the sheltiechick blog

The Last Photos of Auggie

It has been really hard to get into these photos.
Several of these are photos I took after he came home. Still more are photos my sister came and took of us.
I’ll do my best, y’all, but some of these may just have no commentary.
The photos of Auggie’s final night at the vet will be hidden behind a link… I know those can be really hard to look at, especially for those of us who have lost beloved dogs. So I give you the option of preparing your heart, and then clicking to enter into those photos.
Here we go… the last round of photos of the best dog I will ever own.


July 4th – home on his bed after that first weekend. All I wanted was to be able to bring my dog home and have him curl up on my bed with me again. So so blessed to have been able to do that.


That Obi-Wan Kenobi pillow became Auggie’s pillow over the years. He slept with his head on it so many times. When I packed up all his things, I packed that pillow up along with it.


Our 33 week family photo… he clearly didn’t feel well this day. This was when he still wasn’t up to eating again.


With his niecelette, Georgie.


One more time – the hilarious disaster that is my three.


Payton with his bro. He loved his Auggie so very much. Just like we all did. Best brothers and best friends.


This is a photo of the best dog I will ever own.


A kiss from Georgie.


This beautiful photo my sister took. He obviously was feeling much better by Sunday. Look at that big, beautiful, happy smile.


Trying to get another family photo… just one last one with all of us.


Nobody would look at the camera, so I looked the same direction they were looking – ha!


The last one of all three of my great dogs with me.


One last jump, buddy.


Joy, right up until the end. Doing what we loved to do together.


We were at Louisville last year – the year Auggie retired from agility – and my friend Gary’s wife told me one day, “I love to watch you with your dog. Because no matter what your run went like, you pick him up at the end and you give him a kiss. And then he puts his little head on your shoulder, and you give him a kiss again.”
I’m so fortunate to have this photo. It is one of the things I will always remember most about Auggie.

(more…)


The Flash

How do I make this post? How do I begin? It begins with the end.

The battle has ended. My perfect Auggie is gone from this world.

At the beginning of July, I packed up the car and dropped Auggie off with my dad to take the baby dogs to Evansville for an agility weekend. I kissed Auggie before I left and told him “Don’t die while I’m gone.”
We drove to Evansville and checked into our hotel for the night. The first night, my dad called and told us he and Auggie had a nice night. It was pretty cool outside so Auggie was outside while my dad worked on my sister’s car, then they sat on the deck together and listened to people shooting off fireworks. (Well, my dad listened. Auggie is pretty deaf these days. Or was. Was?)
The second night, my mom and I had just finished eating dinner when the phone rang. My dad said “Auggie seems uncomfortable.” I tried to figure out exactly what that meant. He couldn’t lay down, said my dad. He was breathing heavy. I asked him if he could count Auggie’s respiratory rate. I never thought I would need to teach anybody else how to count Auggie’s respiratory rate. Why didn’t I do that?
I called the university and asked if they could try and get me in touch with the cardiologist to see if we could come up with a plan. I looked at my mom and said “We might need to go home. I don’t even know if I can get back into the venue and pick up our stuff.”
It was 6:30. I ran downstairs and drove to the venue. It was still open. The trial chair was still there. I told her briefly what was happening and she sent me outside to bring my car around to the side of the building and she tore down my crate space and helped me pack up my car.
I drove back to the hotel and we packed as fast as we could. At one point, I went to pick up the six pack of beer I’d brought along and the cardboard package collapsed. Bottles fell to the floor, breaking open, spilling glass and beer all over the hotel. I came with the packaging, falling to the floor sobbing. This can’t be happening. Why did I leave Auggie behind? I can’t lose my dog while I’m not there. My mom called my dad and told him to take Auggie to the U of I and we would meet him there.
The woman at the front desk came upstairs and helped clean up the mess while I finished loading the car, a complete mess. She was ready to check me out of the hotel early when I came downstairs when we were done.
I drove back from Evansville as fast as I possibly could. I cried half the way there, thinking about how much Auggie had changed my life and how much I loved my best little dog. I thought about our agility journey. I thought about everything we’d done together for ten years.

When we got back in town and straight to the university, I cracked the windows to leave the other dogs in the car and we headed towards the building. Through the glass windows I could see my dad – and Auggie’s breeder sitting next to him.
I’m not sure what all flew through my mind at that moment. I didn’t immediately think it was bad. I was relieved to see her and glad she had come to help support us. I ran into the building and hugged her and started crying.

Then the bad news started. Auggie was in the back in an oxygen tank. They hadn’t been able to get his breathing under control even after getting him an injection of Lasix. They had given him ace to basically sedate him. He was asleep in the oxygen tank.
They had come out and told my dad they wanted to euthanize him.
This is when he said you cannot do that without my daughter here, and then called Auggie’s breeder.
I later found out they had given Auggie butorphonol. They never told me or Auggie’s breeder this; I didn’t know until I got the itemized bill several days later. I gave Auggie butorphonol once and it increased his heart rate and his respiratory rate and I said never again. I knew I had told the cardiologist about this bad reaction. Why did they give that to my dog and why didn’t they tell me? I still don’t know.
They took me back to see Auggie. The vet and the tech were crying and told me they didn’t think he would survive and they thought I should let him go. I didn’t know what to do. In retrospect it was good I had his breeder with me, because I may have made the wrong choice. She told me if he were her dog, she would try to get him stable. What was there to lose? If they could stabilize him, they could stabilize him. If they couldn’t, his heart would stop, and it would be over.
At 12:30, they asked about trying to give him his oral meds, including his torsemide. I went back with them and he wouldn’t take them from me, even in peanut butter. We pilled him with the torsemide.
About 30 minutes later, the vet came up front again and said he was doing better after the torsemide, and he took the rest of his pills.

I stayed the night sitting in the lobby. Auggie’s breeder stayed until 2AM. My parents went to drop off the other dogs at their house, then came back and stayed with me overnight.

In the morning they said he was much better but not ready to go home. I talked to the vet who would be with him during the day. She told me Auggie was definitely improving and she had talked to the cardiologist again, so she had instructions on what to do, and she would do them. But she said if we got Auggie healthy again, we needed to be aware he would probably have another chronic episode, and we were probably looking at a matter of days or maybe weeks.

We went home and left Auggie to keep getting better. I came back that night to visit him and he looked much better and he was ready to come home with me, but they weren’t ready for him to come home yet. He stayed another night while I went home and unpacked my luggage, staring around my house, watching Payton and Kaner bounce around each other. Trying to steel myself that this was what our life was going to be like without Auggie.

Auggie came home the next morning. This all happened during a week when I was working from home for several days before leaving, then had days off for the July 4th holiday, then spent two more days working from home. We spent a lot of time together.

Wednesday we headed to the cardiologist – we had an appointment scheduled anyway, our normal follow up. It had been almost two months since our last appointment. Every time we went in, Auggie was doing well, so we went longer and longer between appointments. Two months was the longest we had gone without needing to go in.
The cardiologist was baffled. Auggie was doing great. The same day Auggie came home from the emergency care unit, he was already bringing tennis balls and wanting to play. He was happy and it was the fastest I’d ever seen him rebound after a stay at the emergency vet. His x-rays looked as good as they had back in May, back when he said they were the best they’d ever looked and we were going two months before another visit. His best guess was Auggie’s heart disease had just progressed a little more, and we had adjusted the meds some, and now we carry on again. We made our next appointment for two weeks, just to be sure.
I asked him the question. I know we never know, but we were talking days and maybe weeks a few days ago. Is that where we are?
Based on the picture at that moment he thought we could still have months left.

Wednesday night I went to my chiropractor, then picked up some takeout for dinner. I sat down to eat and looked over at Auggie. His respiratory rate didn’t look good. He started coughing, a wet cough, not his usual “my trachea is a little squishy” dry cough. He couldn’t find a spot to lay down.
I called the university. The cardiologist was still there.
I took my dog back in.

Now we had our answer. Now we had our best guess as to what happened the Saturday before. Auggie had developed an arrhythmia and was having a series of them, which was causing a rapid congestive event. There was medication for the arrhythmia. We started the meds, and since it takes about 12 hours to take affect, Auggie stayed the night again.

The next morning the cardiologist called me and told me Auggie was doing better. The arrhythmia wasn’t gone, but it was improved. However, this time he could see a large blood clot attached to the wall of Auggie’s left ventricle. He said to come in and let’s sit down and talk about everything.
I called my parents and told them I was ready to go get Auggie, so they drove over to meet me at the vet. I called Auggie’s breeder and told her what I knew and asked her what she thought. There was no real way to looking into the crystal ball and knowing how Auggie was going to do. I told her I’d talk to the cardiologist and let her know later if he had any more information.
Once inside, the other bit of news was that Auggie’s bottom chamber wasn’t really pumping anymore. When they took Auggie out to pee that morning, he just seemed a little tired. There was no way of knowing if Auggie would improve or not. This might be what we have, or he might get better, or he might decline.
The cardiologist reminded me he made me a promise that he would tell me when it was time to let Auggie go. He told me he wasn’t telling me that right now. He told me he knew if any dog was going to get better, it would be Auggie.
Because he knew Auggie was a fighter.

I told him one way or another I was taking my dog home, and maybe we would come back that night and let him go, or maybe the next day, or maybe we play the game where I make an appointment but if he’s feeling good we push it back. But for that particular moment, I was going to take my dog home one last time.

I took a video as I opened the door and Auggie walked into the house. Our home. The house I bought with a huge yard for agility because it was what my dog loved, and I loved it too, and I loved to play the game with him. The house with no stairs because I knew one day my dog would get old and I didn’t want him to have to try to climb stairs when he was old. The house where he waited for me to come home from work every day. Where I listened to hear him barking when I came home. Where I hung his photos all over my walls. Where I built a shadow box of his master’s titles and put it in a spot of prominence in my living room.

I called his breeder. We had meds for the arrhythmia and still no crystal ball. Auggie didn’t want food. He didn’t even want peanut butter. At one point he even stopped drinking water, but before too any hours passed he went back to drinking again. I carried Auggie in a long walk all the way around our agility field. We went to the dog walk and I placed him on the up plank, then picked him up and carried him all the way over to the down plank, where I set him down again. He sat down in the contact zone. I told him he was a good boy and that was a good “touch.” We went to the teeter. I placed him on the end of the teeter and lifted the end just a few inches, then carefully lowered it down so he could ride the tip of the teeter. I did it a few times. Auggie loved the teeter.
My sister came over that night and we sat in the living room with Auggie, crying over Auggie and of course crying over dogs we had lost before. We talked about Happy and we talked about Kota.
She agreed with me when I said if Auggie didn’t start eating the next day, I would let him go.

I didn’t want to get into bed that night. I put it off as long as I could. I knew it might be the last time I got into bed with my little dog. When I got in bed I sat up for a long time, not sleeping. Just watching my dog.
I woke up at 2AM and opened my Facebook page on my phone. The first thing I saw was the “On This Day” post. A picture of me and Auggie. Auggie with two master’s title ribbons hanging from his neck.
Four years ago on that day we had completed that chapter in our agility journey. Four years ago. I started sobbing again. How could I do this on this day? How could I possibly make a day when something so wonderful had happened the same day something so awful happened?

The cardiologist called me in the morning. I told him Auggie still wasn’t eating but he was comfortable and seemed okay, just tired. He told me he wasn’t immediately concerned about the not eating and gave me a few tips to try and get him to eat.
My parents came over and we made stepping stones with Auggie’s paw prints in them. I got prints of all four paws. His two front paws with his funny little brachydactylic toes and his back paws with all his proper toe joints.
I told them I really, really didn’t want to do it that day.

Auggie ate food.

At first he just took the peanut butter off my hand when I offered him his pills. Then he ate kibble, one at a time, from my hand. Finally, at dinner time, he ate out of his bowl… then immediately threw it back up.

He ate more food later. He said “today is not the day.”
We got into bed together again.

The weekend was good. Every day he started to feel better. Sunday my sister came over and took photos for me. It’s hard when you are always behind the camera – so rarely do I have the opportunity to have photos of me and Auggie together. He played in the yard a bit, looking around for dead worms to eat (something he recently has decided he loves to do.) I got out a jump. I set the bar at four inches and he took the jump with so much joy. It was beautiful.

Monday we went to bed and he coughed and seemed uncomfortable. I worried. Auggie being able to sleep comfortably was one of the measurements I used for his quality of life. Was he sleeping comfortably? Was he eating? Did he seem happy? Those were my three questions. When I unplugged the vaporizer I run each night, full of water and eucalyptus oil to help him breathe, I realized it was still pretty full. Sometimes it doesn’t always put out a lot of steam. Maybe that was it. I made a note to add more salt, to make sure it steamed, so he could try to breathe better that night.
I woke up super early and sat in the kitchen with my work laptop, launching a new website for our company. I spent a couple hours in the morning with my dog. I went to work, then came home early since I had been up early working from home. I had previously arranged for someone to cover my BodyPump class that night, knowing I would be tired from such an early morning, so we all sat at home and watched television together. We had been binge watching my Big Bang Theory DVDs. We were almost through season 8.
Auggie ate some cheese from my cheese stick, and I took the meat off a rotisserie chicken to put into my freezer and handed him some chicken.

When it was time for bed, Auggie couldn’t get comfortable. He was coughing more and more. I called my parents. I told them if I had to take him in, this was it.
The university called the cardiologist and he suggested giving another dose of torsemide. I gave him a full pill first (twice a day he gets a pill and a half, once a day just a pill.) After about ten minutes, Auggie lay down in the bed and he put his head on my legs. After about five minutes, he rolled over and stretched out flat on the bed.
I breathed.
Then fifteen minutes later he was up again, coughing.
An hour after his first dose of the torsemide, I gave him the half pill.
I begged him to please give us one more night. He lay down in my arms and put his head on my shoulder.
He got up and kept coughing.
He stood on the bed and looked at me. Everybody kept telling me Auggie would let me know when it was time, and in that moment I knew. He was telling me it was okay. He didn’t want to do this anymore. And he definitely didn’t want to go stay at the hospital again. It was okay. It was time.

I called the university and asked them if they could get the cardiologist to come in, because I didn’t want a stranger to do this. The guy on the phone told me normally he doesn’t come in for emergencies, but to hold on just a minute. He put me on hold.
That awful hold music.
He came back on the phone and said the cardiologist would come in for me.

I called my parents.

I got Kane out of his crate and set all three dogs on my sofa. I could hear the fluid in Auggie as he breathed as I set him on the couch. I changed lenses on my camera and took photos. Our last family photo. A photo of Payton with Auggie. A photo of Kaner and Auggie. I told Payton this was it and his brother was probably not coming home. Payton knew.

I placed Auggie in the front seat of the car. “Your last car ride!” I told him as cheerfully as possible. I turned the air conditioning all the way up and blasted it through the vents in front of him. He stood in front of the vents and breathed in the cold air and he stopped coughing.
My parents were already at the vet. I carried my little dog in. The cardiologist met us at the door. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I tried to get him to wait until morning.”
“He has his own timetable,” the cardiologist said.

We went back into a room. Chairs and couches. This was a different room than the exam rooms. This was The Room.
The cardiologist sat on the couch next to me and I told him what was going on. And I said “it’s just time.”
“I agree. It’s time.”
There was nothing else we could do. The torsemide wasn’t working, and not only was it not helping, it wasn’t even maintaining. Auggie was getting worse.
It was time. I had done everything I could.

He left us alone in the room to take photos. Auggie licked peanut butter off my hands. His gums were still pink at first and he was happy to eat his peanut butter. He licked peanut butter off my mom’s hands. I told him I loved him. I told him he was my best dog. I told him he was a good dog. So many things I wanted to make sure he heard me say just one last time.
He got up and walked around the room a bit. He walked over to stand at my dad’s feet.
I lifted his lips and his gums were starting to get pale.

The cardiologist came in and asked if we were ready. I told him Auggie’s gums were getting pale so we had to do it now.

Auggie lay in my lap. The cardiologist sat next to me. I held my dog’s head.
He gave him the sedation injection.
I asked my mom to take a photo of me holding Auggie’s head.
I put my hand down on Auggie’s side and it wasn’t moving.
I looked at the cardiologist as he was putting the euthanasia injection into the catheter.
“I think he’s already gone,” I whispered.
He nodded his head. He finished giving the second injection, then took his stethoscope from around his neck and said “I”m sure you’re right. I’m just going to listen.” He listened, then sat back “He’s gone.”

I’m not a big death person. I don’t like funerals. I hate viewing bodies. I don’t want to remember people’s dead bodies. I want to remember them full of life. People had warned me I wouldn’t want to be there in the room when it was time to let Auggie go. But I had refused to leave. This was the dog who would wait outside my bedroom door in the mornings after my mom had let him out to feed him breakfast. This was the dog who would ask to go outside if I left him at home because he wanted to look around and see if I was outside. He looked for me when I was gone. And he gave me everything I had ever asked him to give. I wasn’t going to leave my dog.

I shut Auggie’s eyelids over his eyes. The cardiologist left us to take our time finishing saying goodbye. I held his paws. I looked at his little brachydactylic toes some more. I kissed him. I repositioned him off my lap and laying flat on the floor. His most comfortable sleeping position. We pet him.
I said “oh my Auggie” to him one last time.

I texted his breeder when it was over. I texted my sister, not wanting her to see it on Facebook.
I posted it on Facebook.

I got into bed and held Payton.
It was over.

How do I finish telling Auggie’s story? How do you sum up ten years of amazing memories? Auggie never quit on me. In agility, people told me we should quit. He didn’t quit. He finished out master’s titles with me. Multiple times I thought it was the end and he rebounded. Even when people were saying they were scared he wouldn’t make it and they thought I should put him down, he got better and gave them the finger and said “You were ready to call it! Look at me now! Here, throw this ball.”
And then he told me when it was time. He was still happy to the end. That really was time. Happy, but ready to go. Nothing else we can do. His little heart and little body couldn’t hold his spirit anymore. It was time to soar, unbound by little brachydactylic feet, unbound by the arthritis in his wrists that had developed over the years, unbound by a heart that couldn’t keep up with all the heart that he possessed.

I miss him so much, but I feel as okay as I possibly can about the decision to let him go. I smile when I look at photos of him. It makes me happy to remember my dog, not angry or sad. I don’t regret a moment of the last eight months. I know I didn’t make any wrong decisions. I didn’t throw in the towel too soon but I also didn’t let him suffer. The only way it would have been more clear that it was time was if his heart had just simply stopped on it’s own in his sleep.
I would have liked to have known it was coming, to spend a Last Day together, but we had our Last Day – I just didn’t know that’s what it was.

I am grateful for the love and support of my friends. Times like this are always when you find out who cares for you most. Thank you to my friends Joe and Jenny for showing up at my house that night, bringing me flowers and a card and, most importantly, hugs and company. Thank you to Michel for coming to find me on Saturday and giving me a hug when I needed it to get through my day. Thank you to my sister and my brother-in-law both for taking photos of me and my Auggie, different kinds of photos at different times, but both photos I will treasure; thank you to my sister for coming to see Auggie as we were reaching the end and reminding me he was off to see his hero Kota and to pester Happy. Thank you to my parents for going on this wild ride with me and for loving Auggie so much. Thank you to everybody who has loved Auggie, even if you never met him in person. Thank you to all of my friends who have also lost a heart dog and have expressed in one way or another how their hearts ache too. Thank you to Misha for the beautiful drawing of my wonderful boy and your lovely letter.
Thank you everybody who managed to make it to Auggie’s 10th Birthday Party. I had no idea it would be his last. It was so special because you were there to celebrate it with us.
Thank you to the breeder of my best boy, for bringing this wonderful dog into the world and letting us spend ten years together. I will never have another dog like him as long as I live. He literally changed my life. I wouldn’t be where I am sitting today if not for my dog, in so many ways. I learned so much about dogs in general, shelties, agility, behaviour, and yes, veterinary care from you. Thank you for sharing Auggie’s life with me. Thank you for being able to stop by and see him on his final weekend, though we had no idea it was in fact his final weekend – his tail wagged so much and he was so happy to see you.
Thank you to all of the vets who cared for my dog throughout his life and especially over the last eight months. Thank you to each one who took time to help him, especially when he was chronic, to get him comfortable and stable and enable him to come home with me again. Thank you for treating me with respect, recognizing my medical knowledge and helping me further it by never talking down to me but always being honest and explaining fully, and for seeing my ability to do an awful lot for my dog, and allowing me to do everything I could.
Thank you to Dr. Fries at the University of Illinois for the excellent care and support. If I didn’t have access to a skilled, knowledgeable specialist, my dog would certainly have been gone long ago. Thank you for giving up your time on nights and weekends, even over the fourth of July holiday, to answer phone calls and e-mails to continue supporting my dog and helping his heart work as best as it possibly could. Thank you for seeing and acknowledging the fighter in my dog. Thank you for treating my dog like you loved him as much as I did. And thank you for coming at the final moments, even at 1 in the morning, to be the one to help me release my dog from his failing body.

Thank you, Auggie, for being the best dog I have ever owned. Thank you for being my best friend. Thank you for loving Pepper, even when she didn’t want to play with you. Thank you for loving your brother Payton, even though he was obnoxious. Thank you for loving (or at least tolerating) Kaner, even though you had heart disease when I brought him home; thank you for playing with him in your last months.
Thank you for teaching Payton how to be a good dog. It is possibly the most wonderful gift you have given me, to last after you have gone, that Payton is such a good boy.
Thank you for sharing my bed. Thank you for sleeping on my pillow. Thank you for every kiss and for every happy smile. Thank you for every possible thing I cannot possibly put into words to express how much I loved you, and how much I know you loved me, and the relationship we had that is incapable of being explained by the English language. Only felt in my heart.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Run free, my most wonderful and perfect Auggie. Run free.

Sentinel’s The Flash RN NAJ MXP MJP CGC
11-15-05 – 07-13-16


21 Weeks and Auggie

Starting Wednesday night Auggie has started to lose motor control in his back legs. It started with what looked like a fluke; he was laying in his bed and I asked him if he wanted to go outside and potty, and he jumped out of the bed but his back legs didn’t quite follow. Almost like he tripped over the bed. He then came slipping and sliding across the room to me. I caught him and picked him up, immediately trying to decide which emergency vet to take him to – the one we’ve been seeing or the university, where they could call the cardiologist for me. A minute later, I set him down, and he was fine. Like it never happened. We went outside and he went down the deck stairs, peed while hiking a back leg, then climbed back up the stairs, no problem.
But then it rapidly got worse. Standing eating his breakfast with his back legs shaking. Falling over when he got out of his crate and tried to shake off and his legs gave way underneath him.

The internet says when dogs with CHF lose control of their legs it’s not long to the end.

The cardiologist has us heading to our regular vet for some blood work to try and see what’s going on.

Kaner is 21 weeks today. One ear came up last night so I took them both out to see how they’re doing.


Slowly trying to be bigger than Auggie.


Not quite there yet… just not quite.


Auggie is still happy and still eating well, which is an important metric for Auggie. So I guess that’s good news.


Still happy.


He is my most wonderful dog.


He looks older, and in my opinion he aged quite rapidly – CHF will do that to you – but he’s still so handsome.


The smile hasn’t changed at all, though.


I love him the most.


Ears up. Looking a bit goofy without a lot of coat.


From the side. I think they are a teensy bit too high so I’ll try setting them a bit lower this time.


Eating sticks – his favourite outdoor game.

If you’re wondering where Payton is in the rest of these photos, he wouldn’t leave my side after I buried my face in his fur and sobbed “What are we going to do without our Auggie?” He’s a good boy.


The State of Auggie

It started the day after his 10th birthday with one cough.
Tuesday he coughed twice. I got my phone out to try and record it so I could show the vet what was happening, but it happened quickly and then it stopped just as quickly.
Wednesday he coughed three times, and I called the cardiologist. The cardiologist had graded Auggie’s heart murmur as a 6 (on a scale of 1-6, 6 is the loudest) earlier in the year and told me to follow up with my regular vet for x-rays, and depending on what the x-rays showed, we would go from there. The x-rays in March showed his heart was only just slightly enlarged, and Auggie was completely asymptomatic of any heart disease (outside of an incredibly loud murmur,) so we put him on a hearty dose of salmon oil and chose no other treatment at that time.
The earliest the cardiologist could get us in was in a week and a half. I took it.

Thursday he was coughing a bit more. My mom ended up with the day off work and came over while my dad worked on a few things, so she sat with Auggie for the entire afternoon. I came home from work and put Auggie’s food bowl down, then walked out of the room to change to go to the gym. I turned around, and Auggie was standing behind me.
We went back into the kitchen, and his food bowl was full.
I can’t remember a time in Auggie’s life he hasn’t eaten his food. Ever. I picked up the phone and called my mom to ask her how Auggie had been that afternoon. She said he was fine, although he had coughed a few times.
I put Auggie’s food bowl down again. He looked it over a bit, then decided to go ahead and eat.
I called his breeder. Am I being crazy, or should I be taking my dog to the emergency vet? I am not the sort of person who rushes to the vet over every little thing, but all of my alarm bells were going off. As I stood and looked at Auggie, he looked to me like he was laboring to breathe. His sides were heaving, and I couldn’t remember Auggie ever breathing so visibly like that.
Yes, emergency vet. I called my mom back and she came to pick us up.

In the car Auggie started coughing, violently, non-stop. I pet him and told him “Don’t worry. Mama will fix it. I’ll fix it.”
Suddenly he went quiet. I put my hand on his side and I couldn’t feel it heaving anymore.
If you had asked me before then how to give CPR to a dog, I would have told you I had no idea. I acted instinctually. How do I get air into my dog? I grabbed his face, turned his nose towards me, and blew into his nose.
He snorted, and then he started to cough again.
My legs were shaking.
I jumped out of the car at the emergency vet while my mom parked and rushed to the door, Auggie in my arms. They let us in and the man was asking questions I was only partially hearing but I know I answered them.
The vet came into the room and asked a few questions, then said she wanted to put Auggie in the oxygen tank right away as he was obviously struggling to breathe. Once he was able to breathe better, she would take x-rays and then bring him back in for a more thorough exam.

She brought my dog and x-rays back into the room fifteen minutes later and placed the x-rays up. His lungs were full of fluid and his heart was very enlarged, so enlarged it was actually putting pressure on the trachea. I asked her to tell me honestly how bad it was.
“I’ve seen worse,” she said, “but it’s pretty bad.”
I started to crying with my hands locked in Auggie’s fur. “Okay. Continue. I’m listening to you.”
Auggie needed to stay overnight, probably spend some more time in the oxygen tank. They would give him injectable Lasix which would help get the fluid out, and he would need to be started on heart meds.
At one point she told me we probably had a year left.

I waited until we got back to the car before I sobbed “A year? That’s not fair.”

I left my best dog at the vet. I went home and got Payton and a few things, then went to stay with my parents. The vet called to tell me Auggie’s blood work had come back and his kidney levels were very, very slightly elevated, but everything else looked good. “He’s already starting to feel better,” she told me.
“That must mean he’s being naughty,” I thought, but didn’t say it. I didn’t have much to say.

The following morning I arrived to get my dog so he could be transferred to my regular vet for further monitoring. The vet brought Auggie out to me and he was wearing a cone, and had two shaved legs. “So… he ripped out his IV the first time.”
I laughed. “Is that when you said he was feeling better?”
“Yeah, as soon as he started to feel better he reached down with his teeth and pulled the IV out of his leg.”
That’s my Auggie.
“So we had to put it back in the other leg and that’s why he’s got the cone.”
I have never been so happy to hold my dog in my arms. He was quiet and obviously tired – so was I – but he wasn’t coughing and his breathing was back to normal. I took him to my normal vet and I told them “By the way – that cone isn’t likely to stop him for very long.” They all laughed. Yes, they knew Auggie, and no, that cone wasn’t likely to stop him if he wasn’t monitored pretty closely. Thankfully, they were going to keep a very good eye on him, so the cone should do the job until they were done with the IV and took it out.

My regular vet called me a few hours later. “What happened to your little guy?” he asked me.
“I don’t even know. It just happened so suddenly.”

Apparently, it’s not uncommon for dogs to be asymptomatic for so long and then rapidly deteriorate. That was small comfort to know we weren’t alone. But Auggie had responded well to treatment. I left work early and took him home, along with a handful of new meds to start.
That night we slept in our bed together, back where we belonged.

Monday we were back at the vet to follow up on his blood work and do another x-ray. The fluid had left his lungs, leaving us with a much clearer picture of his heart (the view now unobstructed by fluid.) It was indeed quite enlarged.

Multiple people told me not to listen to any timelines anybody told me. They have no idea. There’s no way at all to know. Lots of dogs live a very long time once controlled with meds.

Thankfully, we already had a cardiologist appointment for the following Monday. Once there, the vet did an echocardiogram of the heart. The news was the best possible considering the situation: Auggie just had leaky valves. No holes in his heart, no major deformities, just each valve was a little bit leaky. He had responded well to the meds and the cardiologist was optimistic. Our biggest task was to monitor his kidney values, as the diuretics taxed the kidneys; at a certain point it might turn into a balancing game, but for now, we treat his heart and carry on.

Then he gave me the best news: Auggie could be as active as he wants.

I asked to be sure. “You mean he can herd sheep?”

“Yes,” the cardiologist said. “I want him to do anything he feels like doing. I want to see him chasing sheep and jumping over fences.”

I started to cry again. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but he’s a working dog, and even though he’s already retired from agility, I just didn’t want to think of my dog unable to do anything he was bred to do and meant to do ever again. I promised him I wouldn’t ask him to go over any jumps anymore, but all I want to do is let him herd sheep again.”


Taken at the e-vet while waiting. Before they took him back to put him in the oxygen tank.


Back with my Auggie in the morning. Conehead for ripping out his IV.


Home with me later that day, back where we belong. Together.

On Auggie’s tenth birthday, I knew our time left together on this earth was limited. I had no idea it might be so severely limited. I thought we had years. The cardiologist told me his goal is to try and get everybody at least a year. I have made a deal with Auggie. He cannot leave me before he’s 11. I was promised a year, and I will be very, very unhappy if I don’t get what I’ve been promised.
After 11, we can talk. And maybe, if we’re blessed, he’ll stick around for a lot longer than that.

But as of right now, every day with Auggie is a gift.


Training Challenge 8/13/12

Okay, these are going to be pretty tough to keep up on. I close on my house NEXT WEEK. Holy crap! From there I have a week of vacation but it’s likely going to all be spent working at the house, getting the major Must Be Done Now things all taken care of before we can move in (like finishing the fence in the backyard!)

This weekend was incredibly cool weather wise, hence why Henri came to pay us a visit. The cool weather will be good for working at the house, but bad for other fun things I had in mind – like continuing working with Payton on swimming to get him ready for Dock Dogs. I need to cart him off to the lake again and do another swim in deeper water. I would really prefer to do this when the weather is above 70 degrees! Let’s hope for some hot weather coming in the next few weekends.

As a result of continuing craziness, I’m just going to continue to make general goals instead. Last week I took a break from teaching “into my arms,” mostly because I visited a dermatologist for a full body scan and she asked me “What did you do to your legs?!” in a horrified voice – what I did to my legs was ask my dogs to jump up in my lap. They may be small but they don’t do anything halfway and I had a ton of bruises, including a few really big ones, all over my thighs. So I took a little break to let some of the bruises heal before I started adding more bruises, lest my thighs become completely black, blue, and yellow.
This week I am going to work on shaping a retrieve with Payton using the bumper. It would be helpful if he brought his toy BACK to me after I throw it into the pool, right? Right.

Speaking of doctor’s visits and horrifying things, two weeks ago Auggie peed all over the floor inside after having just come in and peed outside, so away to the vet we went for another urinalysis. The urinalysis turned up lots of blood and bacteria yet again. So Doc suggested a cystocentesis, which for those not in the know of bladder problems, is where they inject a needle into the bladder and draw a urine sample directly from the bladder. This gives a sterile sample, as opposed to a free catch which is not considered sterile. This was sent off for a culture and sensitivity…
which produced absolutely nothing. NOTHING. So the urine in his bladder is fine. This means the problem is below his bladder. Urethra? We really don’t know. So today Auggie is here at work with me until our appointment at the university vet clinic, where we will attempt to learn something. Anything. Also where all of my moneys will disappear. Our new house is going to be furnished with a cheap butterfly chair I bought on clearance from Target many many years ago, and my Nintendo Wii sitting on the floor in my living room.

So that’s our week. Training and some expensive vet visits. Whoo-hoo. Away we go!


Auggie’s Pee Saga Continues

This morning I let the boys out to pee. Auggie squatted to pee, then almost immediately decided he would rather bark at my mom moving cars in the driveway instead. “Auggie, you still have to pee,” I told him, and sent him back out into the yard. He came back on the deck and barked in my face instead. So we came inside for breakfast. I sent him back out after eating and all he did was poop. Fine, it’s YOUR problem if you don’t want to pee.

Except it wasn’t exactly like that, as I would find out later.

When I came home for lunch and let him out, he squatted, then did the little “Imma wag my tail while squatting” thing which he first did when he had his UTI last year. He has since done this a few times, causing me to freak out and immediately get a urine sample to the vet only for it to come up clear. It still makes me pay more attention, but doesn’t cause immediate worry like it used to. I do know when he is wagging his tail, he’s not peeing yet, and it’s not until he stops wagging his tail (or just moves and tries a new location) that he actually pees. So he moved and squatted again.
And then I realized it didn’t look like he was ACTUALLY peeing.
I told him to try again, so he picked another spot – and this time I was watching closely – squatted… no pee. After a little bit a few dribbles came out, but no real pee.

I went inside and called the vet. Doc was at lunch but they would call me back as soon as he came back to the office and let me know what they wanted to do. I took Auggie back outside and asked him to pee again. He tried a few more times but each time nothing came out. I could tell he obviously HAD to go – for one thing, he gets his food floated in about a cup of water, so I knew there was pee in his bladder – but nothing was coming out. Not. good.

Auggie came back to work with me while I waited to hear back from my vet, then off we went rather quickly to be worked into the schedule.

Doc couldn’t feel anything obvious, but as I expected, an x-ray was first up to make sure there weren’t any stones floating around, even if he couldn’t feel anything. Away the little pup went for his x-ray, then came back looking smug. I wondered if he had peed all over their x-ray equipment, but no, he had just been a very good boy for his x-rays. Doc came in with the x-rays after a few minutes and… nothing. Nothing on the x-ray at all. So away Auggie went again, this time to have a catheter run. Doc warned me they might have to sedate him a little to get the cath in, which, if you remember from Auggie’s last annual, he has developed a heart murmur, so that gave me some anxiety. Back in they come, Auggie looking EXCEPTIONALLY smug now and not woozy at all. They hadn’t had to sedate him, he was very good, he had peed AROUND the cath even. So they had collected a urine sample and were running it, but visually, there wasn’t a lot of blood or anything. It could come back with a bladder infection, but it could also be clear, and if it was clear, we were out of ideas as to what was up.

At this point I seriously started to think my dog was trolling me. Especially as he sat on the floor looking at Doc and Doc gave him some cookies. Auggie, we have cookies at HOME, okay? And they’re a lot cheaper. You don’t need to fake me out just to come get cookies from Doc. That is ridiculous.

So after the urinalysis was finished, Doc came in and said “Good news!”
“He has a bladder infection?” I asked. In what world, exactly, is it good news that your dog has a bladder infection? In my world, where money is tight, and cute little dogs are threatened with a horrible death when they go to the vet and run up bills for no good reason.
“Yep! Lots of white blood cells and bacteria in there.”
“Whoo-hoo! Auggie, you get to live after all!”
(I am, of course, joking. I was trying to fight off a panic attack and trying very hard NOT to cry this afternoon when I realized we had a problem. I love my Auggie doggie even though he may be the biggest snotbucket in the world.)

We came home with antibiotics and some anti-inflammatory too, since he is likely pretty sore and inflamed to not have been peeing. Poor baby dog! Hopefully he will get to feeling better in a few days here. We’ll go back next week and run another urinalysis to make sure we’re in the clear. I sure hope so. I don’t want the poor thing locked into another cycle of urinalysis after urinalysis and I definitely don’t want any stones developing from this infection like we had last year. So hopefully this chapter in Auggie’s Pee Saga will be a short one!


My poor little guy

Payton’s last dose of flagyl was Tuesday… last night at 2:30AM I was up cleaning runny poo off my carpet yet again. =< Lucky me, I hadn't even taken the crate back downstairs from the previous week, so I brought it into my bedroom and started setting it up for him. He actually started CRYING when I was setting it up. He went into it willingly and settled down easily and fell asleep once I got it set up, but he really doesn't like being in the crate. He likes curling up with me right when we get into bed, then jumps down and sleeps on the floor... then in the early morning he jumps back up and snuggles some more before I get up. When he's crated he just stares at me from the crate with his ears back a little like he's pouting. But I never thought he would CRY when he saw me setting the crate up. =< Poor baby. The sad thing is, he's just going to have to be crated at night until we get his tummy figured out. So he's going to be really unhappy for a while. I'm not very happy about it either, I like having him snuggle up in the mornings. =/ Booooo. On the one up side, I contacted Auggie's chiropractor and asked for a second opinion from her. She agrees it's clostridium and has prescribed a nice chunk of stuff for him. Tylan powder for a while, B12 injections, and two herbal formulas. Whew! Getting stuff out of the cabinet to feed the dogs looks like I've raided a pharmacy. And to make matters worse, when I left for lunch my plan was to go to the vet's office and pick up the stuff my other vet called in for them to have ready for me, then go home, let the dogs out to potty, reheat my lunch, eat it, then come back to work. By the time I get home - too late! Payton had crapped in his crate. So I spent the rest of my lunch break cleaning out his crate instead. I kept trying to decide if I should just bring Payton back to work with me so I could watch him and take him outside HERE if I needed to, but ultimately decided I would just give him some Pepto and leave him at home. Then the poor little guy spat Pepto all over my clothes and that EFFING white carpet that I swear I'm just going to flip out about one day and rip up with my bare hands. Did I mention I'm running a 5K tonight? I managed to pop my lunch into the pizza oven and warm it up while I was syringing in the Pepto, then threw it in a Tupperware container and came back to work and ate at my desk. And now my stomach hurts because I'm so stressed out and worried. Worried about having left Payton at home instead of bringing him here where I can watch him. Worried I'm going to come home and he'll have crapped all over his crate and all over HIMSELF, and I don't know where I'm going to fit time to give him a bath. Worried he's going to be sick all night tonight when I'm trying to get sleep before my half-marathon tomorrow. Worried this is never. going. to end. To top everything off, when I was on the phone with my other vet, she asked how big Payton was and when I told her he's 17 pounds she said "Wow, he's TINY." He is. He is taller than Auggie's dad but weighs at least five pounds less. And every time his stomach acts up like this it's just not helping. He's not skin and bones or anything but I've NEVER been able to put weight on him. And then he asked me how old he is and I told her he'll be a year old on the 16th, and she said "Wow! He's old!" Waaaaah!! My puppy!! I'm drinkin' tonight. finishing the 5K, havin' a drink. then going to bed. yuuuuup.


Payton’s tummy troubles continue.

Mr. Man has the poops again. And threw up a bit last night in his crate and it didn’t look right. Part of it looked normal… and part of it looked like poop. Every two hours, pretty much on the dot, he was crying in the crate to be let out.
The vet couldn’t get us in any sooner than 5pm, so he had to sit all day without even any water.

He’s acting totally normal besides having the runs every three hours. First thing this morning he teamed up with Auggie and they nearly caught themselves a squirrel. =P I was on the phone with the vet and they asked “Is he acting normal? Not lethargic or anything?” Nope… definitely not lethargic!

I took the morning off work to catch up on the sleep I missed letting him out all night long – and after he threw up I had a pretty hard time falling back asleep at all, even though I knew it wasn’t anything major to worry about yet – and one I found out the vet couldn’t get us in before 5pm, I took the rest of the day off too so I could just watch him and make sure he doesn’t get worse. And so I didn’t come home to take him to the vet and arrive back to a poo-covered dog.

So after a full day off work and fifty-some dollars later… the vet nothing apparently wrong with Payton.

We came home with more Flagyl, I guess it’s just the general tummy troubles med. Sigh. Best guess seems to be when he eats little pieces of rope and fleece bits off toys it might be enough to irritate his digestive system? I’m not on board with that theory, to be honest.
Doc was thinking blockage, but couldn’t feel anything, his belly felt fine, wasn’t hurting him… asked if I wanted to x-ray him anyway, and I asked if he thought it was worth an x-ray, and he said no. So no x-ray. A friend had recommended checking for clostridium, so I asked about sending a fecal off to check for clostridium. They can actually do a clostridium strain right there in the office with their fecal floats, so didn’t have to send away for anything. We talked about switching food, Doc said maybe switch food; I went over and talked to Auggie’s breeder’s husband about switching food, and he said probably not switch food, at least not now until we get him settled again this round, because if he doesn’t take to the new food it will be hard to tell if it’s that or he’s still got this going on… so no new food just yet… and he isn’t convinced switching food will take care of it anyway. Neither am I.

So chicken and rice for a few days, Flagyl for a week. I’m frustrated. I want more than “The good news is, it’s not this, this, or this! Bad news is I dunno! Here’s some Flagyl, cross your fingers!” which is kind of how I feel right now. =/
Poor Payton.

We just did this two weeks ago. Seriously? Buh.


Training Journal

Since joining Recallers 3.0, I’ve tried to get into the habit of record keeping my training sessions.
I am terrible at it. I have failed pretty gloriously at record keeping. I was GREAT for about the first week of Recallers. Then that was the end of that… whoops.

I do have training notebooks, several of them, all over the place. Inside of these notebooks are notes I take when I’ve watched training DVDs or webinars or whatever. I jot down lists of tricks I would like to train, make notes on what we need to work on, figure out game plans for training large tasks like jumping skills. I think it’s pretty clear how bad my record keeping skills are just based on the fact that I have multiple training notebooks instead of actually having everything just collected in one notebook.
I mentioned my training notebook on a dog forum I belong to and another poster asked what my training notebook was like. “Not very well organized” was part of my answer. I thought the thread might spawn more people giving input on what they have for record keeping and what all they write down, but nobody else piped up about their training notebook. Maybe it’s a rare quality – maybe very few people record keep. I suppose I’m not alone in my disorganization, but realistically, it’s a GOOD thing to do. Why don’t more people record keep?

Regardless, a group of us who have access to Recallers through the end of March (or some who have access for even longer) have decided to work our way back through the course lessons from the beginning. The Re-Doers, we are so dubbed! So I have decided to re-do my attempt at record keeping.

It’s currently the beginning of week two (not counting the first week of re-working what is called Critical Core and are more just games that become part of your everyday life; most of these are in fact games I already played as part of our everyday life anyway.) I didn’t actually write down my training notes for Monday yesterday. I remembered to grab my journal and brought it to work with me to put notes in this morning. NOT ideal… I’m sure there are things that I thought about writing down last night while working with the dogs that I have forgotten by this point.
However, in the interest of accountability, and in the interest of showing a little bit more of what I have in my training notebook, I decided to post what I wrote down from yesterday’s training sessions.

2/6 –
Crate Games – Progress with Payton sitting faster. Still need to play the games more to help him out. Closed the door on Payton breaking sit and he didn’t lock down again.

RZ – Tried this with chicken. Auggie tried to bite my fingers off. IYC fail. Payton seems to get it at first, then I realize it’s just a fluke. Need to do more!!

Hand touches – Also tried with chicken. Chicken was too messy and shredded to work well. Getting solid repeated touches from Payton. Criteria is for two hard nose touches in a row. Shredded chicken remnants were apparently teaching Auggie I want him to lick my hand… not what I want. Put the chicken away.

Not exactly the most organized of note taking, but this is the format I’ve decided on. Essentially, I’m just journaling. The name of the game we played, what worked, what didn’t work, what I need to do to fix it. This is what works for me. Other people might use a different format, far more structured – I do sometimes take structured notes if our activity calls for it (I have a whole page where I charted behaviours out for latency) but being far more relaxed about it by jotting down these notes is how I will take most of my notes. The other major problem I see with my journals is how frequently I focus on “what went wrong” and how rarely I focus on “what went right.” I’m trying to write with a far more positive perspective these days. It’s a hard habit to break since I tend to look at things as a problem solver… this didn’t work, so how can I fix it? The problem solving IS an important part of training, but when I read my notes back, it just sounds really negative. And I believe that the language we use with our dogs and when thinking of our dogs and their training affects our thinking and affects our relationship with them.
Therefore, time to be more positive.

I made some shredded chicken last week because poor Payton was having serious poop problems and fasted him, then put him on antibiotics and a chicken and rice mixture. I haven’t done treats with him – he only got back on full dog food Sunday – and am hesitant to do anything that might aggravate his poor belly again. We didn’t do much training last week because I couldn’t use treats, and what I wanted to work on I didn’t feel could be done with a toy reward as well, but I have extra chicken leftover and wanted to use it to train with. But the chicken just wasn’t working well for the hand touches, so I think I will have to get back to the dog treats. He finishes his antibiotics Wednesday, so hopefully his stomach is back and in balance again anyway. If not… I guess I’m about to find out!
Also, Auggie really needs to learn better self-control, especially when he’s super excited during training (read: just about any time food is present during training.) He is good about being gentle for a few rewards, and then CHOMP! Bites my fingers again. Sigh. It’s a work in progress, as always. Chicken is FAR too high value to be giving him right now if I expect to keep my fingers. We need to work up to him not getting really excited and biting my fingers off for plain old treats before I try chicken…

…see? Negative. I just keep doing it!


Payton has a sick

Poor guy had diarrhea all over the entryway last night, literally right before we all got in bed for the night. =< I had to clean it up, then clean out the spot cleaner, then decided to leave him in his crate for the night because I thought he might get sick again all over my bed. This worked fine for about three hours, until my mom got up to use the bathroom, and he started howling like he'd been abandoned on the side of the road. X_X I let him out to poop again and saw he threw up in his crate, so I cleaned that up too. He was unhappy about being left in his crate this time, so I ended up bringing Auggie's crate (smaller) into my bedroom and put Payton in there. I don't think any of us slept well. With no crate pad or anything in the crate I could hear him every time he moved, and he was confused as to why he wasn't on my bed like usual. At 5am he was crying to go outside again, and at 5:30am I sent my business manager a text taking half a personal day to try and get a few more hours of sleep.

I did manage a couple more hours, got up, washed both dog's pillows (I had removed Auggie's before putting Payton in it, but still, I was doing laundry anyway), bleached both their crates while I was at it, gave Payton a bath because his butt was all poopy and gross. He's been acting fine all this time, even in the middle of the night he would go out and run happy laps in the yard, stop and dump some poop, then bounce around again. Just an icky tummy. I was going to fast him this morning but decided to give him half his normal breakfast just to see if it made him sick again, and if it did, I was going to drive a stool sample over to the vet just in case, but so far so good.

Poor guy. I hope he's done being sick. Not sure if he got into something or just got a touch of a stomach bug. Before he had diarrhea, he had some REALLY smelly farts – like smelled like he had actually pooped farts. So definitely a case of upset belly one way or another.

Though I will say there was quite a bit more room in my bed last night with only one dog up there, LOL. Not that it mattered much since I STILL didn't get much sleep…


Sock Monkey

Auggie has some kind of infection going on with his foot right now… there’s a nice big swollen bump between two toes on one paw pad. First I coned him. He could still reach his paw even coned. So then I got out a sock and socked him. This worked (although he continued messing with the sock) but my socks are HUGE and he is tiny. We tried one of my mom’s socks and even that was rather large.
So I bought him some toddler socks from Target.

They even match his blue vet wrap that I’m using to keep the sock on.

Also Auggie thinks vet wrap is delicious. He has ripped it off, chewed it into a tiny little ball, and eaten it three times, and was unhappy that I made him throw it up all three times.


Ohhhh boy…

Yesterday I caught Pepper offering her butt all flirty-like to Auggie.

Today he has INCREDIBLY renewed interest in trying to hump her. Like making monkey-noises when he can’t get to her or I tell him to stop.

I think we’re about to have a full-blown heat here.

Guess I should go out and buy some washable diapers just in case she starts bleeding on me here… she’s two and this should be her first “for reals” heat. Ughhhh.
I told her last night THIS IS WHY I LIKE BOY DOGS. She just stared at me and wagged her tail.


Big Faker

Last night I took Auggie out running with me. When we were almost to the end of the run, I looked at him to make sure he was doing okay and noticed that at some point in the last two minutes he had started limping. “(#$*()@” I thought. ” Can’t have my little guy hurt.” I wasn’t sure what he did but he was definitely limping, so I decided I’d pick him up and carry him the rest of the way home instead of making him walk the remainder of the way and possibly hurt himself more.

So we get inside, I put him down and start taking off his harness so I can take a look at him to try and see what he did… and no sooner did I get the harness off than he leaps away, wiggling and giggling, and runs to go grab a toy to play. Limp? WHAT limp??

)$@*(%ING FAKER.

Well, I say that, but later that night he was licking his front paws. I thought about putting bitter apple spray on them but he wasn’t really chewing them up, so I didn’t. I sort of think I should have, because he threw up three times in the middle of the night last night, and at one point appeared like he threw up some fur, like maybe he’d chew some off his foot. I’m not sure if he licked something nasty off his feet and that’s why he threw up or what. He has no limp this morning either though, and was chasing after a tennis ball like nothing was wrong. So, yeah. Giant faking faker, Auggie. I’m onto you.


Goopy Eye Continued

The first day of Coneheadness was a hard day, but I tried to take the cone off so Auggie could sleep without it on and he immediately started to paw his eye again, so it unfortunately had to go back on. I took it off at about 4PM the second day and he left his eye alone, so we were able to keep it off after that, much to Auggie’s relief. It’s hard to be a conehead.
At first his eye seemed to be getting much better right away. The green mucus discharge went away within a couple days and the redness got much much better, but he still kept putting out a lot of clear mucus, far more than usual. We went to Louisville for agility the following week, and his breeder told me she thought it might be a clogged tearduct and I should take him back to the vet. The vet said yup… clogged tearduct. The bad news was, he wanted to put him under to unclog it… and figured while Auggie was under we should do a dental too.

Well, I called around and found a vet that would fix it without putting him under, but it was going to cost over $200. Auggie’s teeth really aren’t in need of a dental and I don’t want to put him under, but I didn’t want to pay over $200 either. I decided I would think about it for a while and figure out what I wanted to do. A clogged tearduct isn’t harmful and it can’t turn into anything worse, and was probably caused by the eye infection, so all it was going to mean was a lot more discharge than normal. Not exactly fun for Auggie or for me, so I DID want to fix it… I just wasn’t sure which the best course of action was.

That weekend, I went to the yuppie grocery store in town. I actually went looking for some stuff for my face that I’d read about on the internet, but couldn’t find it. However, they have a tiny little pet section, and in that pet section I found Halo Cloud Nine herbal eye wash. I had read about it online while reading about clogged tearducts and was sort of delighted to see it there. It was $20, all natural, and it claimed to open clogged tearducts and was mentioned a few places online. I figured, well, $20 was a lot cheaper than $200, and if it didn’t work, at least I’d tried a cheaper, natural solution first, right?
The wash comes with two different solution concentrates that you mix up in an eye dropper. You do three days of drop one, three days of drop two, then repeat drops one and drops two for a full cycle. The notes that came with the drops said “You may notice a swallowing motion right after putting the drops in. This means the tear ducts are clear. This may not happen right away.” When I first began putting the eye drops in, I didn’t really see him swallowing. The third day of the first round of drop one, I THOUGHT I saw him swallow after I put the drops in the eye with the clogged tear duct. The first morning of the first round of drop two, I definitely saw him swallow after I put the drops in his clogged eye. He also already had a lot less mucus coming from that eye than he had since he first got the eye infection. The second drops are to clear out the bacteria that clogs the tearducts to sort of “finish the job,” and I suppose you repeat the round to just make sure you’ve gotten everything.

Well, I am REALLY thrilled to say that these drops worked for Auggie. I didn’t have to fork over tons of money for the vet to put him under and unclog it, nor did I have to fork over tons of money for the specialist to unclog it without putting him under! All I did was pay $20 and it was ALL NATURAL to boot. Whoo-hoo!


Auggie’s goopy eye, and first experience as a conehead

When I got home from work Friday, Auggie’s left eye had a slightly green, very goopy eye booger in the corner. That’s not at all normal for him… his eye was slightly red and he was squinting it just a little bit. Luckily, we were already going to the vet Saturday morning for his annual. All evening long I kept going “Oh my poor puppy! You have a GOOPY!” and he just stared at me and squinted his eye a little…

I left him to go see Daughtry in concert, and when I came back, it was crazy goopy. Wiped it, but it was completely gooped over in the morning and he was starting to paw at it a bit. I wiped it again before we went to the vet but it was already goopy again by the time we got there.
The vet pronounced him “really good” except for his goopy eye, and sent me home with antibiotics to put in his eye three times a day. Then we stopped at PetSmart and got him an e-collar, where he proved his mad cuteness skills by getting a cookie not only from the cashier in our aisle, but the cashier in the OTHER aisle too. *facepalm*

Then I came home and put the e-collar on him. Poor guy looked pathetic. I said to him, “I’m sorry baby. I feel so bad for you. But not so bad I won’t take pictures.”


Saaaad puppy.


I asked him if he’d smile for me. Oooookay. Here you can see how he’s squinting that eye just a little bit.


Auggie wants you all to know exactly what he thinks of having to be a cone-head.

He’s done really well with it actually, except when he’s walking somewhere and tries to squeeze through near the wall and ends up konking his cone on something… then he just stands there looking terribly confused. He tried to get it off right when I put it on, but he’s pretty much left it alone otherwise. Though the first time we went outside he whacked his cone on the door frame and backed up looking startled and wasn’t sure if he wanted to go outside after all. Poor baby.