Tripawd Party!

Today Monty had a Tripawd party with Cemil, an Anatolian Shepherd. We met Cemil's mom Mary, and another Tripawd pal Seanne and her family this morning at the K9K Walk to Cure Canine Cancer down in Elk Grove. Seanne just lost her Tripawd Wrigley a few weeks ago, but she brought Rookie and her new puppy Willow as well as her husband and daughter. Torsten missed the fun because he was working. Monty and I didn't actually do the walk, but she did play in the grass and romp around a bit with the other dogs. This was her first big outing with other dogs since her surgery. After the others did the walk, there were guest speakers who talked about cancer in dos and the need to find a cure for it. They had a great turn out, probably between 80 and 100 dogs out there. It was a lot of fun and we look forward to doing it again next year. Monty was zonked when we got home from all the excitement!

A bit to catch up on...

This week has been incredibly busy so I haven't updated in a bit! Monty has had a good week including getting to go to Santa Rosa for a visit. Torsten took her today for her second chemo treatment, but her blood work came back bad so she's going to go in on Tuesday. The vets assured us that it's nothing to worry about, that's why they do blood work during chemo treatment so they don't give her a treatment if her body isn't ready. She also is three weeks from her first treatment tomorrow, so they said that it could be back to normal by the weekend, but they don't do treatments on the weekend. We also added a supplement to her diet called DHA. It's pretty much Omega-3s, that Dr. Stramm said is proving to be very effective for dogs with cancer. The only down side to it is that the pills I bought her are 200 mg and she needs 1000mgs so she's getting quite a few pills each day! That's probably about it for now:-)

A busy Saturday

Today, Monty somehow knew I was going to go watch a barrel race. Dacquiri isn't in good enough shape to run yet, but there was a race in Sacramento, so I wanted to go and watch. Since Monty knew this, she wanted to come with me. So off to Sac Horsemen's we went. She had fun seeing all the horses and standing near the gate so she could bark at them as they took off. Several people were curious about what happened to her, including this one girl, who couldn't have been older than 6. She came up to me and asked "Excuse me, do you know how her leg fell off?" It was very cute. We also stopped by the barn to check on the horses, but she had to stay in the truck. She was tired from all the excitement so she didn't get a walk tonight. After getting home, she shared the front room with Melvin for a nap.

"She makes Torsten look good"

The title from today's post is a quote from Nola. We loaded up tonight and Monty got to visit one of her favorite people and all her friends at agility class. Monty actually did some of the training obstacles and was very confident. She was able to do a small jump, a walk-it, a teeter, the tunnel and the sit table. The weave poles were a bit challenging, but she never did like the weave poles, so it's no biggie. She was so happy to be out there, it was very obvious! As you can see in the tunnel picture, she is able to get around really quickly!





Before taking her to see Nola, we took her for a walk to the park. She was sporting her new red Ruff Wear harness and had a lot of fun. She was running all over, so we were resting with her on the grass when she decided to play with Torsten. One of Monty's cool "tricks" is that she can play very aggressively and then when you tell her "okay," she turns it off immediately. She loves to wrestle and jump around and is always excited by her leash!

I forgot to post yesterday, but Monty saw Dr. Stramm and Dr. Stevens. Both thought she looked really good and she's going to go back in 3 weeks. Dr. Stramm did a little acupuncture on her back and also did this treatment on her immunity points. To do this, she withdrew blood and then injected her blood back into those points. It was weird! She explained that her immune system would "attack" the injected blood, but since it was her own, it wouldn't cause any harm, just give her immune system a good jolt. I'm probably not explaining that quite right, but it was pretty interesting. Dr. Stramm had just attended a conference on Bone Cancer in dogs and told me that there were really good results with giving them high levels of fish oil. We already have her on 1000 mg of fish oil but are going to up it to 2000 mg.

I think that's all to report for today. I did want to include a couple of current pictures of her incision site. It's all healed up and her fur is growing back nicely. Most likely, there won't be a lot to report for tomorrow as Montana will probably be wiped out from all of today's activities. She'll probably fight Melvin for her pillow all day!

Monday:-)

Monty had a good weekend. She had a quick visit from Ute and Olov on Saturday, a walk and two car trips. She was all worn out! She hung out with Torsten most of the day yesterday. They watched Nascar, a Giants game and golf! Today I'm home with her, but I'm going to be heading out to the barn in a bit, so she'll have to stay home. She's out cold on her pillow right now, so I don't think she'll be too lonely. Tomorrow she gets to go and get another accupuncture and chiro treatment at 11. Ahhh...a day at the spa, so rough!

Tests are good:-)

Monty had her CBC yesterday and everything looks good! They only problem we're having lately is that Melvin has been stealing her pillow upstairs. Poor Monty is too nice to kick him off and they aren't friendly enough to share, so she's been on the floor. Every time we catch Melvin on her bed we put him up on ours, but he's been persistent! It's weird how the cats like to steal her space every once in awhile. It seems to happen in phases. Well, I'm glad that's the only "bad" news to report, as everything else is going GREAT!

Not much new is happening...which is good!

Montana and I have been hanging out the last two days since Torsten has been at work. She's had a walk each day and even came out to the barn with me last night. She's eating good but becoming a master at spitting out her pills! She gets a CBC tomorrow to make sure all is good from her chemo last week. She's still moving around great and wanting to do things which is awesome. Nothing else much to report at this point. I'll update tomorrow after her test results come back:-)