Pictures...

A few pictures...Heidi, wonder-dog, my vegetable garden (which is doing well), and the back flower bed. I should have taken before pictures. It doesn't look that exciting now, but it was full of dead crab grass, dead hydrangeas, and out of control vine until I took it in hand today. I weeded, cut back the crab grass, pruned the hydrangeas, and put down new mulch. I also push mowed the entire lawn (and it's NOT a self-propelled mower). I followed that up by making ginger soy chicken and broccoli for dinner, then reading some. All in all, a productive day.

Update on the H-bomb

So, she has improved markedly. The urine overflows at night are down to smaller spots...but she is still losing control of her bladder.

A repeat urinalysis tonight did not show any bacteria or white blood cells - so that's encouraging. It doesn't mean that she doesn't have an upper urinary tract infection like pyelonephritis, but it's encouraging all the same. Her urine specific gravity has improved from the hyposthenuric 1.005 to an isosthenuric 1.016. It's still not good...her urine should be more concentrated. We'll probably be seeing the IM specialist soon.

I collected more urine to send out for culture, so we'll see if e.coli still grows. I switched her antibiotic, as well - to cephalexin. It's a pain in the arse, as it has to be given every 8 hours, but it's a heckuva lot cheaper than Clavamox...and she doesn't seem to be 100% on the mend yet.

We shall see, we shall see.

In other news, went out of town this weekend to visit the in-laws. It was a great time with fantastic food involved (my MIL is a gifted cook). We also stopped in Asheville on the way back to visit with friends, have beers, and dinner. Now, we're back, and I'm very, very tired...

Veterinarian, heal thy pet...

I am about to lose my sanity.

Heidi is a great dog. She is obedient, trainable, smart, calm, and everything else I always wanted in dog - including housebroken. That is, until recently.

Her urine culture grew e .coli - A TON of e.coli. This is the most common bacterial isolate of dog and cat urinary tracts, likely due to contamination of the vulva with fecal matter and bacterial migration up the urethra. This was probably especially true in Heidi. She's been in heat for the last week, and her vulva was enormously swollen. It is likely that fecal matter caused a UTI.

The sensitivity showed that luckily, the e. coli was sensitive to pretty much every antibiotic. I started her on Clavamox - a penicillin (amoxicillin) that has been clavulanated to improve its efficacy against nasty little microbes. Within 2 days, Heidi should have been on the mend.

She's not. She's still urinating and drinking massive quantities, going out every 3 hours, and still losing control in the house. It's not small accidents, either - we're talking 2 liters of dilute urine. Oddly enough, it seems to only happen when she sleeps. She always wakes up in a pool of urine. She was spayed on Tuesday, and the vet that did it mentioned that her bladder was massively distended in surgery. I noted the same thing when I ultrasounded her to obtain a urine sample. Despite having just urinated about 2 gallons in my car, she had a huge bladder.

I'm starting to REALLY worry that the urinary tract infection was a symptom of a larger problem. Pyelonephritis? Cushing's disease? A urine retention problem? I have no anwers at the moment, only frustrations. And dog beds soaked in urine.

When it rains...

I love my animals. They enrich my life in untold ways. So far, I've been very lucky and had healthy pets. I attribute this to a combination of things: luck, having "mutt" cats and no purebred dogs (until now), minimalist vaccinations, and benign neglect. Some of my cats are getting old, however. Two of the current 5 indoor cats are pushing 12 or 13 years old. That's not ancient by any means, I've seen many, many cat patients in their mid to late teens. Still, they are now geriatric. My birds are still young in bird years. Heidi is middle-aged for a Doberman.

I love my pets, love love love them. I love animals, obviously...but tonight...ahh, tonight.

The kittens are old enough to urinate on their own. And they did, on the couch after being fed. My fault, I should have put them back with their towels and "litterbox" (actually just newspaper). I cleaned that up.

I went to do laundry and found cat urine in the laundry room. This is unusual. Although I have 3 male cats, I have NEVER had an outside the litterbox peer - thankfully. I've been fortunate. Apparently, someone was stressed and/or unhappy about the litterbox being not pristine and/or locked in the laundry room and/or angry about the dog, and decided to urinate in the laundry room on the dirty laundry (thankfully) AND on the expensive vacuum cleaner (!!!!!). I cleaned that up.

Heidi, who is being spayed tomorrow, walked into the living room, paced around (after having been out a mere 3 hours previously), squatted, and urinated on the rug. The second the smell hit me, I knew I needed to take her to work for a urinalysis. Sure enough - raging urinary tract infection. The signs have been there for 3 days, but I've been wrapped up with work and I missed/semi-ignored them. Now I feel terrible, of course. She must've been very uncomfortable. She was drinking massive quantities of water, urinating every 2-3 hours, and urinating large amounts frequently. She also peed on the rug. All signs pointing to lower urinary tract disease. My fault. She's at work now, on IV fluids and antibiotics in preparation for her spay tomorrow. Her urine culture is pending. I'll let you know what it grows.

I came home with medications for her and also for my old fat white cat. He's 13 years old and has a recurring, nasty rhinosinusitis (basically recrudescence of his Calici and herpes virus - he was infected when I adopted him at 1 year of age). I was afraid it was cancer a while back, but biopsies confirmed a raging lymphoplasmacytic inflammation. When it flares up, he gets all watery eyed, drooping, and sneezes ropes of snot. So, now he's taking prednisolone and azithromycin (Z-pack). Pilling him usually ends up being an exercise in torture (and claw marks) for both of us. Usually, it only takes a couple of days of meds before he's on the mend completely.

My 12 year old tabby barn cat Zeppelin continues to lose weight...and I know it's time to start her on prednisolone and Leukeran for presumed inflammatory bowel disease and/or GI lymphoma. I just don't want to put her under the knife to get a diagnosis when I'm pretty sure I know what I'm dealing with...

All of this makes it sound like my house must be disgusting - what with cat pee, dog pee, cat snot, etc EVERYWHERE, but really, I'm a neat freak. I've been cleaning and scrubbing since I got home, and the house smells nice and fresh. You'd never know that 3 animals have had accidents in the house.

But STILL. GEEZ. When we have kids, I'm going to have to hire someone to take care of the pets.

I need my head examined

Look what I took on last night...like a moron.

What a crapola way to end this shift

At 7am this morning, 1 hour before my shift ended and I began my 9 days off, our front doors blew open. In staggered a man carrying a dog that looks EXACTLY like my dog (except for the testicles). The Doberman was rigid and dying. His abdomen was so massively distended, he looked like someone had inflated him.

The hysterical owner laid him down on the triage table and exited stage left while we tried to work a miracle. As my excellent technicians got a large bore IV catheter in the front leg and intubated the dog (not breathing) - I rapidly stabbed 4 large bore catheters into the massively distended abdomen. Gas in huge quantities came pouring out. We poured the fluids into him, but he was already in ventricular fibrillation. Since we didn't have a defibrillator, I had my burly, 6"3 male technician hit the dog as hard as he could on the chest - hoping to help the heart re-start itself. Nothing - just disorganized fibrillating.

The Doberman had suffered a GDV ("bloat"). He had been in this condition for possibly hours and hours. He was an outdoor dog, and the owners had gone to bed around 11pm and found him lateral and groaning this morning.

We did what we could, but he was too far gone.

It reminded me that when Heidi is spayed tomorrow (and no, I'm not touching that with a 10 foot pole) that she also needs to have a gastropexy. I never want to have to go through that.

And now for something entirely different

I have never had much of a green thumb. On the other hand, I despise buying terrible tomatoes and other produce at the grocery store. I got ambitious today. Let's be honest...I am not handy. My wonderful husband is, however he is currently out of commission due to a broken rib he sustained whitewater kayaking last weekend. Thus, it was up to me. I did some reading and decided that the easiest way to grow my own vegetables was to try a raised garden bed.

This would normally involve building said garden. Thankfully, Lowe's has these:



They're great for the non-handy!

3 hours and 2 trips to Lowe's later, I have this:






I've planted tomatoes, cucumbers, yellow squash, red peppers, and parsley. I'd like
to plant some lettuces, but I couldn't find any.

This was under a tree...it made me sad. No baby robin will be coming out of it.