had a cheese stick for me, and the vet had a cheese stick for me!!  

The vet tech that also works the front desk gave me freeze dried lamb lung while she was seeing how my legs work.  I don't like that so I decided not to cooperate and my woman ended up doing 1 leg for her since it was easier for all of us.  
I can be pretty stubborn and difficult which makes everyone happy because it means I feel good.
If I cooperate with people at rehab, it means I don't feel like myself!

The good news to my woman was the evidence that she's helping me with massage I didn't really have any of my usual problems.
One of my problems is because of all the force I put into barking!  I'm one of the few dogs that can throw my back out because I have such a big bark!!  My woman got some special tips for helping certain muscles relax to let my vertebrae go back into place.

The good news to my man was no drawer movement in my hurt knee like there was 2 weeks ago.  

My woman got lots of advice for how to help my esophagus issue, how to help my leg tremor, and help my lymph issue.

I get to go for longer and longer walks now!

I'll let my woman fill you in on the rest of the visit later.
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Chance’s woman here.  The visit Friday was both good and bad.

The Good
The lack of drawer movement, lack of pain in the knee and the fact that the knee is not incompetent.  There is still fluid in the knee but no swelling.

We also finally know why Chance has had throat “burps” since we got her in 2007.  It’s esophageal nerve irritation and relaxing the diaphragm muscle will help.

My massage efforts have helped Chance’s range of motion and are really helping her.  The rehab vet said it’s a good thing I took the classes and became a certified Small Animal Massage Practitioner. 
I worked out an updated massage plan with the vet and will follow that until the 3-week recheck.

The Bad
Chance’s patellar-tibial tuberosity line has gone vertical.  It should be angled.  If it continues to move, it will mean surgery.  And her knee could still destabilize which will mean surgery.

The vet also suspects the esophageal anomaly is probably megaesophagus since it was 1st seen at 12 weeks.  Based off Chance’s start in life, she thinks something she at lodged or irritated the esophagus and caused damage.  She’s the 2nd vet to mention megaesophagus.

What's Next?
So, we are back to the rehab vet in 3 weeks.
I plan on asking the unpleasant question: Is surgery best to get Chance back to being able to play and run without worrying about a knee injury?