My Sammy Girl

Wow...so it is almost 2 weeks into the new year and I haven't posted an entry yet.  I'm just glad that I didn't say to post more often in my January change.  We've been pretty busy here.  Jonathan is on the move.  Yes I do have a video and here it is...Jonathan is doing the army crawl.  Sorry for the short distance, but he has gotten so much better and I have to upload some more videos that I have gotten of him army crawling.  Once I get them up, I will post in the blog.

So he is on the move now!!  I can't get much done because I am constantly turning him around because he is getting into things he shouldn't.  He goes into the pack n play when it is nap time, because I don't trust him to wake up and not get into things.  Which is fine....he has been pretty content napping in the pack n play.  

I did capture a wonderful moment...Jonathan napping on Daddy!!  Don't tell Daddy, but this is one of my favorite pictures!!  So that is pretty much the new stuff with Jonathan...He's on the move and destruction is quickly following his trail!

Jonathan & Daddy...1/9/12

So the past couple of days has been a rough day on our Sammy girl.  It started a week ago.  We figured Sammy had finally caught up with her age (she's 11 and 1/2 years old), she just wasn't wanting to go upstairs with us.  She like to be around people, more particularly around us.  We just let her be, if she wanted to come up we would walk with her up the stairs, if not, she was perfectly content on her bed in the family room or in the utility room.  We did notice that she had lost a lot of weight.  Just hit us that she was very thin and you can see her ribs.

A couple days ago, Sammy had an accident overnight.  She had diarrhea in the house (like I said middle of the night, so we couldn't hear her if she was by the back door to go outside).  She had gone around our dinning room table and in the kitchen.  So I spent about 2 hours cleaning up the mess.  I did call the vet and set up an appointment for him to come out, as Sammy and Dakota are both due for their vaccines anyway.  So, Sammy had a few additional episodes and thanks to some advice from a family member, I switched her food to the boiled chicken and rice as well as gave her some pedialyte.  She had said to give this to her for the next 5 days and then to provided that she is doing better, she can be slowly weened back onto her normal food.  So she had a small portion at her dinner time feeding.  Sammy ended up have a couple more episodes throughout the night, this time I was close by and was able to let her outside in time...no mess in the house.  When it cam breakfast time for the dogs, Sammy had another small portion of the chicken and rice and I decided it was probably a good idea that I not give her the daily aspirin that I give her to help with her joints.  She did pretty well all day (although we were very nervous because of her age).  She got 3 small meals throughout the day.  I'm mixing the pedialyte with their water (so Dakota is getting it too, but that's what happens when you have 2 dogs), Sammy gets 3 small meals, and no one is getting any treats.  Sammy can't have them because of her diet and well, lets face it, they are really not healthy for them anyway.  

Dakota could stand to loose a little bit a weight....she has trained us that she won't come in from outside unless we have a treat in our hand, if not, she will bark and wake the neighbors up if it is late...she does not do this when it is freezing cold out.  However, since I've been a stay at home mom, I have broken this habit and just shut the door on her , she will want to come in on her own eventually.  Hubby on the other hand, I had to remind him Sammy couldn't have a treat because of her diet, this meant Dakota couldn't have one.  On the upside, Dakota thinks ice cubs are treats and sometimes we can get away with giving her an ice cube.

So back to Sammy....the vet came out today and I gave him a little background on Sammy and what has been going on the past week (much like I just did for you).  He did an exam and he said well, here's what I can tell you.  The exam for a dog her age was remarkable!!!  He said everything sounded normal, her teeth look great, gums are in great condition.  After hearing all of this, I guess we were getting worried for nothing.  I did let him know that her eating habits did not change, she was still scarfing down her food just like any normal dog would.  Neither of our dogs get table scraps.  I must admit, I do sneak her some people food once in a great while....nothing recent so it wouldn't have caused the diarrhea...it's usually when I'm cutting up veggies for Jonathan's puree or a salad for me, or dinner...but it is always veggies.  So with everything looking good, he said it is probably a case of gastroenteritis.  Great news!!  He said since she is in great shape we have a couple options that we could do...

Option 1:  Change her food to something easier to digest (Check...already done), Stop any and all medications that could possibly cause the diarrhea (check, I decided to cut out the aspirin to strip her down to the basics), He said he would be giving her some meds as well as a shot (he did say what it was and it's on the paperwork, I'm just too lazy to go look and I don't remember what it is) to help boast the meds.  He said the meds would be 1 pill 2x's a day.

Option 2:  All of the above with the addition of blood work the full senior workup.  

He said since she's really in good shape he would go either way.  I decided to to option 1 and then if she's still not better after the 5 days of meds, then we could call him back to do the blood work.  Regardless, he will have to come back anyway.  If she's not feeling better, for the blood work, if she is feeling better, for her vaccines.  So she got a shot and really, she seemed to be feeling better within 5 minutes!!  Back to herself and wanting all of the attention.  Of course she was like this when Dakota was getting her turn with the doctor.  I was holding Dakota and Sammy was nudging under my elbow wanting the attention.  She really does love the attention.  She hasn't had any diarrhea episodes the whole day, so I believe she is on her way back up.

As for her weight loss, he said that as long as she still eating we will work with that at a later date.  He would like to get her digestive system back on track first, and maybe this will help her out with the weight as well.

So this is where we stand now, and now it is time for this Mommy to go to bed.  So, I am hoping to get back on track on my blogging and not have such a big gap between this blog and the next one.