Treasure What You Have: December 2011

I haven't been very good about keeping the blog up to date. Between a fabulous vacation at Disney World, a couple overnight trips for work, planning for an upcoming cruise, and all of the other parties and social events that go along with the holidays - there just aren't enough hours in the day! I apologize for not making it around to most of your blogs lately, I barely have time to do my own it seems!

Anyway, this year we walked in the Middleburg Christmas parade with VAGA and I just wanted to share some pictures. We have never done this parade before and I really liked it! It was very dog friendly with a lot of rescue groups in the parade and tons of dogs watching it too. In fact, the paper said there were over 10,000 people at the parade this year! That's pretty amazing for a small town!

We decorated the wagon and I pulled Lauren while Tracy walked the dogs. We ended up having about 15 greyhounds walk with us. Lauren waved to everyone along the whole parade route and we all had a great time. It was during the day and the weather was great too! You will notice, however, that our pups are almost the only ones not wearing coats - that's because Buford refuses to wear one and I forgot Puddin's!

I thought we were going to be late meeting our group because we couldn't walk 20 feet without being stopped by someone who wanted to pet the dogs and learn about greyhounds :) They were superstars!

We had a pug when I was growing up and I thought this little guy was simply adorable!

Puddin was very brave - until the llama moved!

In other news, I just wanted to add that we got through the one year anniversary of losing Macy on December 17. I still think of her so often and especially for the last couple of months when we would do certain things...like walking in the parade and going to SPCA to see Santa, for example. Last year, we walked in the Fredericksburg Christmas parade and it ended up being the last time I got a picture of all three hounds together. It was a tough day, but I kept myself very busy and am still so grateful that we had Macy in our lives for the time that we did!

I'm not sure if I ever posted this or not, but this is the proof of the granite memorial stone that we have where Macy is buried so I still get to see her sweet face every time we go outside.

On November 12, I attended the 6^th Annual Greyhounds Rock event in Fredericksburg, VA. I wrote most of this post right after the event and am I just now getting back to finishing it! It was the first time I have ever been to Greyhounds Rock and although I must say that it wasn’t the most organized event, I would definitely attend again for the cause and the speakers. The event is to benefit the OSU Greyhound Health and Wellness Program and Dr. Couto was one of the guest speakers. It was the third time I have heard him speak and he never disappoints! If you haven’t seen him, you should really make an effort to get to an event that he attends. The amount of knowledge he has about greyhounds is impressive beyond words and he has devoted his life to trying to figure out the breed since he says they are definitely not dogs J As any greyhound owner knows, they really are a breed of their own since pretty much everything about them is different from any other dog. Dr. Couto is supposed to share his presentation with the event attendees and if I get it I will try to pass the slides along; however, there is so much that he talks to that isn’t called out on the charts. He talked about the program at OSU, his work in Spain with the galgos, and of course much of the presentation was focused on cancer, particularly osteo. I didn’t have paper to take notes, and obviously you should do your own research in case I got something wrong, but here are a few things I remember (I should note that all of this applies to racing greyhounds as osteo is essentially non-existent in AKC greyhounds):

- 60% of greyhounds will die from some form of cancer, 25% from ostersarcoma! That’s right one in four get bone cancer – pretty scary statistics to say the least!

- Males are slightly more likely to get osteo compared to females.

- Acute trauma has been ruled out as a primary cause for osteo since it is about equal as to which side of the leg it affects. If it were due only to racing, there would be a much higher rate of cancer on the right side due to the trauma caused by repeatedly running clockwise on the track.

- The top 5 places where osteo presents are: #1 shoulder, #2 wrist, #3 thigh, #4 bottom back leg, #5 hip. Dr. Couto said that hip displaysia is virtually unheard of in greyhounds so if you notice that your dog is suddenly lame in the hip it is definite cause for concern and x-rays should be your first action. He said most vets will tell you that it’s just arthritis and prescribe drugs. He said those are the toughest cases because by the time the owner figures out that it’s cancer, it has spread so aggressively that there’s little that can be done.

- Anytime your greyhound has surgery they should be given Amicar to prevent post-surgical bleeding. The number of blood transfusions required after surgery drastically decreased once they discovered this drug.

- If your dog gets osteo and you choose to amputate only (no chemo), the cancer will come back within 3-4 months – often found in the lungs. With amputation and chemo, you can extend your dog’s life 12-14 months on average (of course there are some dogs that live years, but 12-14 months is average – these still aren’t good odds in my book).

- Dr. Couto says dogs are born with 3 legs and a spare! He also says that giving chemo to a dog is nothing like giving it to a person because dogs don’t get all of the negative side effects like hair loss and nausea, etc. OSU provides free consultations and free chemo drugs that can be administered by your own vet.

- Osteo may present itself as a minor limp or severe pain – or the worst case, your dog has not had any indications at all and until you are out for a walk one day and he breaks a leg!

Having been through this with Macy, we really didn’t have any other choice but to let her go on that fateful day last year (December 17). I truly admire the work that Dr. Couto does, but after hearing him speak again it reaffirmed even further that we made the right choice and I just don’t think I would put my dog through all of that to gain another year together (a few months of which would be spent recovering anyway). It’s a tough position to be in no matter what individual choices you make!

Dr. Couto really just did a drive by – he flew in a couple hours before his presentation and had to rush out to the airport right afterwards. You will notice that I don’t have any pictures – there was a lady there who must have taken 100 photos in the first 20 minutes of his speech until someone finally asked her to stop! She had a huge camera with a big external flash and it was so distracting – I was definitely not going to be that person and didn’t want to even attempt a photo after everyone was so aggravated with her! J

Fortunately, I was one of only three people that got to talk to him afterwards because I was second in line! During his talk, he mentioned strokes so I asked him about the incident with Puddinnot too long ago. He said it was likely a mini-stroke and the only way to know for sure would be to do an MRI which would end up costing $2500 and they would tell us to give her baby aspirin! He said he has only heard of a couple cases where a dog had multiple strokes. If it does happen, he said to give her one baby aspirin that day and then we would have to give her half of a baby aspirin each day for the rest of her life. Since it was an isolated event and we haven’t seen any side effects or lasting impacts, he said not to worry too much which made me feel much better!

The evening speaker was Victoria Stilwell – you may know her from It’s Me Or The Dog on Animal Planet. I almost didn’t stay, but I’m glad I did – she was awesome! She focused a lot on her positive reinforcement training and how to learn to think from the dogs perspective. She made several digs at Ceasar Milan without actually saying his name which was pretty amusing. For example, she said there is no such thing as calm submissive because if a dog is submissive he’s not calm. She does not agree with dominance training at all! She said a dog walks in front of you not because he’s trying to be dominant, but because he has 4 legs and we have 2 so the dog’s pace is naturally faster than ours – plus your dog can still see you when you’re behind him because they have peripheral vision of 240 degrees compared to our 200 degrees. A dog goes out the door before you because he’s excited to get outside to all of the new sights, sounds, and smells – not because he’s trying to take over the house! She discussed other senses like smell – humans have 5 million olfactory sensors in our nose; dogs have 200 million (and bloodhounds have 300 million)! Victoria actually started out by forming a dog walking business in England and that’s when she met her first greyhound. One evening when her daughter was very young, she sat down to watch the Super Nanny to see what she was in for – at the end of the show she thought to herself “that’s what I do with dogs” and so began her television career! She also said that the emotional part of the dogs brain is identical to humans, but they lack the reasoning part which makes their emotion that much stronger so when they’re happy, they’re really happy (same goes for other emotions). She brought up three different dogs from the audience and showed us positive reinforcement training in action. She talked about thunder phobia which is common in greyhounds and recommended both the thunder shirt and a CD with sounds that is supposed to desensitize them to the noise – of course they are both sold on her website. I’ll never remember everything she talked about, but it was all very interesting and I like her even more now that I met her!

The third guest speaker was Sheryl Matthys and every attendee got a signed copy of her book, Leashes and Lovers. She did a brunch presentation the next day and I didn't go back for it, but I met her Saturday night when I got the book and she was very nice! She is the person who was featured on the Dogs 101 episode with greyhounds.

I also helped out at the VAGA table for a bit. The vending area was very small so there wasn't much shopping to be done, but overall it was a good event and depending on who the guest speakers are, I will check it out next year!