Sirus and his stomach problems.

Sirus has not been going to the bathroom well for a while now. About a week ago he was badly constipated. He got to the point were he didn't want to even eat but showed no other signs of being sick. We took him to the vets this week and they did X-rays. There was what looked like a bone in his colon. The vet thought that it should come out on its own and gave him a couple of enemas then sent him home with some stool softeners. Well we spent the next couple days searching his....deposits... for the bone fragment.

Now this is not a job I want to do. Thank goodness I had ken there. See I figured ken was better equipped to run his fingers through this since he is used to reading braille. Now envision this. I send a blind guy out to the yard (I was nice enough to lead him to the pile of crap) which rubber gloves and let him run his fingers through the deposit to see if there is any bone fragments in the pile.

We did not find it and ended up taking him back to the vet on Saturday to see what the X-Rays showed. It seems the bone or what ever it was is now gone but no idea why he is still not eatting. The vet did some blood work and his white blood cell count was slightly high. The vet gave him an antibotic shot and sent him home with some antihbotics to take over the next few day. So now we just hope the high blood cell count was because of an upset stomach and not something left in the stomach causing a blockage.

We got Our New Car

Well we spent yesterday getting the RV ready to trade in. I woke up today (Monday) and of course it had snowed. Just what I needed to do, drive the rv over there in the snow. It went pretty good. Getting out of the yard was fun, I had to turn the wrong way then go turn around on a small side road. But once I got going it was not bad. We got the RV there with no problems. the main roads where not bad with snow. It was rather funny watching them check the RV since none of them knew anything about RV's. They filled up the gas on the Rio and gave us a voucher a free tank of gas and a free oil change. This was to compinsate the full tank of gas the RV had. How nice of them they give us an 18 dollar tank of gas for the $175 worth gas that was in the rv. OH well we knew we would be getting the short end of the stick on this deal. I am just so glad to be rid of the rv.

New Car

Well we went out today and found a place that will let us trade the RV in for a new car. We are getting a 2009 KIA Rio. Its a small car that will work well as a run around. The problem with the RV aside from gas prices is that no one wants to buy it. We SHOULD be able to get 18k min for it selling it privately but with the present economy its impossible to sell. The other thing is it could cost us up to 5k to get the RV imported into the USA from Canada. So anyways we are getting our self a little blue Rio. It has satellite radio which we will get free for 3 or 4 months. It has like 8 air bags with something called a curtian that covers the side windows in a crash. It sounds kind of neat.

Bill Cosby

We went to see Bill Cosby last night at the Horseshoe Southern Indiana Casino. He was great. at 71 he still has it. I thought ken was going to die laughing. The only real draw back to the show itself was that we were packed in like sardines. But once you got laughing you didn't even notice it. I loved his ability to roll with the crowd. He does great on improv. Seeing him is something I have wanted to do my whole life. I am just thrilled to have been able to do it.

Before we went to the show we went and had dinner at legends, the bar/restaurant at the casino. The food was good but the 45 min wait kind of sucked. I was really hungry when I got in there. I had a martini, chocolate of course. Yum.

After dinner I went to the bathroom and was amazed/shocked to see a sharps disposal box on the wall. Way to say "go ahead and shoot up in public". Kinda weird in my books. Hell in vancouver people where complaining about a needle exchange program in some out of the way biulding. In indiana you just need to go to a local casino to dispose of your needles.

After dinner and before the show we went and gambled a bit. The smoke in the place was enough to make me nauseous. It is amazing that they still allow people to smoke in public places in Indiana. Get with the times guys! I don't want to have to breath that crap! I likely would have stayed longer but the smoke was awful. When I got home I jumped in the shower and scrubbed the smell from my body. And I guess on the bright side I left before I could lose all my money.

The Casino was only about a 30 minute drive from home. A pleseant suprize since I had thought it was closer to an hour drive.

German Shepherd Cross with a Horse

Well Sirus (My German shepherd) will have his 1 year birthday in 2 days. He went to the vet for his vacinations and such and weighed in at a whopping 90 pounds. The dog is still slim so he is not over weight. All I can say is Wow! He is doing pretty good on his obedience. I know he would do better if i was not lazy LOL but over all eh does well. There have been a few times he has gotten away from me (gate left open, got loose at a rest stop while traveling etc) and he has come back and I think that is the most important thing of them all.

I was taking him to a fellow that was working with us on the advanced obedience commands but when I got whooping coup he would not reschedual the appointments to make up for when I was too sick to go outslde. In his defense he did tell me ahead of time that it was '4 weeks' not '4 lessons' but I think for the price he charged he could have done a bit more. It was a place called Kentuckiana k9. The lessons where rather lacking also. I paid him $250 for 4 lessons and the lessons often lasted less then 20 minutes. He had a good reviewm on a page so I thought he would be ok but such is life. He kept pushing me to leave the dog with him so he could train it for me. Not what I want in dog training. I myself wanted to learn how to train the more advanced commands.

I would like to get him into agility but the vets are worried about hip displasia and I feel if that it a problem I will need to wait for a bit to see how that goes. He will be going for another xray at 18 months old to see how his hips look.

A lot going on this and last month

Strabo has been very sick. Back in November he came down with what I thought was a cold. This cold progressed to pneumonia really quickly. He was having trouble breathing and coughing a lot. Xrays showed a lot of fluid in/around the lungs. He was put on Antibiotics for a few weeks. After I think it was 3 or so weeks on the meds he had another Xray done. This showed the pneumonia was clearing up but oddly he did not get better. He was still coughing a lot.

I mentioned to the Vet it sounded like heart problems. They tried him on some heart pills and kept the antibiotics going. The heart pills really didnt seem to help much so we stopped them. Strabo started to get very weak and lethargic. He very rarely moved around and slept a lot. I was getting more and more worried about him.

I ended up planning a trip to NY state to see Tobias and was kind of worried about Strabo. Do I take him, do I leave him with ken... I took him into the vets one last time before I left to find out what I should do and the vet commented that strabo had been gaining a lot of weight and that this was not normal for a sick ferret. He should be losing it. So he did an ultrasound on him. It turns out his heart was in really bad shape. There was a lot of scar tissue on all the chambers. One chamber was kind of fluttering and that was what was keeping him alive. The lack of beating heart caused the fluids to back up into his tummy rather then be pumped through the body.

So the verdict turned out to be that he had Cardiomyopathy. They put him on vetmedin. The doctor said if it did not help him I may have to make a hard decision soon. Well I packed him up into his stroller in the car with Sirus and went off to see Tobias in NY.

It was not to bad of a drive. I left at about 10 am and got there at something like 7pm. It took a little longer then normal because of the snow and stopping to let sirus pee and such. It was quite the welcome. I got there lights were flashing and the whole area was abuzz with people. Sherie, Tobias's mother was on the way to the hospital. She had surgery a while back and the wonderful medical system let her out without making sure she had her medication. Blood retards.

Once we got inside Ed (Tobias's Dad) took Strabo over and instantly fell in love with him. I was kind of worried about getting strabo back. There was a bit of a pary on new years eve and we had a couple of drinks. I got to meet a lot of Tobias's family. An interesting but wonderful group of people. We spent the weekend watching movies and playing games. I brought my guitar hero with me and got Tobias to try it. The monster did a thousand times better then I did on my first time. It was depressing LOL.

During this time Strabo was getting stronger and stronger. It was great, he started complaining about being in the cage and wanting to play a lot more. I was so happy that he was getting better.

Ed made us some of the best stroganoff in the world. I got the reciepy but I pouted a lot when I lost it. I will have to get it again.

When I took Strabo back to the vets after returning from NY the vet said strabo was doing great. He does not have to return for a checkup for 8 weeks. He lost 5 oz of fluid that had backed up into his tummy from his heart not beating right. Thats a lot of weight for a little guy. He was back down to 2 pounds 14 oz.