Catching Up

It's a new month and a new season and it's time to get started on new projects. First I thought I'd catch you up on some things I left hanging.

First, the Blues Brothers are settling in well. They eat a lot and play with the cage toys and make a lot of noise. As soon as I started calling them that, the names were obvious. The darker, noisier one, in the back, is Elwood and the lighter quieter one is Jake. They just polished off a bowl of diced apple, pumpkin and banana without throwing it to the dogs.

Holly is doing much better. She's come out of the corner, is eating and spends most of her time watching and hissing at the new noisy neighbors.

Morgan is just the sweetest little dog. Today she brought her ball to me and stood wagging her tail. How do I explain that it's going to be a long time till we can play ball again? Her leg seems to be healing pretty well. I've been able to cut back on her pain meds and she's walking now putting a little weight on the injured leg. She hates being carried and tries to beat me to the steps, but so far I've been able to grab her and lift her up the stairs.

Dr B thinks she's on schedule and this weekend we can start her physical therapy which consists of walking up and down the hill on leash. Going down is no problem, but walking uphill forces her to stretch out the muscles and work the leg a little.

Finally, my girl Samba. The MMM is currently under control and we've cut her prednisone back to a maintenance dose. She's using her jaw almost normally.

We've been unable to get rid of the kidney infection. I was given an option of using an injectable drug that would probably wipe out the infection, but I couldn't accept the side effects which include possible kidney damage and deafness. For now we'll continue to test regularly and possibly repeat the antibiotics.

As if all that wasn't enough, I discovered a large swelling on the tip of Samba's tail. At first I thought it might be a spider bite, but it didn't go away. I took her by the clinic and one of the techs thought the tail was fractured, but Dr B says it's scar tissue from an injury. Samba loves to bang her tail against doors and furniture and anything that makes a loud noise. Over the past few days the swelling seems to have come down a little and we're left with a crooked tail with a bump in it. We can live with that. As you can see in the short video above, Samba never stops wagging that tail.

So, on to a new month and we're going to try not to get any new injuries or illnesses.