Pea-Mania

I guess it's been about a month now, but now everyone can see just how much trouble two little peas and a baby can be. Paisley had to be taken to the ER here in Jacksonville because she stuck two dried peas up her nose. One on each side of course. She's like her mommy, things need to be symetrical whenever possible. Stupid mommy, though, has no idea when said peas were put up her nose. She tore the seed bag open one day, but it wasn't until about 2 days later that we realized her nose was bothering her. Anywho...the ER in Jacksonville couldn't get the peas out. No surprise since the ER in Jacksonville sucks. I took a chance though hoping it would be a quick ER visit. So they transfered us to Arkansas Children's Hospital in Little Rock. We got lucky, it was a short wait. About 20 minutes in the waiting room and then about 30 minutes in the exam room waiting for the ENT. My average ER visit to Children's is about 3-4 hours total. That day was about 2 1/2 hours. Not bad. Our longest ER visit was 12 hours just in the waiting room. Of course that was becuase Lorelei got sick 4th of July weekend and everytime we got to the front of the line we got bumped for yet another ambulance with yet another firecracker injury. Anyway, back to the original story. The ENT got one pea out with his little metal scoopy thingy (yes that is the technical term) but it was a no go for the other pea. Now picture this at the same time. Poor Paisley is wrapped in a sheet like a burrito so she can't move. The worry is that the pea might accidently get pushed to far back and go into her airway. The ENT has this "AHA moment" Yeah, I said it. "AHA moment" what are you gonna do about it, Oprah. NOTHIN'!! He remembers something he read about. He took a sterile catheter (the ones used for little baby boys) and threaded it behind the pea. Then he filled little balloon with saline and pulled the pea out that way. He commented that he wished he remembered that an hour ago when he first started trying.






The penny is there for size reference. The peas on the outside are the dried peas. That is the size the peas were when they went into Paisley's nose. The inside peas are the actual re-hydrated peas that came out of the poor girl's nose.

New Puppies!!

Will post info on puppies later, just wanted to get some pics up!

Ouch!!

At about 8:30 this morning I get a call from Houston's teacher on my cell phone. I know it can't be good. If it wasn't a big deal, she would have called the home phone first. Seems Houston and one of his friends were horsing around in line when they were walking outside after breakfast. Houston tripped over his friend's feet and face planted on the concrete. He cut up both of his lips, scrapped under his nose and his forehead, plus scrapped both elbows and knees. The first picture I took of him after lunch when he fell asleep on the sofa (don't worry, the smears extending from his mouth is just pizza sauce). The other picture I took about three hours later. I wish I had a picture right after it happened when the swelling was really spectacular, but the camera battery was charging.

Shiloh

I know that I won't be able to do this tomorrow, so I am doing this tonight. Tomorrow afternoon, we have a 3:45 appointment with the vet. We have made the decision to put Shiloh down. This has been heart wrentching for us. We have struggled with this for the last 6 months. For those who don't know...Shiloh has a congenital defect. It is a called a luxating pattella. Basically her knee-cap dislocates on a regular basis. I can pop it back in, or by streching her leg out she pops it back in herself. Yes, this can be very painfull. We have been doing home treatments for her for almost two years. I have talked to two different vets plus other owners of great pyrs who have had this problem. There is a surgery to correct it. We oppted not to persure surgery for several reasons. It is not always successful. There is a minimum recovery time of 12 weeks that Shiloh would have had to stay confined unless we were taking a potty break and then only 5 minutes on her feet at time. With bigger dogs you run the risk that they over compenstate with their good leg during the recovery time and end up damaging the good leg. One great pyr owner ended up have to do two knee surgeries plus a hip replacement to correct the problem. In addition to that, we just can't afford $2000 worth of surgeries. We did our research and the home treatment we chose was the same that you would use for and older, arthritic dog. She was given 2000mg of glucosomine, fish oil, and flaxseed oil twice a day. After a year of this is when her leg became more painful and we started pain meds. She was given tramadol everyday and rimadyl on extra bad days. We've noticed increasingly in last few months, that she is slowly getting worse. You would have to be with her every day to see this. When she is in motion, she is ok. But when she stands still her back legs shake (we suspect that her good leg is now starting to be affected) and she has a harder time getting up after she has been laying down more than a couple of minutes. Sometimes, all she can do is lay there and wag her tail. I can tell that she wants to get up and come over to me but she just can't. We love her and that is why we are doing this. She is already in pain, and it is not fair to let it continue.

First Hair Cut

These pictures are from Feb. 3. I think one of my favorite feature of the digital camera, is that it tells me when the picture was taken. I have a whole desk drawer of pictures from when Houston was little(r), pre-digital days, that I have no idea when I took them. Anyway...These are from Feb. when I got tired of Lorelei always having to push her hair out of her eyes.



Wow! It only took her three years, but she FINALLY grew some hair.


After she calmed down, she managed to smile and show off her hair cut. She was very patient and even though she cried the whole time she stood very still while I cut her bangs.





Now you can see just how uneven they were. After Lorelei was done posing for the camera (there are about 5 more pictures of her acting goofy with her new hair cut) I got some sharper scissors and evened them up. She enjoys being able to see.

Stay tuned for pictures of Lorelei's new 'do!

Cryptic Message

After we got the new truck, Brian really wanted vanity plates. He wanted "CRODADY" but I vetoed that. We both have to drive it and I refrained from getting "CROMOMY" plates on the van since he had to drive it, too. So he told me his top choices, and told him mine. A few that were considered: (AR plates lets you use 7 letters and/or numbers)

C130TRP

CROFMLY

4DAKIDS

Here is the one that Brian practically begged and pleaded for and I gave in. Can you figure it out??

New Truck

I'll have to take some more pictures soon. The truck has a new tow hitch and shiny green valve stem caps on the tires. These are special caps because today I had the trucks tires filled with nitrogen.