Rolling Dog Farm Blog

Today was "run around town" day in Missoula — among other stops, a press check on the fall newsletter at the printer, taking Molly and Priscilla to the groomers, and the thing that's been weighing on us … having blind Goldie checked for a new set of skin growths.  Goldie has already had a couple of surgeries to remove cancerous growths in recent years, which is why we were alarmed to see three new lumps develop.  So I took her to see our internal medicine specialist in Missoula, Dr. Dave Bostwick, this morning for a medical exam.  That's vet tech Alex holding Goldie while Dave looks at two growths on her left front leg; a third growth was on her back at the base of her tail. 

The good news is that two of the lumps are basically warts, but one of the growths on her leg was most likely a basal cell carcinoma.  Although a carcinoma, these tumors "behave" in a generally benign fashion, meaning they are local and don't spread.  We'll need to remove it and send it in for a biopsy to know for sure what it is.  And because the warts are something Goldie will continue to lick, chew on and generally "worry" — which will only make them grow larger and more inflamed — Dave will take them off at the same time.  We'll get this done next week.

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And in Poodle news, I was so proud of Molly and Priscilla this morning.  Usually I have to carry the blind sisters from the truck, across the parking lot, and into PetsMart to the grooming section.  They just haven't felt comfortable walking in such unfamiliar territory, with the pavement, vehicles, all that city noise around them.  Not today.  Both girls walked on a leash the entire way, right into the store, down the aisle and into the groomers.  And they walked back to the truck this afternoon when I went to pick them up.  One of the groomers walked Priscilla out with me to the truck while I took Molly, and she told me that these two girls are "the best Standard Poodles we've ever had" … and by that, she meant in terms of being easy to work with for clipping, bathing, and overall handling.

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I also went to the "groomers" today, and it finally occurred to me that the Poodle sisters and I are pretty much on the same schedule.  When it's time to get them groomed, it's time for me to get a haircut … and vice versa.  It's just that I don't need three hours to get all gussied up.

When I was at WSU yesterday, Dr. Fidel asked me how blind Callie was doing after her brain tumor radiation treatment back in April.  I told her it had been a long slog, and for a few months we began to wonder if the old Callie was ever going to come back.  She was pretty much zoned out most of the time.  We'd see brief glimpses of her former self — she'd start grooming someone, for example — but it didn't last long and she'd revert to what we called her "lost" state.

We didn't know how much of it was due to the inner ear problem she developed during her stay at WSU, the radiation or the phenobarbital.  Well, we finally opted to take her off the phenobarbital altogether several weeks ago, and that's when the "real" Callie started returning.  Not only has her personality returned, but the seizures haven't … showing that the radiation worked to shrink her brain tumor.  

Alayne got the photo above of Callie in the living room a couple of days ago, and that's the Callie we used to know.  Before we took her off the phenobarbital, she wouldn't or couldn't even get on the dog cots.  Now she's back up on them all the time, and in her preferred sleeping position — upside down.

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Update on Gabe:  He had his surgery this afternoon and I just found out a few minutes ago from his case manager, Al, that he came through it in great shape.  The surgeon told me this morning that they planned to cut through the skin along the top ridge of Gabe's nose, peel it back, then remove a section of bone about 8 centimeters by 1 centimeter, and then scoop out the tumor.  They will cover the missing bone gap with the skin flap and eventually tissue will grow back over the hole, underneath the skin, so it is permanently covered like a tight drum.

(We actually did something similar on a blind horse a few years ago … drilled a one-inch hole into his sinus cavity and covered it back up with skin.  A couple of months later, you couldn't tell there wasn't any bone underneath.)

The surgeon said that because of the nature of the tumor and its location, they'd end up leaving microscopic bits of cancerous tissue behind, but that's what the radiation is designed to clean up.  Overall, the surgeon was very optimistic about Gabe's long-term prognosis.  He will come back to the ranch next week, recuperate for a couple of weeks, and then we will take him back to WSU to begin his radiation treatment.

You know you've been coming to a veterinary teaching hospital a lot when you walk up to the front desk and they hand you your file and sign-in sheets before you've even said who you are.  Yes, they recognize me by sight now.  Uh oh.

I took the photo of our oncologist, Dr. Janean Fidel, examining blind Gabe this afternoon.  His MRI is scheduled for tomorrow morning.  We won't know until she has a chance to review the images whether we are looking at surgery and radiation, or just radiation.  This has to do with the location and size of the tumor, how far it's spread inside his nasal passages, etc.  Dr. Fidel also said that sometimes the initial biopsy sample can result in a pathology report of fibrosarcoma, but deeper inside the growth it's actually a different kind of cancer … which can change both the treatment and outcome.  

So we'll know much more tomorrow.

Gabe did fine on the trip out from Montana, though he stood up in the back seat the entire time!  Only when I stopped for gas did he actually lie down.  We had the back seats removed in both trucks and covered the floor with thick, fleece blankets, so it's a very comfy place to snooze — but for some reason he wanted to stand up for the entire 5-hour long drive.  Needless to say, by the time we got to WSU, he was one tired boy … and then he promptly went to sleep on the hard linoleum floor of the exam room.  I told Gabe he has this whole thing backwards!

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While I was en route to Pullman, Dr. Jennifer Rockwell called me to say Teddy was doing "fantastic," but that she really couldn't explain the turn-around in his condition.  In fact, his glucose level is lower and more stable than it was during his previous long stay at the clinic … and this after the crisis we had with him Sunday evening.  His ultrasound is scheduled for tomorrow, and unless our internal medicine specialist, Dr. Britt Culver, finds something new, Jennifer will go ahead and do his dental work.  For now, as Jennifer said, the "medical mystery" continues with the little tyke.

Well, just a few hours after posting the blog yesterday about Teddy settling in, I was rushing him over to our vet clinic in Helena last night.

During his first stay in the hospital a few weeks ago, Teddy had begun breathing heavily, but our vets could find no explanation for it — the lab work and imaging showed no medical problems that could account for it, other than as a potential complication of his diabetes.  So when we brought him back to the ranch following his surgery, we kept an eye on his breathing.  It continued to be labored but not in a distressed way, and there was never any coughing, gasping or other related respiratory problems. 

Then yesterday afternoon we noticed he was sitting with his head pointed up, breathing very heavily, but this went away after a short while and he laid back down on the bed.  But yesterday evening he started doing it again, this time with some open-mouth breathing while his head was up, and he couldn't seem to get comfortable.  He'd try to lie down, but then would immediately sit up again, with his head pointed to the ceiling.  His little sides were working hard, going in and out at an unbelievable rate.

It was just at this point we were scheduled to take his latest glucose test for the curve we were running on him all day, and when the glucometer screen flashed "610," we thought … uh oh, we're in trouble.

I called the emergency number for our clinic, and our vet Jennifer Rockwell was on the line in a few moments.  Ten minutes later I had Teddy in the truck and I was headed to Helena.  Jennifer and her husband Rick, a vet tech at the clinic, met me there around 9:30 p.m.

Jennifer started Teddy on oxygen, then took X-rays and ultrasounded his abdomen.  Nothing jumped out from the images, so Jennifer decided on supportive care last night to get his respiratory rate and glucose levels down.  She increased his insulin dose to 4 units.

This afternoon Jennifer reported Teddy was resting comfortably, and his respiratory rate had dropped dramatically, from 100 breaths per minute to 50.  His glucose level also decreased a lot, down into the mid-100s.  Jennifer said it was difficult to attribute that kind of a drop in blood sugar so quickly from a single unit increase in insulin last night, but hey — it's a big improvement and we'll take it!

The radiologist reviewed the X-rays today and did not see evidence of significant fluid in the lungs or abdomen, nor an enlarged heart.  (We already knew he had a minor heart murmur.)  The radiologist did see some potential indication of an enlarged lymph node near his heart, and recommended a follow-up ultrasound.  Our internal medicine specialist at the clinic will do the new ultrasound in the next day or two while they continue to monitor his overall condition.

So at this point, we don't have any real answers … but the good news is he's in much better shape today than he was last night.  We'll take that, too.

I got this shot the other day of Teddy with Dexter and Bailey, all sharing a dog bed in the kitchen.  It wasn't feeding time … they had just found a comfy spot to hang out.  Teddy has very much settled in — he's got his routine down and is quick to let us know what he wants.  He's even starting to really put on weight, so much so that when we run our hands along his ribs, we don't feel them stick out like they used to.  In another couple of weeks I bet we won't feel his ribs at all.  His spine is still very bony and is clearly going to take longer to fill out.

But one thing that has filled out entirely is his tummy.  He's so rotund that we now call him Buddha Belly.  You can actually see it in that photo.

While we're making significant progress on his weight, his diabetes continues to be a challenge.  We still don't have him regulated.  After a spike in his glucose level on Saturday prompted a call to our vet, Dr. Jennifer Rockwell, we ran a mini-curve yesterday evening and are in the middle of doing a full day's curve today — measuring his glucose levels every two hours.  We'll give the data to Jennifer on Monday, and she'll decide whether we should adjust his insulin dose again.

One factor that might be at play here is his dental problems.  When we first got Teddy and found out he had diabetes, we were going to do a dental on him right away, because dental disease and the associated bacteria can make it harder to regulate diabetes.  But then we found out about his much more serious bladder stone and gallbladder problems, and that major surgery had to take precedence over doing the dental work.  Our vets didn't do his teeth during the surgery because it would have meant keeping him under anesthesia even longer, which would have increased the risk.  And then we needed to have him fully recuperated from that operation before doing anything more to him.

Yet now his dental problems could be the "wild card" that's still preventing us from getting him stable, so we're going to be taking him back to the clinic to get that work done.  We worry, of course, about putting him under anesthesia again, but it looks like that's a risk we're going to have to take.

Meanwhile, Mr. Buddha Belly gets his tummy rubbed quite frequently.

We discovered our new arrival, blind Gabe, has his own peculiar drinking style.  While blind Samantha likes to put both feet in the water bucket, Gabe for some reason likes to drink with just one foot in the water dish.  And he's very particular about this, mind you, because he will only put his left foot in.  Really.  (Is he the doggie equivalent of a 'leftie'?)

It's as if he's trying to keep the dish from going anywhere … but as you can tell, that's a big equine salt block holder and it's not going anywhere!

Another week, another dog mystery.

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I will be taking Gabe to WSU next week for an appointment with the oncologist on Tuesday.  So far he's doing okay, but we're anxious to find out what they'll be able to do for him.

I saw blind Callie sitting in front of the TV yesterday morning, as if she were waiting for someone to turn it on for her — or to show her how to use the remote, I guess.  Usually we have CNN or CNBC on during the day (muted), though we know she prefers the Food Network.  This may have been her way of letting us know it was time for her favorite Food Network show, Boy Meets Grill.  She'd like us to send them a proposal for a new show called — what else? — Dining with Dachshunds.