New Lease on Life

On July 31, 2013, I started my day as usual around 7:30 AM, letting the dogs outside and then bringing them in to feed them.  Right after their breakfast, I noticed that Fynn's disposition was a little off - she didn't seem comfortable.  She wouldn't take her morning pill and looked uneasy... like she needed to go outside.  So I let her out and immediately noticed her tummy was slightly enlarged.  Normally, I keep her fairly lean.  Now some people may think she is underweight but due to her legs having problems, it is best to keep her that lean and it's actually healthier.  So it was really easy to spot that her tummy was slightly more round than usual.  I woke Shane up to get her opinion and she confirmed Fynn looked a bit odd and that I should call the vet.  Fifteen minutes later I was at the vet and Fynn's stomach had swollen to the size of a very large medicine ball.  My poor baby could barely walk and was crying out in pain.  And then the vet confirmed my worst fear... Fynn had bloat.

Now my family has had fila brasileiros for a while now and I am well aware of the health issues that plague not only this breed but all giant breeds, bloat being one of them.  That said though, I still never though this  could happen to my kid!  And when talking to my friends and extended family about her situation, I came to realize that most people are actually unaware of the risk of bloat.  So I write this partly to share Fynn's story but to also spread the word so that maybe more canine lives can be saved.

Bloat is a condition where the stomach distends with gas and fluid and then twists.  This traps the gas within the stomach preventing the dog from vomiting.  As the food within the stomach ferments, it creates more gas and eventually the stomach wall begins to die.  According to the vet, it looked like Fynn hadn't digested her last two meals.  And all of this happens VERY fast.  It took about half an hour from when I noticed her not being herself to me being at the vet with a very sick dog.  Bloat is very dangerous.

Dog with bloat

Bloat occurs mainly in large dogs with deep chests but can also occur in small dogs with deep chests like dachshunds.  Other symptoms besides the ones I already mentioned include pale gums and pacing.  It is extremely important to catch this early on.  Luckily, we did so with Fynn and not much tissue had died.  You  can read more about bloat here.

Right when I brought Fynn in, the vet techs rushed her in to get x-rays of her belly to see what they were dealing with.  They were unsure of the image results as there was so much gas in her belly so they intubated her to get a lot of the gas out, then re-did the x-rays and sure enough her stomach and spleen had twisted.  The vet then told me that there was a 70% chance of survival with this surgery.  That was a hard pill to swallow.  You see, once they un-twisted the organs, that would release a lot of toxins into the body and some dogs are unable to recover from that shock.  As usual, I asked the vet if she thought it was worth it and she said yes.  I felt that I owed it to my dear Fynn to at least try to save her.  This was all so sudden, I wasn't ready to let her go.  Even with such a big risk, I decided to move forward with the surgery.  It's a good thing I did... Fynn pulled through just fine.  She was very lucky though... lucky to have this happen when I was home and lucky that she was healthy enough to pull through such a difficult life-threatening situation.  You see, all the bloat cases I have ever heard of never ended this well.   I was truly amazed that she lived.

After the surgery, Fynn had to deal with a new set of problems.  I decided (on the vet's recommendation) that she should go to an overnight vet to be monitored as there were possible unseen issues that could occur.  That facility sent her home with a pain medication.  My personal vet had only prescribed an anti-inflammatory.  Not only that, but during the surgery, my vet had not emptied her stomach.  I'm assuming this was to be as minimally invasive as possible.  The overnight facility's indicator on whether a dog is well enough to go home is if they are able to eat.  So regardless of the records that were sent over by my vet showing this, they fed her and gave her pain medication that slowed her elimination.  None of these things helped the food that was still in her stomach to move through her system.  All of this was completely counterproductive (and really frustrating).  Finally, after two days of no solid waste, minimal food, no pain meds and walking, Fynn showed that her system was digesting and getting back to normal.  I was the happiest mama in the world! 

Now it has been a month and thankfully she is doing just fine.  While her hair is growing back very slowly, her energy level and appetite for not only food but life was practically back to normal the moment she left the hospital.  I have a pretty amazing and resilient dog!

Fynn in Neah Bay, 3 weeks post-surgery

My hope is that we can save more lives if we get the word out there.  I count my blessings every day with Fynn.  I don't believe that it was her time to go.  But every day she is here is a day that I almost didn't have so I am extremely thankful for the miracle that her existence is.  And to commemorate her new lease on life, I have started a mini-journal of her life... tweeting pictures.  You can follow me on either instagram or twitter and see all the pictures.

Thanks for reading.  Mama loves you, Fynn.

Blowin My Mind...

Holy shit!

There are times that things just slap you in the face and astound you and this would be one of them. This happens often to me with music.  Can you recall a place where you heard a song or had something musical happen that just made you speechless?  I have written about something similar before.  Speechless, in awe, floored... it all applies.

Let me first give a little background.  I was introduced sometime last year to one of my favorite choral composers Eric Whitacre's pet projects, the Virtual Choir.  This concept is the first of its kind.  He composes a piece of music, puts training materials online and has thousands of people submit videos singing to the same piece of music.  Together, all these people from all over the world create a collective vocal choir that is pieced together to create finished projects like this:

This would be Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir 3 singing his composition 'Water Night', one gorgeous piece.  So you can imagine my joy when I heard he was coming out with #4.  Unfortunately, due to a busy schedule, I was unable to sing but I learned about the process.  Here is a taste of how it started. You download the sheet music online as well as all sorts of tools to help you learn like videos of Eric conducting or audio of your parts or all parts to help you learn.  That combined with the forums and other tools on the website are a fabulous way to get comfortable with the process.  After practicing, you then record yourself and upload your video to the website to be a part of the choir!

 

So this is the audio that we started out with.  It seems pretty straight forward with a typical "choral" sound.  Well, this is the finished product:

Fly to Paradise - Virtual Choir 4 by Eric Whitacre

I AM SO AMAZED.  It's a different take for sure.  Luckily I like electronic music so I'm not as offended as some are.  Regardless, I love it.  It's a great song with ethereal haunting melodies and a great message.  I'm just so amazed with this production and had to share.


On another sad note, a friend of mine passed away on July 2nd.  This is Greg Carroll.

I met Greg in the music department at Western Washington University.  We studied music and sang together in choir for a few years.  He was one of the sweetest guys I know with the biggest heart.  Since that humble beginning, he has gone on to be a successful tenor in the opera scene with such an amazing voice.  He was only 35.  This is such a tragedy and it's heartbreaking.

So Greg, this song goes out to you as you fly away to paradise.  Your heart, beauty and spirit will forever be missed.

Oh Jimmy...

While I'm not a regular watcher of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, he so often does the funniest sketches.  I just had to share one I thought particularly amusing.

Epic.

Progress and Miracles...

So first off I'd like to share the progress that was made this weekend with our yard... very exciting things.  We worked quite a bit in our yard this weekend.  To preface this, let me tell you where we/I've been.  It all started this last winter when I took a soils class...


I found that our tiny yard is so polluted with animal waste that its phosphorous levels were astronomically high.  I happened to do my final project on this issue so that I could help to deduce what could be done to improve the health of our yard.  The dogs not only helped to eradicate grass in areas with their paw traffic but our naturally acidic soils combined with way-out-of-balance other chemical levels made a difficult condition for grass to grow to not only make the yard more attractive but to also help mitigate the phosphorous problem.

I must interject here, this whole issue produced a great book/research idea... it would make a lot of money if someone did the research and wrote a book to help the average lawn-caring dog owner better manage the pollution problems that come with animals.  That would have been handy for my report!

Anyway, aside from the yard-wide full-summer re-seeding plan, we also had some other beautification projects that were goals for the summer.  Let me just share some "lovely" photos of how our yard looked this winter.  Please be ever-abundant with grace... ;)

The "trashy" distant view would be the neighbor's yard, an unfortunate sight we have yet to overcome.

The view as you enter our yard.

So my lovely girl Fynn likes to look in our main window seen in the first picture to monitor where we are and if we're going to rescue her from being outside.  So pitiful.  That has caused a depressed area in the yard to become even more so with compaction.  This has turned into a semi-hydrophobic situation in the summer when the soil completely dries which is not ideal to say the least.  A long time ago I dreamed of putting down pavers to create a small patio.  So we got to work making the magic happen and here's the result...

Of course, it helps to have things growing in... I'm just sure Fynn loves her new platform.  And the hope is that this will reduce the mud tracked inside during the fall/winter rainy season.  The plan is to put mosses in between the pavers to help with erosion and beauty.  Next step after finalizing the mini-patio... re-seeding this sadness.

And can you believe my classmates suggested to just cover the whole back yard in mulch? Preposterous!

In other news...

When I first moved to Seattle seven years ago, I got an orchid that was used to brighten up my windowless office.  I've done such a wonderful job keeping the leaves growing this whole time but alas no buds graced my presence.  I had many people give me advice over the years.  I finally started a fairly regular 4x/year regimen of fertilization and low and behold it paid off!  Here she is in bud...

And voila, here she is in all her glory!

So proud.  Look what can happen with a little patience.

Growing Pains

My baby's getting old.

No longer this cute gangly puppy, my sweet girl is now considered a senior citizen in the extra large dog range at the ripe old age of eight years old.

One of the hardest things about being a young animal owner is taking care of your pets financially.  I'll admit it's not easy to stomach vet bills while you're trying to work and go to school at the same time.  And you take your dog in to be seen and know they need the care being offered but it's a hard pill to swallow when you hear the bottom line.

As Fynn gets older, that is the other hard thing to watch.  I realize I never had it so good as when she was three - fit and happy, agile and no real issues to speak of.  I think this hits closer to home having just experienced her mama Vida's death.  For a while now I have been looking at Fynn and getting really sad about where she is at with her health and age. She is not as stable anymore on her legs. She will sometimes fall when the floor is slippery.  It's sometimes hard for her to get up into the car on her own and her knee that she injured when she was younger bothers her more.  And like all filas that long to please their owners, even though she knows you're telling her to get up, it is difficult for her to do so and she gets so worried.  It is so hard to watch.

So I took her in today to get some care and come to realize she needs more care which will in turn cost more.  Of course I will give her that care and thanks to student loans I can.  Regardless of that, the blow financially followed by the blow of watching her age was really tough.  And then I heard this song come onto my ipod...

Aside from the lyrics referring to father and the cheesy video, Paul Simon puts it perfectly.  "As long as one and one is two, there could never be a mother who loves her daughter more than I love you."  And snap, it's all in perspective.  As the doctor said, she could live quite a few more years and I want to have her feeling as best she can so she can enjoy those years as much as she can.  And true enough, nothing matters when it comes to her.  I would do anything to care for her... she is just that important to me.  Thanks Paul, for not only making me cry but for the reminder.

To make you smile...

Just had to share a post from one of my favorite blogs The Pioneer Woman.  She talks sometimes about her basset hounds Charlie and Walter and takes the funniest pictures.  So in honor of these amusing kids, here's a post to make you laugh;)

Jessie, Linda Ronstadt and the Joys of Fostering...

Dogs.

You gotta love em.

They are your biggest fan club.
They keep you company.
They make you feel good about yourself.
They make you laugh.
They know to comfort you when you're down.

One point dogs.

Humans.

We can do pretty awful things.  Unfortunately in rescue, we hear about the worst.  Recently, a dog within the rescue community had to be put down because her body had experienced too much to recover from.  You see, prior to being rescued, she had been thrown against a wall.  This poor little dog tried hard to overcome her experiences and managed to bless many volunteers' lives before she had to go.  I've also heard of people moving and leaving their animals in their vacant home with no plan for rescue.  I've heard of people dropping off their dogs in the middle of a desert area in the heat of summer where there aren't many people who pass by them.  And these are the least gruesome of the stories!

Minus one point for humans.  Boo!

This is why I work with animal rescue.  I volunteer and give voices to the dogs that can't speak for themselves.  And with my help and many others like me, we help to pull millions of dogs from terrible situations and help overloaded shelters by giving these dogs homes.  This is why I foster.  We all have a duty to take responsibility and unfortunately, we have to pick up where others are lacking.  But I have the faces of over 50 dogs I've helped staring back at me saying thanks.

Oh, and making me laugh... and smile... and... well... just look...


Introducing Miss Jessie.

She's an owner surrender and is one of the sweetest dogs I have ever fostered.

I mean just look at this face... the face of an angel.  Oh and did I forget to mention... she loves the sun?

I have a few of those sun baskers...

Yup, Miss Fynn loves herself some sun.

Anyway, Jessie was surrendered from her owner as she felt like she wasn't getting enough attention and thought it best to teach the babies in the household she didn't want to be tugged on.  Crazy notion! So Jessie is living it large with us... and she's ADOPTABLE!

And it's a good thing we have her because she's really helped our newest addition acclimate to life in our home.

Without further ado... introducing... Linda Ronstadt!

Wait... are you saying you can't see the resemblance?

How about now...?

Well either way, this little girl is named after Miss Linda Ronstadt and she has the vocal chords to prove it.  We are quite the talker!  She's a 3 month old miniature pinscher and is just adorable.  Jessie is helping her get settled in and teaching her the ropes.  Linda is totally enamored with her big foster sis.

Both dogs are ADOPTABLE!  Just sayin...

These cute faces keep me rescuing, including the one resting at my feet right now (Mr. Milo).  

And to leave you with a video that sums it all up... let's savor every moment we have with these precious beings.