December 26, 2016

White Dog was adamant that she WAS going along. Steve told her "No" several times but each time he reached for the doorknob she jumped down and trotted to the door.

Finally, I shrugged. "Little White Dog of My Heart if you want to go so badly, come along but do you know where we are going?" She paused for a moment and tilted her head. "We are taking Trixie to the VET to have her sutures removed. Come on, let's go." WD looked at me, "I am not kidding that is where we are going. Coming?"

She backed slowly from the door and went into her fortress behind the chairs.

Trixie was already waiting in the car. As she has healed from the itchiness of the skin rash episode she has regained her spirit and spunk.

At the vet's office, everyone was amazed at how good our Big Beautiful Girl looked. She danced on and off the scale and was impatient to get things taken care of...so the tech took her back to review the sutures and remove the staples.

It was so quick! In just minutes she dragged Dr. England out to the lobby where we waited. "Can we talk here or would you rather we go into a room?" she asked. The office was empty; Trixie made the decision by jumping up on the couch next to Steve and pawing the air. "Here seems to the patient's choice," I laughed.

We agreed the rash issue seems to be episodic. The pox have all dried and there are no areas of new infection. "Now she can get a bath and most of the dried stuff will slough off," the vet told us. "What we are doing seems to be working well." We decided that we would, as an experiment, decrease Trixie's prednosone by 20% for a week to 10 days and see if she stays stable. If so we will slowly continue to decrease the dose until we find a maintenance level for the medication...it is likely she will need to be on it for the rest of her life.

The vet explained that our girl's continuing weight loss was a part of what was happening deep within her somewhere. Trixie was VERY excited when Steve was given the go ahead to increase her food in an effort to offset weight loss. We were happy that the loss did not seem to be further fast muscle deterioration...there will be wasting but it is our hope to slow or delay that as much as possible...months and possibly even years. She is strong and still able to walk and jump and today, at least, be quite an imp.

Given the "all clear" Trixie was released and wished a Happy New Year filled with treats. As a special reward, we stopped to make her Christmas wish for a cheeseburger come true.