Showing posts with label Tripawd Warrior Princesses. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tripawd Warrior Princesses. Show all posts

November 23, 2012

Sandy Dogs

No, I'm not writing about Rita after she comes home from the beach (although I could probably enter a sand castle competition with the amount of sand she brings home from Fiesta Island). Instead, I'm talking about Hurricane Sandy. Helen Woodward Animal Center (where I volunteer) got 45 cats and dogs this past weekend from shelters affected by Hurricane Sandy. Forty-five!

You can read more about it here, but basically each of the pets that arrived was already up for adoption before the storm hit. However, there were so many displaced pets after the storm, that the shelters didn't have room for the adoptable dogs/cats anymore and needed help.

HWAC, Southwest Airlines, SeaWorld, Delaware County SPCA and Save-a-Pet all worked together to fly the dogs and cats out to San Diego. Here's a super-sweet little video:

If this video doesn't warm the cockles of your heart, then your cockles need some serious thawing. I'd suggest putting them in the microwave on auto-defrost and just leave them in there for as long as it takes.

A lot of the pups weren't ready to be adopted yet when I was there on Monday for my usual shift, so I didn't meet any of the dogs in the video but I did meet some other real sweethearts!

In other Helen Woodward-related news, remember the other day when I posted this picture of the gorgeous but somewhat, um, crazed looking pup that I was in love with...
...well, when I went up on Monday, he was already gone! Hopefully he's being spoiled rotten in his new furever home even as you read this. Hopefully all the "Sandy" dogs and cats will soon find their furever homes as well.

A Special Shout-out for Tripawd Warrior Princesses
The day after Thanksgiving will probably always make me think of our beautiful Abby. We brought her home from HWAC on 11/27/09, the day after Thanksgiving. We are very thankful that we got to have that special girl in our lives, even if for way too short of a time.

Sadly, this week, the last of the original Tripawd Warrior Princesses that I dedicated the drawing below to earned her wings.
Tripawd Warrior Princesses: Rio, Isabelle and Abby
I like to think our special girls are all together now, with their capes and their wings. Goodbye sweet Isabelle. You were truly an inspiration, surviving Hurricane Katrina and two kinds of cancer. Run pain free and say hi to my Abby!

I hope everyone here in the States had a lovely Thanksgiving!



November 3, 2011

My Big Weekend

Abby here. Mama said I could do the blog post today because she is busy. Mama says November is NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month. To be all official-like, you have to sign up and post your progress. You are supposed to write ~1700 words/day but Mama is going rogue! She is doing her own thing with a friend and trying to get 1000 words done a day. Right now, Mama is doing laundry, making granola and working on her book all at the same time, so that leaves me to do the update.

I told Mama she should just stick a picture in her book, because 1 picture = 1000 words. Done for the day, and then she can play with me some more!

I am going to take my own advice and let the pictures tell the story:

Saturday, to celebrate my ONE YEAR ampuversary (Yah me!), we went to In-N-Out. 
The box says "animal fries" but it's not - it's my Flying Dutchman!

I got this flat pig. It squeaks. I hate that.
I tried to nap using Mama's shell of succulents as a pillow.

Sunday we had a big photo shoot with me in my Tripawd Warrior Princess cape and crown.
When we start TWP land, this'll be on the currency

Whaddya think? Cute? Yah, thanks. I know!










OK, enough adulation. I'm bored...
Then Mama put on my TWP outfit. She's so embarrassing.
In other news, we went to see my friend Dr. V. His dog, Hank was there. You might recall that Hank is was my boyfriend. The nice lady left me, Hank and Mama in the room together, and . . . this is hard for me to talk about . . . Hank gave Mama more kisses than me! WtH?? Whatever. There are a lotta other fish that lift their legs to pee. Or whatever that saying is. Anyway, after that two-timer left, Dr. V. came in and listened to my chest a long time - I think because he likes to hug me. He told Mama everything sounded just fine. (I guess he couldn't hear my broken heart!)

He talked to my Mama about taking pictures of me. He is weird. I know EVERYONE likes to take pictures of me, because I'm so beautiful, but he takes pictures of the INSIDES of me. Oh well, I guess it's because I am beautiful on the inside too! Mama is supposed to decide if she wants to see pictures of my insides again. If they look beautiful, than everything is good and I keep eating my spoonful of peanut butter and the little ball of braunschwager like usual. If they don't (which I doubt could happen) then Dr. V. said my Mama could try to give me something different in my little ball of braunschwager . I don't really care what they put in there, as long as it doesn't make my tummy hurt and as long as the ball of braunschwager keeps comin'! Anyway, I'm pretty sure the pictures would be beautiful. I don't take bad pictures!
I'm outta here. Kisses everypawdy!

P.S. from The Mama: we are trying to decide about the x-rays. If we look, and Boris and Natasha are being held at bay/not partying in there, then we'd happily keep doing what we've been doing. On the other hand, if we find that B&N are being bad renters and sub-letting space to all their stupid friends (do B&N have friends?) then we could drop all the stuff we are currently doing (cytoxan/piroxicam and our 'ancient Chinese secret', artemisinin) in favor of trying another at-home chemo drug, Masitinib. It is supposed to be similar to Palladia, but Dr. V. said he's seen dogs that do poorly on one do well on the other, so just because the Palladia didn't agree with her doesn't mean the Masitinib won't either. I was leaning toward not looking and just being blissfully ignorant, BUT...  a woman on Tripawds the other day posted that her dog's lung mets disappeared (!!!) after three months on Palladia. That kinda makes me wanna try the Masitinib. And, who knows, if the x-rays show that our current protocol is effective, we might not even need to try it. We'll see. Of course, I'll keep y'all posted. Now, back to work!

September 16, 2011

And Yet More Worrying!

Let me just cut to the chase and say Abby had a good check up. But not before scaring us, yet again.

This latest round of scaring started last night. We were watching the Rugby World Cup (which is INSANE and so interesting to watch, btw. If you've never watched rugby before, it's pretty fascinating. You can't believe the things that happen to these big beefy dudes and how they throw themselves at each other - and yet, no one ever gets carried off on a stretcher! At least, not that we have seen yet...) Anyway, we were watching US v. Russia - nothing like a good old cold war rivalry - and the US was doing well*, so Mike yelled "Go!", and Abby went.... She started racing up and down our long stretch of hardwood floor and spazzing out, and then suddenly pulled up lame. She flopped over onto the area rug and held up her lone good front leg out as if to say, "This hurts really bad!

Panic set it, but after a few minutes of resting, she was up and hopping about again. Then in the night I heard her get up to bark at something. She must have re-hurt herself, because in the morning she could barely walk. I attempted to carry her around all morning (she insists on being in whatever room I'm in), which was just barely doable. She is "only" 45 lbs, but rather unwieldy.

I got her oncologist visit rescheduled to an earlier time, got the Tripawds folks busy sending positive thoughts (or "pawsitive" as we like to say on the site - yes, we are silly that way), and hoped it wasn't a case of the cancer spreading to her good leg.

At her appointment, Dr. V. messed with her shoulder, ankle, wrist and toe and the only time she fussed was with the toe. Hooray! He said it doesn't seem swollen at all so is probably just a mild sprain. He said it is very very rare for OSA to spread to a toe, so not to worry. He said to give her tramadol for the pain and only do short leash walks in the neighborhood for a few days. No beach. But that is good timing as Fiesta Island is closed for 3 days because of some big silly boat race thingy, so we couldn't go there anyway. If all goes well she can go back to the beach next week. :)

In other good news, he listened to her lungs for a good long time and said they sounded great. He said if we didn't know the mets were in there (damn Boris & Natasha!) he wouldn't be able to tell there was anything wrong with her. In additional good news, she weighed 47 lbs, which is great as we are trying to get her weight up just a bit. To celebrate all the good news, Abby and I stopped at Arbys and got a roast beef sandwich for lunch. We stopped at the park and shared it. :)

Next appointment will be for x-rays to check on Boris & Natasha on Oct 28 – just one day shy of her one year ampuversary!!

Sorry I have no pics of Abby to share today. I hate to have a post without any pics, so I'll just post this drawing I did that I put up on Facebook and on the Tripawds site, so most of you have already seen it. We've been joking lately on the Tripawds forums about "Tripawd Girl Power" and how our hero girls needed some pink capes, so I did this drawing of some Tripawd Warrior Princesses (TWP) - that is Abby in the middle. 


One of the ladies ran with my idea and made a pink cape for her TWP, Lylee. Here is Lylee modeling her cape (with sparkles even!) at a Tripawds get together in Northern California. Wish we could have gone!
Unfortunately, Abby didn't have a pink cape to wear to her appointment today, but she wore her Tripawds bandana instead, and I'm sure it brought her good luck. 

Thanks for reading and thanks for thinking good thoughts for our girl! 

* The US won! The matches are on Universal Sports Network - you should check one out. It makes American football look like powder-puff girls.