Poor Kotabug

My poor poor sleepy kid... I took him home at 3:30pm and it's now 5:30pm and he is still soooooo sleepy.... I've brought him out of quarantine though... I had him secluded in the laundry room, but now the dogs are ok with him and understand he's not going to be jumping up to play like normal. I picked him up and put him in his favorite place on the couch with his favorite pillow under his head and covered him up... my poor baby. He'll be on crate rest till I come home tomorrow (I SHOULD be able to leave early, as it's a half day for the kids) and hopefully he'll be a little more lively tomorrow... I forget how long Ollie was "down and out" after his neuter... I don't see any bruising on Kota, which is a good thing! Some of you might remember that after I had Ollie neutered (Ollie was my first Pem who I got from Carolyn in 02 who has since been re-homed living as an only dog in Mesa, AZ after wanting to kill Kota), he had SEVERE bruising that lasted about a week or so... all up and down his poor boy parts were bruised... I took doggy porn pictures to document it in case there was a problem in the long run. Thankfully there wasn't.
Hopefully Kota bounces back quickly! :) Keep sending good healing vibes for my boy! :)

big days....

Today Piper is 6 months old! SIX MONTHS OLD! Omg!!!

I have a few pictures of how Piper spent her last day of 5 months old.....

Happy 6 month birthday to Piper, Nash, June, Lucy, Echo, Maddie, Vegas, Wall-E and Harmony!!! I can't believe they're 6 months old! I bet Jeri can't either!!!!


(don't let her fool you - she may LOOK all innocent, but this hardly the face of an innocent dog....)
Silly goony Piper....
She wrestles and wrestles with Chance every chance she gets.....
Sedona was pretending to be invisible - you can clearly see her annoyance with me for taking her picture (and you can see her ouchie healing under her eye..)

a great "RAR" picture.... viscous dogs.
more wrestling and "rarring" :)

Look at the GLOW on Kota... (and he needs a bath!)

Tomorrow Kota has the big "N" scheduled.... Yep. After 6 years of having two friends follow behind him, we're letting his "friends" go... He'll be well cared for, as 2 girls who are in Piper's class will be caring for Kota, so I feel good about that. I'll update tomorrow after I bring the big man home from the mobile surgical center... Poor Ko will need some special care and babying I'm sure ;-) Now we'll only have ONE "real" man in the house ;-) It'll help my sanity when the girls come into season next....

our night at the vet

I took Piper to the vet for her 3rd round of puppy shots and to have Kota's leg looked at..... he started being intermittently lame back in January. Sometimes he'd be fine, and other times he'd be really light on his right rear leg.. After agility season ended (summer came), I decided to give him a few months of no activity to see if it was a soft tissue injury. Agility season has started up again so I decided it was time to take him to the vet and have it looked at....

Piper looking up at me as she was relaxing on the floor in the vets office waiting for Kota...

Piper being checked out by the vet tech....
more waiting....
Kota's x-rays.... You can see the little coil near his right knee....
a side view - the vet wanted to have a good look at his spine since I mentioned all the folks I knew with Corgi's going down in the back - so she took this 1) to look at the spacing between his disks, and 2) to look at the leg from another angle...

a closer view of the leg
The spacing between his disks is great she said - there's a bit smaller of a space between two disks (disk 3 and 4 in this picture from the left), but nothing she was concerned about in the least...
a closer view of the problem leg and the coil again...

the pair after the lights came back on while we were all chatting... too bad Kota looked away! :(
Dr. Carey (she rules) said she will call me this weekend once she's had a chance to consult with a cardiologist (Dr. Church). I have a gut feeling that another surgery might be in Kota's near-ish future... and if that's the case, I might just have him neutered at the same time... if he's out, I'd might as well! :)

Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we look for resolution to this issue - and hopefully he can get back out onto the agility field soon - he MISSES it dearly!!!!

PS: Piper weighed in at 14.2 pounds today. Kota weighed in at 34.6 pounds.

Kota - 24 hours later

As expected, I'll be making a journal of Kota's recovery here on the blog.. now that he's had 24 hours at home, here are updated pictures. I won't update pictures again for another few days...

This is the angle that his ear sat at, when he woke up this morning.

This is him after work today... smiling his big Kota smile, despite his weird ear...
another shot of the ears in comparison to one another...

and the back of his ear this morning... poor little Frankendog... LOL
Last night I let the dogs run together - which ended up making Kota more comfortable. It ended up making ALL of the dogs more comfortable, honestly. And when it came time for bed, I let him stay in one little section of my bedroom where he normally sleeps. I was up and down A LOT checking on him, but in the end, he did great. I woke up to blood splatters on the wall from his head shaking over night - but aside from that, he slept like a LOG I think. :)

Chance is reacting to the stress in the house I think... he's been weird about eating. He didn't eat his breakfast this morning, so I left it for him all day in his crate (I crated them all today) and he didn't eat it till this evening. Weird dog. Sympathy stress?? LOL

My main concern now is when the itching kicks in... I'll keep an eye out for itching, and the minute it starts, the e-collar will come back out.

More updates tomorrow - hopefully there's not much to report on - dog wise :)

Kota - post surgery - WARNING for the weak stomachs

it may not bother some - but it may bother others, so I figured I should warn you all... I picked Kota up today after work and his e-collar (lent to us by our agility / photographer friend, Amy) was splattered in blood.... like there was a little mini murder in his collar!

He whined a good part of the ride home, and was more calm when i was touching him (*sigh*). I have to keep the 2 younger dogs completely away from him until he heals some, so I stashed them in the yard and put him in my bedroom... he has cool lineoleum floor to lay on if he wants, and all the bedroom floor any dog could want. :)

now on with the "end result"....


He was laying down in front of me, so I grabbed this one....
and the backside of his ear... (poor kid looks like a quilt)
And this is him holding it up as best he can... I see a crease, despite my best efforts. I got tired of trying to keep him in tape. We'll work on it again after he's healed some.
So there ya have it. He has an appointment on Tuesday the 12th to follow up with the surgeon, and on the 26th for suture removal... he's on 2 weeks worth of antibiotics and has 4 days worth of pain meds should he need them.

I just want to make it all go away for him... I feel so bad :( keep sending good vibes, thoughts, well wishes, crossed paws, prayers, ANYTHING to Kota - for speedy healing and UP EARS! :)

Surgery day for Kota

The first medical attention I saught for Kota's hematoma was on 3/18.... here we are 5/4 and will finally, hopefully, have resolution.

I take him to Companion Pet Clinic this morning for his surgery and should be able to pick him up right after work today (thank goodness). It'll b e a day of pins and needles for me, despite this not being "that big of a deal" as far as surgeries go.

He's pissed that the kids got breakfast and he didn't... I just hope he doesn't get "hungry-sick" on them... when he gets too hungry, he vomits bile... always has.

So say a prayer, cross your fingers, do whatever it is you do to wish Kota good luck at his surgery today....