We lost our big Teddy bear yesterday. We all knew it was going to happen. He like Otis and Remi just will not stay in the fence. Teddy and Otis have no fear of anything including cars. Otis got lucky but Teddies luck ran out. It’s going to be hard for the next few days to get used to not seeing that big oaf at the gate in the morning or meeting you at the car door when you get home looking for some loving.

Teddy always wanted to be in the middle when company came to visit.

He also had to check out all the new arrivals. Animal or otherwise.

Forever on guard.

Well, Otis is spending some quality time with the veterinarian this week.

We saw him last Saturday night but when we left for Church Sunday morning he was no where to be seen. Missing all day Sunday, by Monday morning we expected the worst. Sebastian came in from doing his chores and said Otis wasn’t back. Then 5 or 10 minutes later when he and JennaKay went out the door for school he was laying by the inside gate.

When I checked him out I didn’t feel anything broken and nothing looked swollen. When I started messing with his hip, that was obviously painful. The kids went on to school and we waited for the local vet to open.

Of course, the regular vet was out and someone else was standing in. I should have walked right back out and taken Otis to our other vet in Auburn but I didn’t. She looked him over and did an x-ray. The hip was dislocated but the angle didn’t show how much. She had to sedate him and even that wasn’t working and ended up having to gas him on top of everything else to be able to get a good x-ray. She took one look at that picture and said there isn’t anything I can do for him and suggested we take him to the University. $300.00 and we are now on our way to our Auburn Vet.

We told him we thought Otis had been hit by a car and the other vet said she couldn’t help. He took one look at the x-ray and said this is classic big dog vs car hip dislocation. He immediately had two ideas for treatment. The first was to get the ball joint back into the socket and tie his leg so that it couldn’t pop back out…hopefully. If this didn’t work he would need to remove the ball from the leg bone and create a floating joint.

Well, even with his back leg tied up like a Thanksgiving Turkey the hip popped back out the first day but they got it back in. Just got notified that it’s been 2 days and it looks like everything is going to stay in place. Fingers crossed but it’s good news. Looks like he will be there for a few more days and when he comes home he will be confined to a kennel for a few weeks.

Update: The Vet tried to wrap his leg up pressing the joint back in place. As of Friday it appeared to be holding.

Unfortunately x-rays on Monday showed that it had popped out again. So they unwrapped his hip for now and he is scheduled for surgery on Friday.

This is Bonnie. She is a 10 week old Blue Heeler aka Australian Cattle Dog.

We picked her up Sunday.

It was a busy day. She helped me fix an outside faucet. Then she met some of the animals.

She was exhausted.

It has taken me two days to write about this but Tuesday we lost our Sadie. She and her sister Roxie, who we lost to heat stroke several years ago, were our first Great Pyrenees. They all have been good dogs but Sadie was on a different level. She was so protective that if she found an egg she would guard it and literally fight our two boar hogs to keep them away. She will be missed. She had a good life and 11 years is about average for the breed.

She developed a raspy growl at times almost a year ago but it didn’t slow her down. Over the last couple of weeks it got much worse even making a whistling at times. She got to the point that she couldn’t cool herself by panting so we retired her to the house. The episodes were becoming more frequent but it wasn’t a constant condition. Most of the time she would lay under the ceiling fan enjoying the A/C. We’d let her out and she would do her business and roll around with the other dogs as if nothing were wrong. Then she would get winded and come back inside. I was convinced it was her heart and expected she would go to a heart attack within the year but we ended up taking her to two vets. First last Saturday when she was having some trouble. It got worse in the vest office because she got stressed and agitated. After x-ray’s and tests the vet had no idea what was going on. We took her home and within an hour she was back to her normal self. Monday night she woke me up 3 times so Tuesday morning we took her to our other vet and he new what was happening as soon as he saw her. He said she was suffering from a paralysis of or collapsed esophagus. He said her vocal chords were closing up and that is why she was having trouble getting air and making the whistle at times. She was the worst I’ve seen her in his office. After discussing everything with him and Lisa we decided it was time to let her go. We might have gotten another year with her or she might have had an attack and suffocated while we were at work. The idea of her suffocating was more than we were willing to risk.  We said our good bye’s. Her body is now resting in our Pet Cemetery but I believe she is still on guard duty.

Unfortunately the hound in the above picture won’t be with us for much longer either. Ladybugs hips are failing. She is getting medicine twice a day and is holding her own for now. One of these days she won’t be able to get up and we will have to do something. Until then she is an inside outside dog and I will be building a ramp this weekend to make it easier for her to get in and out of the house.

Here are a couple more pictures of Sadie. One is her recovering after surgery on her ear. The other is her doing what she did best. Protecting and comforting a baby goat. Timmy was new to the farm and the other goats hadn’t accepted him yet so Sadie laid down next to him so he would stop crying. What a good dog she was.