It’s a good thing these two sisters have different markings, because it would be hard to tell them apart sometimes! It’s like they’re programmed to give us the same looks. These girls are the cerebellar hypoplasia pups who came to us from an Iowa shelter a few weeks ago. That’s Noodle on the left and her sister, the-one-formerly-known-as-Wobbles, now renamed Soba. (Get it? Soba … Noodle. Okay, well, maybe that’s a little too much inside-Asian-cuisine … soba is a Japanese noodle made from buckwheat.)
Noodle surprised us the other day and managed to get on a cot all by herself. She is definitely much more compromised than her sister Soba, and we didn’t think she could climb up, but one afternoon we came out of the house and there she was, happily lying on the cot. Now it’s her favorite spot.
Just in case you thought the photo above was a fluke, here’s another one. These two girls do a lot of things in unison. No matter where I moved with the camera, I got the same expression from each of them. Photo after photo.
Notice how far apart Noodle’s front legs are in the first photo. There are times when her legs look like they are sticking out at unnatural, 45-degree angles from her body. We had our vet, Dr. Brenda Culver, X-ray Noodle’s joints to make sure they were okay, and they were. Most cerebellar hypoplasia animals adopt a wide stance with their legs (the front ones in particular) to achieve added stability, but Noodle is the most extreme case we’ve seen.
Everything was looking pretty much the same here until Soba decided to try and steal her sister’s bed and pull it over to her cot. It’s a good thing she doesn’t have great motor skills, because she wasn’t able to get it, though try she did!
(Click on photos for larger image.)
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