Vet Bills 'R' Us

People, shelter/rescue animals are not cheap! But they are worth it. Our extensive visit to the vet on Monday revealed PB to be in excellent health other than his right rear leg which apparently suffers from patellar luxation which in English, means the kneecap dislocates on its own. This only occurs very intermittently and he has learned to slip it back into place on his own. Evidently this is common in small dogs but not as much in larger dogs. PB suffers from the same medical statistics as I do i.e. if it only happens to a tiny percent, it will happen to us.

It doesn't seem to cause him pain, just momentary discomfort until he slips it back. It can be caused by genetics but in his case, it was most likely an injury caused by the evil man who abused him and who makes us fervently hope karma exists. We took X rays to be sure and those revealed that there is also significant atrophy of the leg and some fluid and inflammation around his achilles tendon indicating tendonitis. I have suspected he is favoring it slightly and he tends to stand with the foot slightly askew. He will take a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory for a month and rest. Like he doesn't lounge on the sofa all day anyway! To wit:

Could you rearrange my down comforter? It slipped.

Hopefully that should take care of it. If it persists, I will be spending the remainder of my assets at the orthopaedic surgeon. Sigh. We substituted Camano Island for Whidbey as I have to return a kennel to the shelter from the kittens so the dogs, my parents and I will be making an outing of it tomorrow. The dogs must remain on leash but they have a lovely state park with beach, trail and everything in between for the dogs to roam in. Photos to come of course.

Now for the kittens - several hundreds of dollars later in blood tests, urinalysis etc. we discovered that *shock* Dexter is as healthy and robust as can be. However, Samantha is still ailing. She has had a prolonged high fever now for 10 days and while she eats, drinks and plays albeit briefly, she clearly is not thriving. She tires easily and has none of the energy you would expect of a kitten. This is the PB version of Samantha:

SHE tires easily???? They exhaust me!

I decided to have them tested for everything and to check Dexter as well for my own peace of mind. Her results are complicated. She is anemic, her bone marrow is not producing the red blood cells she needs and she has some blood in her urine. She tested negative for all the big, fatal diseases but some of these are also quite complex so there is still a possibility she has one of them. In short, additional, more complex blood work and urinalysis is needed to try to pin point why she is sick. If those tests are still negative or at least ambiguous, we will do full body X rays. If, at that point, nothing obvious is found, it may just be that she will never be in excellent health as a result of being a stray, her momma likely being malnourished etc. But it appears, at least, as though she has nothing fatal which was a distinct possibility until they called me back today with the lab results. In fact, Samantha has her own moments of devilishness when she can squeeze them in while Dexter is off duty. See?

It's all a big facade. I am going to take him down!

Have you taken out a second mortgage yet? hee hee! I'm worth it though, aren't I? Aren't I....hey, come back here!

Don't look at me. You brought them home.

For some reason, both kittens are obsessed with PB's feet. I don't even want to know why.

Dexter is just, well, obsessed period. He torments PB to no end. Like this.

Post PB tail attack. Dexter is looking to see if he got any response.

You can eat the poisonous plant or fall into my mouth. You choose.

I will be going back to work on light duty October 5th dear readers, which means I will actually have to organize my life and be slightly more productive than I am now! So that means less blogging, more slogging. But we will still post as time permits.