Rolling Dog Farm Blog

Alayne took that photo a few days ago of blind Widget in mid-roll on a bed in the living room. 

Back in October, I had mentioned in a post that our oncologist at Peak Veterinary Referral Center in Burlington, Dr. Kendra Knapik, had said Widget was already "probably in remission" at that point. We've had a few ups and downs since then, and for one brief span her lymph nodes became enlarged again after we had to interrupt the chemotherapy for a couple of crucial weeks because of gastrointestinal issues. Along the way we found that one of the chemo drugs in her protocol, vincristine, seemed to be the culprit behind the GI problems. Once Kendra switched her to vinblastine, a similar but different drug, everything improved. Widget's been on a roll ever since. (Um, I think that pun was intended but I'm not really sure.)

At Widget's weekly oncology appointment yesterday, Kendra was quite definitive: Widget's lymphoma is in remission. Yay! We still have a couple of treatments left, but after that we'll be in monitoring mode. It's been a long slog, but absolutely worth it. She wouldn't be with us today otherwise.

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It's funny how a camera angle can make a 7 lb Chihuahua look three times his normal size, isn't it? Wilbur was also on the van to Burlington last week for a check-up with our internal medicine specialist at Peak, Dr. Dani Rondeau. In the photo that's Dani doing a physical on him. Wilbur has been on blood pressure medication for quite a while, and to keep on top of it, we've been trying to monitor his blood pressure at home using a device called a PetMAP.  

There's only one problem with this particular monitor: It is extremely sensitive to motion, so keeping an animal absolutely still is necessary to get accurate readings. As we've discovered, when you have an animal like a little Chihuahua who trembles, particularly when something is being done to him (like putting a blood pressure cuff on him and inflating it), it is difficult to get accurate readings. He can be perfectly still, i.e., not moving, but trembling slightly, and that throws it off. Last weekend I was getting consistently high blood pressure readings on Wilbur, and wanted Dani to use their Doppler monitor (a different type that is less sensitive to motion) to see if what I was getting were spurious results.

Fortunately, his readings at the clinic were lower than what I was getting on the PetMAP, which means his blood pressure medication is still at the right dosage.

You may remember that Wilbur had bladder stone surgery back in November. One unintended consequence of this is he is now pretty much incontinent, which sometimes happens after this kind of problem. Wilbur can still go "on command," but other times he just pees and seems to have no idea he's doing it. One evening when we were checking his blood pressure, Alayne was sitting back in a chair holding him on her chest, and he just let loose and peed all over her. He didn't even seem to notice. (Although someone else did.) Not much at this point we can do about it, other than getting some itty bitty doggie diapers for this fellow!

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Blind Sophie, our newly diagnosed diabetic, was one of the dogs I took to Burlington last week along with Darla. In the photo above is our internal medicine specialist, Dr. Marielle Goossens, examining Sophie. Under Marielle's direction, we started Sophie on insulin injections and have been carefully increasing her dose, bit by bit, to try and get her regulated and stable. The trick is finding just the right dose to keep the blood glucose within a stable range. Alayne and I have been checking her blood glucose levels repeatedly. We ran the last 24-hour "curve" — or series of tests — starting at 8 a.m. Monday morning and checking every two hours, including a 2 a.m. test overnight and concluding yesterday morning at 8 a.m.

I emailed the full results of this curve to Marielle yesterday. When she called me yesterday evening to discuss the findings, she sighed and said, "Sophie hasn't read the literature." That's because Sophie's not responding normally to the insulin, and her results just don't make sense. For example, on Monday morning her blood glucose dropped a pretty dramatic 200 points within two hours after her morning injection, then climbed a bit before dropping back again. But following her evening injection, she actually went up 100 points within two hours and climbed throughout the night, topping out at a startling 503 at 8 a.m. yesterday morning. That's just not supposed to happen. (Normal blood glucose range is generally considered between 75-120 mg/Dl.)  We're making sure she isn't sneaking any extra snacks that could throw off her values, and we're testing her urine as well, which confirms our blood glucose monitor's findings.

Sophie's been "off" since we started — even the emergency clinic on New Year's Day was surprised at how she responded to their initial insulin injection. One reason for last week's visit with Marielle was to run some other tests to see if there was something simple that could explain why she wasn't responding like she should. But the tests all came back negative. 

After looking at the results from our last curve yesterday, Marielle has called a veterinary endocrinologist at UC-Davis she worked with in the past to see if he has any recommendations. We're just waiting to hear. One thing she's already planning to do is change the type of insulin and see if this generates a different response.

Oddly, despite these blood glucose values and the variations we're seeing, Sophie is acting just fine, thank you very much. Good energy, great appetite, full of her usual zest. "Problem? What problem?," she would ask.

As in:

(Looks like she capsized her "boat," doesn't it?)

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Back in November, I had a long post about a procedure our internal medicine specialist was doing to open the mouth on Travis, our dog with a fused jaw from masticatory myositis. As I explained then, the purpose was to be able to intubate him for anesthesia for a lengthy dental he desperately needed. We had earlier taken Travis to see board-certified veterinary dental specialists at Veterinary Dental Services in Massachusetts. The veterinary dentist there, Dr. Diane Carle, consulted with our internal medicine specialist in Burlington, Dr. Marielle Goossens of Peak Veterinary Referral Center, and together they developed the plan for Travis.

With his mouth now open enough for the tube, I drove Travis to the veterinary dental clinic last Friday for his oral surgery. I took that photo above of Dr. Carle working on Travis. This was a major deal: He was under anesthesia for 7 hours and 40 minutes. She ended up having to extract all of his teeth except his canines and upper incisor teeth.

Many of his teeth were odd sizes and shapes; some molars in the back angled horizontally into the center of his mouth, rather than coming straight up out of the gums. Other teeth were also at weird angles. It's almost as if the masticatory myositis struck him while he was still a puppy and before his adult teeth came in; with his upper and lower jaws shut tight against each other, the adult teeth had nowhere to go when they came in, and thus angled out as they grew, looking for the path of least resistance. That's just a theory; we'll never know for sure because we don't have any history on Travis before he came to us. But it's hard to explain otherwise the appearance and random presentation of many of his teeth.

Here's another shot — this was what it all came down to, trying to get his mouth open enough to insert that tube:

Here's an over-the-shoulder view of Dr. Carle and her vet tech Kerry, who's checking the anesthesia monitoring unit on the shelf in the background:

Along with the teeth, she removed two oral masses and sent biopsies to the lab for review. We don't have results yet.

We don't know if Travis' mouth will close up again. That will depend in part on how he responds to medication over the long-term. This is something we will be monitoring closely.

We got back late Friday night, and Travis is recovering well from the surgery. He's on pain meds and antibiotics during this period.

Here's one final shot of Dr. Carle extracting a tooth:

I joked to the dental clinic staff that we'd put all his teeth under Travis' pillow and see what the tooth fairy would bring. (Alas, nothing!)

Yesterday was a one-two punch of bad news for Darla.

I took a full van load of dogs to Peak Veterinary Referral Center in Burlington, among them our beautiful Lab/Beagle girl. I had earlier scheduled an appointment with our ophthalmologist, Dr. Sarah Hoy, because I was concerned about changes I was seeing in Darla's eyes. I took the photo above of Sarah examining Darla yesterday afternoon while vet tech Patty held her.

And last week, while loving up Darla one morning while she snoozed on her bed in her room upstairs, my hand brushed across a small bump on her right rear leg. Since she had just come through surgery several weeks ago for a mast cell tumor, we had been alert to any more growths. When I felt this new one, my heart sank. I parted the hair with my fingers and stared at it. It was hard, round, small and more of a bump than the "flatish" dime-sized one our surgeon had just removed. It seemed different from the mast cell tumors we've encountered before, but given Darla's history, it was suspicious.

I emailed a photo of the growth to our internal medicine specialist, Dr. Dani Rondeau, who had diagnosed Darla's first mast cell tumor. She put us on her schedule for yesterday. 

I didn't get photos of Dani aspirating the growth yesterday because I was holding Darla still for her, but here's a shot of Dani doing her overall physical examination:

The news came quickly. A few minutes after taking the aspirate samples away to review under a microscope, Dani came back to the room with our surgeon, Dr. Kurt Schulz, with her. That, I knew, was not a good sign. My heart sank again. While we're still waiting for the official pathology report to confirm the results, Dani found mast cells in the sample, and Kurt wanted to see the location of the growth to determine surgery options. The growth is on her right knee, which means we may have some mobility issues in the immediate post-op phase, but otherwise he thought it would be a routine surgery. We scheduled it for two weeks from now.

Sarah's diagnosis came just as fast: Darla has developed glaucoma in her left eye. I couldn't believe it. Ever since her cataract surgery, we've continued twice daily eye meds, including an eye drop to control eye pressure. (Ironically, the other changes I had noticed in her eyes were not a concern.) So, starting yesterday, Sarah added another glaucoma med back into the mix, as well as a general anti-inflammatory medication. I'll be checking her pressures weekly. 

The long-term prognosis with glaucoma, of course, is not good, and Darla now has a 50/50 chance of developing glaucoma in her right eye, too. I spent some time this morning on the phone with Sarah discussing other, more aggressive treatment options for Darla, including laser surgery to reduce the production of the fluid that ultimately causes the glaucoma. It just seems like such a cruel twist of fate that less than a year after giving Darla her sight back, she's now at risk for going blind again.

I'm not sure which option we're going to pursue at this point, but in the meantime, please keep your fingers crossed for her. 

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One of the first things we noticed about Tanner when he arrived was how he sloped down in his hindquarters while standing or walking. It looked like that half-leg he was carrying around was literally weighing him down. If you go back and look at the various photos in his arrival blog post, you'll see what I mean. Here's one of those shots:

The day after his surgery to remove that stump, we watched him moving around the front yard and immediately noticed a difference. His back was level as he walked, and when he stood still, his rear leg was perfectly straight. In the photo at the top, which I took on Sunday, you can see how different his posture is.

Here's another view:

And now when he walks or runs, he's almost skipping across the ground. Alayne calls him "Twinkletoes" these days. Having taken off many a leg over the years, we knew Tanner was going to be better off without that stump, but we were amazed to see what a striking difference it made in his case. Here he is running:

Of course, all of this newfound ease of motion is great, but in Tanner's mind nothing quite compares with this:

During the recent cold snap we fired up the wood stove in the living room to help out the heating system, and the spot in front of the stove became an instant favorite. The dogs took turns lying or sitting in front of it. Alayne took this photo of Wilbur enjoying the wood stove warmth. Funny how the camera can make a 7 lb munchkin of a Chihuahua look so large, huh?

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I took that photo of Alayne with Tanner this afternoon, about an hour after I returned from Burlington with him. Our surgeon, Dr. Kurt Schulz, removed the remaining stump of Tanner's right leg yesterday. We think, but don't know for sure, that he lost the lower half of the leg to a trap. Kurt also neutered Tanner for us; one of the testicles was shrunken from an unknown cause, so our internist, Dr. Marielle Goossens, is sending tissue samples to a pathologist to make sure there isn't something weird going on. 

The surgery went very well, and this morning at the clinic Tanner came bounding out on a leash, tugging Kurt along behind him. Tanner is in great spirits, and it's amazing to see how happy and energetic he is the day after having major surgery.

Tanner does not like having his photo taken, however, which is why he is looking away from the camera in that shot. Although with just the right high-pitched goofy sound, I was able to get this expression:

[Please note the perfect color match between Alayne's turtleneck and the plastic pot on the table behind her. I did not arrange that, though wish I could take credit for it.]

Since being with us, Tanner's weight has increased from about 27 pounds when he first arrived to 37 pounds yesterday. No more bones sticking out! But as a three-legger, we'll need to keep him on the trim and lean side from this point on.

After the photos, we put a soft cone on his head to keep him from licking and chewing at the staples closing up the incision site. He didn't appreciate our concern, needless to say.

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