{31jan2011: acupuncture}

We hadn't realized it's been so long since our last acupuncture appointment for Darwin, but it's been since October!  Last weekend she started looking a bit gimpy in her backside so we got her in to see our holistic vet.  Darwin seems to be the highest energy level Great Dane we know.  Hour long walks or hour long stops at the dog park don't tire her out for long.  So before our afternoon appointment we took her to daycare* to tire her out a bit.

(sorry for the blurry pictures!  And it bugs me so much when her collar is upside down!)

There are a couple spots Darwin is not a fan of the needles being placed (on her legs) but for the most part really likes going to see Dr Kelleher.  

When we got home all the activities from the day left us with one tired pooch!  Woo hoo!

*She's been going twice a week to daycare and still no big breakthroughs in her enjoyment of it.  She's fine walking in and will stand around the whole time totally calm (not really relaxed, but fine). When we go to pick her up and her name is called in the back she gets crazy!  Barks at the other dogs, lunges to get out, pulls the poor worker through the door.  They laugh and say, she's so good during the day, but she's so eager to leave.

{08nov2010: prizes}

As you may recall, Darwin won Augie and Ti's Halloween costume contest.   Well the prizes arrived the Friday before Halloween and boy were we surprised!

Such a big box!
Since it was dog day Friday in our office (as all Friday's are) Darwin was there and was so excited to see what was in the box.

Of course since we were celebrating Halloween in the office Darwin had to come in her winning costume.


Once she got in the box we could see it was filled with lots of fun things!


A stuffed spikey ball!

A super cute abominable snowman (which has since been destuffed)!

Look at all these goodies (the warthog has also been destuffed)!

They even sent a cute Halloween card with it all.

Thank you so much Augie and Ti!  Darwin loves all her new toys!!

Since we were celebrating Halloween, here's my last minute costume idea.

I was a crazy old cat lady.  I really should've dressed Darwin up as a cat.

And here's Darwin's bff Juneau who was also in the office (we usually only are allowed one dog in the office at a time, but our boss let us bring both dogs in since it was a party day).

Can anyone guess who they were dressed up as?

Oh and a lot of you asked about Darwin's last Wordless Wednesday post.  We're still (and I think always will be) treating her for her back problems she developed in February/March.  We go to see our holistic vet every 5 weeks or so for acupuncture and chiropractic treatments.  She says to get the energy flowing even more it's better to use electro-acupuncture so she hooks a few needles up to a little battery box.  It's like a mini set of jumper cables.  Darwin's got a lot better about relaxing when we go in for her appointments, while she won't sleep as some other dogs do, she does lay there and is pretty tolerant of it all.  Dr. Kelleher tries to leave the needles in as long as possible, usually 10-15 minutes, and she'll do the electro-acupuncture for at least 5-10 minutes.  It's amazing how it helps Darwin, and Darwin seems to know it too.

{03nov2010: wordless Wednesday}

Acupuncture session edition:

p.s. If you haven't already seen yesterdays' post please pop over and see how you can help donate food to shelters!

{17aug2010: cough cough}

Thanks for all your concerns regarding Darwin's latest ailment!  All her issues made me think of a research speech/paper I had to do in college about Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy a condition where a parent (usually a mom) makes their child ill or injured to get attention from others.  The movie The Sixth Sense showed a case of that.
Anyway, we had a little getaway this weekend (more on that in another post) and her cough/hacking was a little better, but still there and her appetite still wasn't what it usually is.  By Sunday night she was still hacking so I called our vet yesterday to get her in to get checked out.  Her appointment was scheduled for 930 this morning.  Before her regular vet appointment she had a 730 (omg so early!) appointment at her holistic vet for her accupunture treatment.  While we were there we were talking about Darwin's hacking and she immediately said it's kennel cough.  I told her how we went to the emergency vet last week (she doesn't think the one we went to is very good and recommended others) and told them I thought it could be kennel cough but the on-call vet was quick to say it was not kennel cough but an irritation in her throat.  She said the Prednisone Darwin was on for her back problems left her with a weaker immune system than normal so she had a higher chance of getting any kind of cold or infection.  She even laughed at the Bordetella vaccine saying that she thought it was a waste as Bordetella is only one type of kennel cough and the vaccine only lasts for a couple months.  We got sent home with some Chinese herbs and Astralagus root to boost her immune system.  I canceled our regular vet appointment and we'll see how Darwin does on just these Chinese herbs.
As I've said before, thank goodness for pet insurance.  After last weeks emergency visit we racked up a thousand dollar plus bill and when we picked up Dar, we left them with a claim form to fill out and fax in.  By Sunday we got an email from Trupanion saying they received our claim and last night got a follow up email notifying us that our claim was processed and we'll be getting back our 90% (minus exam fees).  Woo hoo!  Even though Trupanion doesn't cover holistic treatments I'm still very happy with them and it's even better now that they've done away with their cap/limit on payouts.  It used to be about $20,000 cap, and at the rate we've been going with Darwin we would've reached that in couple years.  Now with no cap we can breathe easy!  
And because I don't like pictureless posts, here's a peek for an upcoming post!

{20june2010: hfd}

Happy father's day to all the dad's out there!
Darwin's dad, Jason:

And her doggy dad, Atlas:

And my dad:



So after back and forth discussions about how much Darwin's homemade dinners are costing (if they are that much more than her normal kibble), I've decided to blog about it to keep track!  
Today we went to the market to stock up on meat and veggies. We picked up cauliflower, broccoli, kale, parsley, and ground turkey (it was on sale).   We already had at home carrots (bought a 3lb bag last week for a couple bucks) and eggs (carton of 18 for about $2.50). 
ground turkey (3lbs) $6.50
cauliflower (2.62lbs) = $3.89
broccoli (2.74lbs) = $4.07
kale = $ 2.49
carrots = $2.00
eggs  = $1.00
total  = $19.95 
With everything we bought we got about eight 2 cup servings, which breaks down to about $2.50 per serving.  We actually have extra broccoli, cauliflower and kale that we can eat ourselves so it actually is less than that.
Week one we were blending her veggies almost nightly.  Week two we started blending enough for two meals.  Week three I wised up and decided to make a weeks worth and store them in the freezer and we'll just defrost each days dinner serving in the morning for that night (hopefully we remember).



The one thing about blending her veggies is we need to make sure everything's blended down well, because any chunks get spit out on the floor.



Since our last vet appointment on Monday, we've been working daily on touching her feet and feeling her backside with a "let me look" command and today when we went back to Dr. Kelleher she said she could tell we've been working with her!  Woo hoo! 

Btw.  Bess is having a really rough month.  If you could pop on by and wish her a speedy recovery on her latest snaffu (be warned, there's a picture that's not for the squeemish), I'm sure her family would appreciate it!

{15june2010: needles round 2}

We went back for our second visit to Dr. Kelleher yesterday.  Jason was able to come with us this time and I think it helped because we were able to control Darwin a bit more and Dr. Kelleher was able to place a few more needles than last week and even did some electroacupucture.


After the acupuncture she did a bit of chiropractic work on Dar, saying that she still feels a lot of stiffness in her lower back.
Darwin's doing well on her diet.  She LOVES her homemade meals and I think she's slowly shedding some of her roid weight.

(Let me note that a blender is not the ideal gadget to grind up raw veggies, but we don't have a food processor (oh how I wish we did), so this will have to do for now.)



I've been trying shake off some comments that the doc made to us yesterday but the more I think about it the more it bugs me.  When she was checking Darwin out, she was testing her reflexes in her back legs and when she picked up Darwin's left back foot and bent the toes down Darwin turned and let out a growl.  Not a ferocious "I'm going to eat you" growl, but more like a "what the heck is happening to me" growl.  Dr. Kelleher said she didn't like that Darwin growled and that she thought it would be best to put a muzzle on her for the acupuncture treatment in case Darwin decided to bite.  I was ok with that as she's the doctor and while I don't think Darwin would bite, it's better to be safe than sorry. 
Then while she was treating Dar, she made a comment about how Darwin is our first dog and how a Great Dane isn't the best dog to "start out with" as they are very big and you need to have total control over them and we don't have total control over Darwin because she reacted when her feet were touched and wouldn't let herself be manipulated to be examined and worked on.   I know that we need to work on Darwin's acceptance to being touched and handled especially by strangers, but at the same time I don't think it's a breed specific thing of her being our first dog and being a Dane.  
At the end of the session Dr Kelleher gave Darwin a small treat as a reward and then walked away and tried to call Darwin over.  Darwin walked over, but then walked away and the doc made a comment (I can't remember exactly what she said) about how we need to work on that as that wasn't good.
Darwin loves attention, but a lot of the times if people want to say hi to her, she'll go over and sniff them, but then walk away and not hang out to be petted.  Does that mean we don't have her trained or totally controlled?  I just figured she was being indifferent to the attention and that was just her being her.  
I always thought we've been doing a pretty good job with Darwin, especially for her being our first dog.  I know there are things we need to work on with her but I really don't think she's that out of control.

{10june2010: needles}

Good news!

So Darwin's neurologist called last week with basically the same results.  He got Darwin's xrays from our vet and looked over them with the radiologist and two other surgeons and they all couldn't determine her pain or rear end weakness.  Dr Sanders thinks Darwin is a "rare example of hyperproliferative soft tissue".  He thinks she "may be subject to a limited activity lifestyle" if we cannot control the pain.  I asked again about what he thinks about taking her to see Dr. Kelleher and he thought it would be the best thing.  

Ok, that's not the good news.

Here's the good news.  So I emailed her last Tuesday to get on her waiting list and figured it would be a while till we could go in and see her.  She emailed early Saturday morning saying she had a cancellation for Monday and we could have that appointment!  Woo hoo!  

So Monday afternoon Darwin and I jumped in the car for a 30 minute drive north to see Dr. Kelleher.  I brought along all of Darwin's records and we went over how all of this started with her staying with her doggy mom and dad.  She was very excited about Darwin's case as we had done everything we could with traditional medicine (xrays, neurologist, MRI, Meningitis treatment, more xrays, etc) and after checking Darwin out she felt like chiropractic and acupuncture would totally help.  She said in checking out Darwin's spine she confirmed my suspicion that she was probably t-boned from the right side by her dad.  She found Darwin's right shoulder was really stiff, many disks were out of alignment going down her back, her pelvis was a little crooked, and her left side was super sensitive.  She did a few adjustments along Darwin's spine and then started with the acupuncture.  

Darwin did really well with the acupuncture, which surprised me, the only time she seemed to be uncomfortable with it was when Dr. Kelleher tried to insert a needle in her lower left side (her sensitive side) and Darwin jumped up.  

Dr. Kellelher noticed that Darwin is a tad overweight due to being on the Prednisone, so Darwin's now on a diet!  We're looking for her to lose around 7lbs to get her back to her 115lb range.  Now Darwin will only get 3 cups of kibble (she was at 5, and up to 7 with the Prednisone) and 2 cups of homemade food.  She gets to eat more raw meat and hard boiled eggs, and a mix of ground veggies.  Dr. Kelleher says vegetables like broccoli, kale, parsley, carrots and cauliflower are good "back building" veggies.  She also said Darwin could get raw chicken necks.

Sorry, iphone picture.... but doesn't that look appetizing?! 

Darwin seems to like her new diet, but is not a fan of chicken necks.  Monday night she ate them, but she won't go near them now.  If they are in her bowl, she won't eat.  Last night I took them out of the bowl and she ate just fine.  I tried to give her a chicken neck on its own and she totally rejected it.  She sniffed it, gave it a lick and turned her head away!  Thank goodness they are cheap ($0.99/lb) because I threw them out! 
Darwin also getting new supplements.  A Chinese herb mixture, doggy daily vitamins, Vitamin E, fish oil (she was getting this salmon oil but Dr. Kelleher recommends getting a human grade fish oil high in DHA), cod liver oil, Choline, and Lions Mane mushroom.  These are supposed to help her brain and nervous system.  It's a lot to get used to in terms of how much and how often, but I'm sure we'll get the hang of it soon.

The only slightly bad thing is that our insurance doesn't cover holistic medicine so all the visits we make to Dr. Kelleher will add up.  Eeek!  We'll see how it goes!  We have another appointment next Monday and then another one in early July.   I'm feeling pretty confident that she'll be able to help Darwin and get her back to her normal self!