This poor girl has been through so much with such a great attitude. We can all learn a lot from her.
She has a vet appt. this week. After exhausting just about every drug for her condition we are back to prednisone. She isn’t doing well on it. She is so very thin and still having blowouts.

We will do a full blood panel and gastric tests to see if anything has changed and figure out a course of action. Seems like we have tried everything for her, from holistic to western drugs. She hangs on to life and runs around crazily and usually has a bone in her mouth outside…amazing dog.

Our poor girl. Geesh…to have lived most of her life with this bowel disease. And we just can’t get her stable. She still doesn’t know she is pretty sick. Lots of energy and enthusiasm. For the past 46 days we had her on Atopica (cyclosporine) but she was getting worse and worse. Her diarrhea was increasing although her weight has been stable at 38 pounds.

So we decided to try prednisone again. This is her first day and so far she is doing exactly what she did before on it….she drinks so much water and has so many blowouts that I worry about severe dehydration. We will give her IV fluids if she continues much longer. The vet said to at least try it for a week. It IS the drug for this disease. But if this continues she will be dead in a week.

We will see how she does tomorrow and go from there.

sigh. She is the most gentle, loving dog. She didn’t deserve this in her life.

OK….having this many dogs in the house (14) with temps the month of Jan. staying from 20 to 45 below…well, cabin fever has taken over. Here is an example of my life at the moment..
Pixel! Bring that dog bed back. NO don’t chew the stuffing out of it…where did you get it from? It goes back in this crate…now what do you have? Towels from the other crate? Chance likes to sleep in there- she doesn’t want your drool all over them…Bonsai! Please don’t chew the fuzz off your tennis ball…oops too late….(throw tennis ball in trash…get another tennis ball)..Bonsai! What are you doing digging under the couch? oh….2 tennis balls under there. Ivy wants to go out? OK..who else? 6 dogs out…4 minutes later 3 dogs back in. 5 minutes after that 1 dog back in 5 dogs out. 6 minutes later 3 dogs in 1 out. This is a math question…how many dogs are still outside? ha ha.

Who just chewed a hole in my blanket? Everyone looks guilty. Is someone in the utility room? what is going on? WHY are you pealing up the linoleum. ARGH…there is a big chunk on the bed. Where did this stuffing come from? HEY..that was a new dog bed.
Is that scratching at the door again? Who needs to go out? Someone coming in? I thought everyone was back in? Oh Loon! What do you have? Frozen poop! oh lovely. No kisses from you. Who puked straw in the bedroom? Please don’t eat it again Mardy.

How about a kong? Look how many we have? NO one wants to play with a kong? here are more tennis balls. I will toss them down the steps. Zorba….we don’t eat tennis balls, can I have that one back?

Look at the dogs in the dog barn! THEY aren’t chewing up their beds…they are grateful they have them. I guess they are getting a bit more tired with all the times we are forcing them to go out and pee and run around.
See, we aren’t forcing YOU all to go out and get cold and tired. OK…let’s do that. Everyone, house dogs and barn dogs. Time for afternoon hour romp and feeding.

Chores done, dogs all fed. Everyone crashed out.

Bonsai! what do you have? Pixel, what is in your mouth? Where did the 2 of you get these pieces of plastic? Does anyone sleep around here?

Every winter one of our chores is to keep the dog houses up out of the snow. This winter we haven’t been as diligent because the dogs are either in the house or the dog barn and when they are outside for their romping time, no one uses a dog house.
But today I decided to clean out houses and get them up on top of the snow. Once I knock the box free I lift or swing it out of the hole. I usually put the old straw in the hole and move the house to a new spot. We only chain some of the dogs when they eat so really the placement of the house is not important because they have free run of the yards.

We have tried to pull out some of the posts but after a dozen years it is difficult! And impossible during the winter time. We got a bunch out of the side yards last summer and will try for the main yard this summer.

It was hot working today at -17! I had to take off my outer coat.

Well, the boy has been a great puppy…he rarely chewed anything and now has all his permanent teeth (including still the one canine puppy tooth that never dropped out)….but he has taken now to chewing different things and we had a little scare the other day. He didn’t eat and we were sure he had something stuck in his esophagus. Don finally got him to eat that afternoon but shortly thereafter UP came all the food plus several large chunks of foam from a dog bed. They had gotten stuck and couldn’t go down.
After that he was back to his regular high energy, madly playing self.

It is -34 here in the “hills” where usually we have a nice inversion and not as cold as Fairbanks (which is -40 at the moment). Mama Moose and baby have been around for a couple of days. It is hard to try and drive them off, so we don’t.
In this picture, Chance is admiring Mama’s great girth and trying to spot baby hiding directly behind Mama. You can see how the moose is concerned about Chance. She would rather eat than expend the energy attacking the fence.
She did give one turn and a kick to the fence as they ambled off later. As if trying to get in the last word.

My little girl is gone. 16 years and 8 months old. I had her for nearly 15 years. I had her when I owned my bed and breakfast (she was a great friend to all my visitors), lived in a cabin without running water or indoor plumbing on Love Road and here at my current home. She was a tiny girl weighing around 32 pounds. Star lost her front leg to a pick up truck when she was 2 years old. She never knew she was handicapped and still skijored with me until she was around 8 years old. When she was loping all out no one could tell she was missing a leg until I would stop and then people would stare in amazement and awe that this little dog could still do something that she loved.

She was diagnosed with cancer in January of 2011. She was given 3 weeks to live. Of course, dogs don’t listen! nearly a year later she decided that it was time to go, not 3 weeks.

She was in renal failure and it was a challenge sometimes to find something that she would eat. But she survived on many different foods over the months.

She had a very rough Thursday. I thought sure she was going to die in my arms. But she slept peacefully all night and ate a few different things on Friday. On Saturday she decided that my bowl of cheerios with craisins and yogurt were pretty tasty so she ate all of that. Then she had a salad for lunch. But she was frail and was having a hard time getting around. She seemed to be thirsty but really couldn’t drink much. I think we all knew it was her time. Dr. R. came up and we peacefully let her go.

I can only think that now she is off on her next adventure with all 4 legs and a healthy appetite. I will miss her dearly. She has been the dog that was with me the longest of all my sled dogs so far.

Rest in Peace little lady. We love you.

Onyx has had a severely hard couple of months. She was doing well for about a year, then just crashed. Went from 42 pounds down to 33. We put her on a new drug over a week ago. Cyclosporin We have tried many things in the past and think they work well, and then she goes down again. At the moment she is tolerating the drug well (no vomiting!) and her weight is back up to 37.2 pounds. She still has splats but they are less and less looking like liquid. Here’s hoping that this will be the “miracle” drug for her.

In the meantime, Bonsai is thriving. He is up to 28 pounds. Still quite tiny for his age (probably around 7 months old now) but full of energy and no lasting side effects from his surgery. He is still being fed elevated although he seems to be able to get things down (like frozen turds–isn’t THAT lovely!) and not regurgitate them back up. He loves life and playing and is obsessed with his ball.

Bonsai has claimed the newest holiday present from Don. An elevated dog bed. He loves it.

Hoping everyone is having a wonderful holiday season. Mardy says “these are all MY toys.”(and at 13.5 years old she can have anything she wants) Hope you have shared with loved ones in your lives and enjoying this time of the year. I realize how very fortunate that I am with love, shelter and food for myself, Don and the dogs.