Wordless Wednesday--Taffy Edition



PS: Mom says she has been neglecting the blog lately but Twix is doing much better ;o)

A Valentine's Update with Photos!

Gosh! Momma has been taking over the blog lately. I don't know what makes her think she has the right to do that.

I would like to say THANKS to all of you for your support, prayers, and ideas while I've been sick.

I am doing better and I even have a photo to prove it....

Yes, that is me, eating Fresh Pet! 

It seems having Taffy here has given me an incentive to eat.

This morning I was running through the house like a cracker dog because I was so excited to get something to eat. Momma and Daddy are taking me to the specialty clinic on Wednesday. I'm not looking forward to it. I still have a little head twitch and stumble sometimes but not as bad as before. I have the most problems when I first wake up. Mom is wondering if it was just because I wasn't eating that caused some of that stuff.

I know you guys have been having withdrawl symptoms from not seeing any photos of me so here you go!

This is from a couple of weeks ago when we had a blizzard.

Do you see how deep that snow is?

It is up to my NECK!

And do you see how quickly I changed my mind about needing to go outside?

A couple of photos of me and Taffy:

Taffy says, "What? I'm just makin sure

she don't fall off the couch."

We got some mail this past week.
First, I got a card from Frankie. He is such a nice guy.
Thanks for thinkin of me Frankie!

Sorry about the photo,

we weren't in the mood for a photo shoot.

Then mail came that was addressed to Twix and Taffy.

 I'm not so sure I like having to share my mail.

We got a wonderful window cling (so the firemen will know to look for us if the place catches fire) and a card from Oskar. Thanks Oskar!

Taffy thought the cling was for her to chew on.
What a dork!

I hope everypup gets some
extra lovin for Valentine's Day!

Just a quick update

Twix is doing better!!!!

Thank you all so much for the feeding suggestions.  I have never had to deal with a dog that won't eat and several of your tips worked.  She will eat from a syringe on her own without me forcing it down her.  Currently, she is eating applesauce, yogurt, baby food fruits, and strawberry ice cream. She snarfs down that ice cream!!! We have known that she was having vision problems but I don't think she is blind.  It seems she has a hard time finding her food so I am starting to wonder if her sense of smell is not working so great either. She doesn't eat a lot at one time but her energy is starting to come back.  She even picked a fight with her sister last night! Up til yesterday she acted like she didn't even care that Taffy was here so I was glad to see that.  I know, it's crazy that I was happy to see my dogs fight.  It was just a 3 second spat and no one was injured.

Now that Twix is starting to feel better, having Taffy seems to be giving her a bit more incentive to eat also.  She has not eaten true dog food in quite a while and she ate some Fresh Pet yesterday.  I tried it before all the other stuff when we got home from work today and she turned away from it.  Later, when I fed Taffy and she got Fresh Pet, Twix was much more interested and ate a little herself. 

Twix still has her head twitch but it is not nearly like it was in the video.  Her daddy and I are going to take her back to the specialty clinic next week for a consultation.  Dr. Abby suggested we start with an internal medicine doctor there and he/she will probably want to get a neurologist involved.  I will update you guys after her appointment--I haven't made it yet because we just made this decision today.

My mom is doing good as well.  We are still in a holding pattern but she will be having another bone marrow biopsy the first part of March.  We are praying that the results will be a definite yes she has it or no she doesn't.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for all your support with both of these situations.

Twix and/or Taffy will be back to posting this weekend with pictures ;o)

Twix update from Mom

I wasn't sure I would make it through the work day today because all I could think about was getting my girl to the vet this evening. When I got home she seemed more alert than she was this morning and was walking better. Her head twitch seems less frequent too. On the way to the vet's office Twix's daddy and I discussed our "options".  He felt like Twix was suffering and in pain whereas I did not and He was worried that she would fall off the bed and break something in the middle of the night or hurt her back.  Our long term followers know how much Twix and her daddy love each other and it was a very hard thing to think about us not bringing her home. It is extremely important to Twix's daddy and I that she not suffer.

When we arrived at the office Twix was not her normal anxious self but was maybe her half normal anxious self. She did some pacing and some whimpering.  Of course, I was in tears in the waiting room and it only got worse once we were in the exam room.  We talked with Dr. Abby for quite a while and asked lots of questions.  We discussed Vestibular Disorder and she said Twix definitely doesn't have that.  She and Shannon (Twix's aunt) assured us that she was not in pain.  They made some suggestions on how to keep Twix safe and we talked about how we could control those type of things. So, when we got home tonight we took the mattress off the bed and put it on the floor ;o)

Dr. Abby had sent the video to a neurologist along with a list of things going on with her and is still waiting to hear back. I asked about a concussion and Dr. Abby said that was possible since she was showing some improvement. Both hubby and I felt much better about things after talking with her.

As far as the blood in her urine, we have addressed everything that was suggested in the comments from yesterday's post. We have looked at stones, UTI's, masses, etc. She has had several urinalysis, including sterile ones. She has had x-rays and her back and discs look great. The sonogram she had done at the specialty clinic didn't show any abnormalities at all. The specialist thought she probably had a broken vessel in one or her kidneys and said the only way to fix it would be to have surgery and remove the kidney.  He felt that we don't have anything to worry about with that. We have had lots and lots of blood work done too. It seems like we do that about once a month. One reason we do blood work so frequently is to make sure she doesn't become anemic.  Her liver and kidney functions are fine.  Her blood sugar is always in a normal range.  The only thing that ever shows up in the blood work that is abnormal is the white count.

Dr. Abby feels like the biggest issue is the anorexia.  We have been trying to get her to eat things she should be eating up to this point but the vet said we should just give her what she will eat right now.  I know she likes applesauce so when we got home I put some apple juice in a bowl and she drank all of it.  I will be making a trip to the grocery store in the morning to get some applesauce and baby food fruits.

I know that Dr. Abby has had other colleagues review Twix's information and they are as baffled as she is.  I think cancer of some sort is probably what is going on but with her recent abdominal sonogram we know it isn't located there.

Thank you so much for all your suggestions, thoughts, prayers, and crossed paws. We talked about pretty much everything that was suggested when we were at the vet's office. I will try to keep you updated as I can.

Thank you so much for everything!

Twix is sick.....Post from Mom

As many of you know, Twix has had some ongoing health problems for a while.  I haven't updated all her friends lately about her newest issues but she has gotten much worse in the past 24 hours and I need to know if anyone out there recognizes any of these symptoms.

First of all, as has been posted on the blog, she has had blood in her urine for quite some time.  We were under the impression that this was nothing to worry about after seeing a specialist and having a sonogram.  She didn't have any masses or even anything that looked suspicious when we had that done this past summer. The blood comes and goes and other than that she seemed to be just her normal self.

A couple of months ago, she stopped eating her dry dog food and started losing weight.  She usually weighs in the 11 pound range and she had gotten down to a little over 9 pounds.  She would sometimes eat canned food and sometimes she wouldn't and then it got to the point she just wouldn't eat it at all.  We started cooking for her.  Chicken breasts and rice, hamburger and rice, just about anything else that our vet suggested.  Again, sometimes she would eat and sometimes she wouldn't.  It is so hard for me to reach down and hand her a slice of cheese and have her turn her nose away.  She is the dog who will eat anything! We finally realized that she seemed to like sweet things so I started using sweet potatoes instead of rice.  That lasted for one meal.  We started feeding her yogurt and she will eat some of that each day but no more than a half a cup of yogurt per day.  She will sometimes eat some plain chicken or hamburger.  Somehow, she has gained some of her weight back and is now at about 10 pounds. I really don't understand how that is possible since she eats so little but I figure it is because she wasn't eating at all before.

They usually do blood work when we take her in to the vet's office. It will come back normal except for a high white blood cell count so then we put her on antibiotics. When we have the blood work rechecked her white count is normal.  Then the next time the blood work is done (sometimes just a week or two later) her white count is high again. 

She has lost some of her coordination over the past 6 months or so but we had attributed it to her age.  She had started to trip going up or down the stairs.  She was on an anti inflammatory medication but we were concerned that could be affecting her appetite so we took her off of it. When she trips, she may slide down a couple of steps but she never fell and once she got her footing she was able to make it the rest of the way. 

Yesterday, I was at an appointment with my mom and her Daddy was home with her.  Taffy was at the vet recovering from her spay and teeth cleaning.  Twix's daddy had gone to the basement and heard her go upstairs but then heard her fall down all the stairs.  When he came running up to check on her she was standing at the bottom of the stairs dazed.  He checked her over and she didn't seem to have anything wrong other than being dazed.  When I got home she didn't even move off the couch to greet me which is strange. We thought maybe she was a little sore from her tumble.  Not too long after that she started doing this strange jerky thing.  I called the vet and they said we should take her in.  I had this fear that she would stop before we got there due to excitement/nerves.  I took a quick video so that they would be able to see exactly what she was doing.

She is usually quite nervous at the vet's office but yesterday she just stood there.  They checked her over and thought maybe she had a seizure but weren't sure.  They checked her blood work and her white cell count is high again.  While we were waiting for her blood work to come back, she fell asleep in my arms, belly up, like a baby. She would NEVER have done that before. And she was totally out, almost hard to wake. Once I put her down, she was stumbling when she walked and if she stood still she would lean forward to the point that her hind legs would start to lift off the floor before she would catch herself.

Today, she seems the same. Not really much change at all except maybe the head jerk isn't quite as often.  We are taking her back to the vet tomorrow for a follow up.  Dr. Abby wasn't there when we went yesterday but will be there tomorrow.  She has been telling us for a while that Twix definitely has something wrong but her symptoms are very vague and we are having a hard time pin pointing it.  These new symptoms almost seem neurological.

I was hoping maybe, just maybe, someone out there has seen this same thing with one of their dogs or might have a clue of what is going on.  She has totally lost her spark and it breaks my heart to see her like this:

On another note, at my mom's appointment yesterday they decided to postpone her transplant.  The second biopsy came back as leukemia OR a reaction to something going on inside her body.  They don't want to do the transplant on Monday until they have concrete answers.  The doctor said he is sure she has the Leukemia from her blood work and symptoms but it is his job to leave no stone unturned prior to doing the transplant.  So, they will be getting the slides from her first biopsy and comparing them and if the pathologist still isn't sure they will either perform another biopsy and/or send the slides to Mayo Clinic. They said it will probably be a month or more before we proceed.

Thank you for your prayers and power of the paw!

Please feel free to link to this post.
I feel like the more who read it the better the chance someone might recognize what is happening.