I woke up the other morning around 5:00 a.m. and could not get back to sleep. This is not an unusual experience for me. I usually hate just lying there waiting to drift off into a little more slumber before I need to get up. But on this morning I found it rather pleasant. The neighbor’s rooster was crowing every now and then; the peepers were still singing; and an owl was hooting in the woods. We don’t normally hear owls so it was extra special to hear it.

And what about those crazy peepers? We don’t normally hear them until late April/early May but for the past week we’ve been hearing them and they are getting more numerous by the day. Yes, Spring certainly is eager to get going this year.

While out in Mia we could see the pinkish-red fuzzy blur of the popped maples everywhere we went. In our woods there is an ever-so-slight tinge of green from the undergrowth starting to leaf out.

The forsythia bushes have clusters of plump buds just waiting to burst open in an explosion of yellow happiness.

I took advantage of the warm weather yesterday to rake part of the big flower bed where the forsythia is planted, and also to clean out all the leaf clutter from the day lily bed in the rock bed by the pool.

Here is a before, during, and after photo of my hard work on the day lilies.

The rest of the large bed and all the ferns in the rock bed still need attention, but at least it’s a start. I might just get out there this afternoon and do a little more. They really need the extra attention this year as last year I had injured muscles and was unable to do much yard work so the beds were left pretty wild.

The warm weather has also brought out the cherry blossoms in Branch Brook Park a few weeks early. Here they are last year. I hope to talk Rick into taking a long lunch on Friday and going there for a few hours to get some photos since it’s supposed to be a pretty nice day. I love the cherry blossoms!

Neighborly crocus!

I struggled with what to call this entry. It’s a mishmash of stuff really. I’m sure you are wondering how it all goes together. Truth is; it doesn’t!

Alex continues to improve daily. Tomorrow I don’t think I am even going to give him the same amount of pain medications.  Tonight I will start weaning him off and within a few days he will no longer need them. I don’t think he needs them now but I don’t want to stop him, shall we say, cold turkey.

I won’t be here tomorrow. I have to report to jury duty!*** Blech. I’ve never had to do this before and I am not looking forward to. Especially since I have to drive down to Paterson (not a pleasant place) to do it. I will no doubt spend the day in the selection room with a bunch of other potential jurors waiting around. I hope they see something in me that they don’t want in a juror and sent me packing. I am taking my iPad and a good book.

I am doubly not happy as the weather is truly glorious and will continue so during this week. Not a week I want to spend inside a stuffy courthouse!

Not in my yard but neighbor Luke’s. I love the striping.

My guest room do-over is now on hold until I know about this jury thing. Last week it was Alex; this week jury duty. Excuses, excuses. But really, I can’t move forward unless I am home. Very frustrating but I’m sure it will all sort itself out.

If you live in the U.S. and have been watching the news lately, you are familiar with the term “pink slime.” It’s a by-product of beef that has had the fat spun down out of it and ammonia added in to the whole (rather) digesting mix. This process is widely used (who knew?) in ground beef aka hamburger.

Now, I have to admit that one of my favorite meals is a really good hamburger. I might have to rethink that. When we make our trips back to Colorado/Wyoming for our cabin trips we are always struck by just how good the hamburger we buy at the grocery tastes. Like real beef.

With that in mind we set out to grind our own chuck yesterday. We bought a chuck roast at the Market Basket in Franklin Lakes (stomping grounds of the Real Housewives of New Jersey), unearthed the meat grinder and ground our own “hamburger.”

In the second photo please notice the dog (not in focus) in the background. You can just make out the blaze. It’s Alex.

The whole grinding process got attention. (Bella in front; Alex in back)

No pink slime here — guaranteed! The hamburgers were delicious! None of my photos came out and I think that was because I was so excited to eat it that I didn’t have the patience to get the shot right. You’ll just have to imagine in your mind’s eye how wonderful it looked and how good it tasted.

If you don’t hear from me for a few days you’ll know I’m being held captive at the Passaic County Courthouse!

***Actually as I am typing this entry I don’t know for certain that I will in fact have to report to Jury Duty tomorrow, but since my Juror number is 0004 I am guessing they won’t cut it off at Juror 0003. It’s a given I will have to show up.

Yesterday was a rough day. I’m not going to lie. Alex could barely get up, let alone go outside to take care of business. I thought to myself oh my god, I put this poor dog through surgery and now I’m going to lose him just like that. It was that bad. He was miserable. He could barely walk once we got him up and he limped and could barely move. When he came in he was shivering. I’m still not sure if it was shivering as a pain response or the fact that he drank a lot of cold water right after he came back in. He was just laying there shivering and would not even make eye contact with me. The shivering stopped after my covering him up and rubbing his body to warm him up, but he did not, and would not, get up. I knew he was not crashing and in need of immediate care because his temperature was way down from what it had been and his color was good with nice pink gums.

I had a call in to Oradell Animal Hospital (the emergency vet) but we still had not heard anything by around noon. Not getting any response there, I called my local vet just so I could be assured that he was indeed stable albeit miserable and didn’t need to be seen. My vet concurred that Alex was in no immediate danger but probably needed more pain meds and most likely an NSAID like Rimydal. He didn’t understand why they would not send him home with it. He was going to try and call them since it was not really his place to either up his pain med or prescribe another drug in case they had a reason they did not want to.

So we waited. And waited. And waited. In the meantime my dog is in pain and feeling like crap. I felt awful too. I called Oradell again and complained after waiting on hold for ten minutes in a queue of calls. I didn’t hear from my local vet either but I imagined he had the same trouble getting through to them that I did. Plus, he sounded like he had a pretty full day of his normal appointments.

Alex started to come around to feeling a bit better after we had to hand feed him while he was laying down for his evening meal. How sad is that for a big dog to not be able to even lift his head to eat? Rick sat on the floor and hand fed him piece by piece of the round steak I had cooked up for him. Pretty sad. But he was eating and drinking (I had to bring the water bowl to him) which was a good sign.

Finally around 6:00 the doctor from Oradell finally called. She thought his pain might be coming from having been manipulated under anesthesia, pulling on his legs to position him, etc. It made sense since I was seeing it mostly on his front legs. She did apologize but it didn’t sit well with me. She said she hadn’t realized I was trying to get in touch with her, so what good is their system I ask you? At one point the person who answered the phone and I let loose on about it all said that after all if I was concerned my dog was not well I should bring him in. Right. Bring in my dog that is not ambulatory at this point to sit in your office for how many hours before he could be seen? Don’t think so! The vet told me his pain dosage was the absolute minimum for a dog his size, so I should increase the dosage. Duh! Also that if he was not improved to call back the next day and let her know so she could fax over a prescription for an NSAID to my local vet. I pretty snarkily asked her how I should go about doing that in a way that was better than the way I tried to contact her today?

I called my vet’s office after I had talked to her and let them know that Dr. Louer didn’t need to call me and gave them the low-down on what was going on. About a half hour later Dr. Louer called anyway, as I kind of thought he would. He talked mostly to Rick. This was around 6:30 p.m. He said he had tried to contact them but he couldn’t hold for ten minutes until they answered his call. He was pretty disgusted. Around 8:00 p.m. the phone rang again with Dr. Louer on the other end. He apparently had called and (in my mind) reamed the other vet out for not getting back with us and for not prescribing what he thought were the correct meds in the first place. She countered with saying that Alex was doing so well when they released him that they didn’t think he needed the additional meds. I told him that she wanted me to call back the following day regarding how he was doing and if he did indeed need the Rimadyl, and Dr. Louer, bless his heart, just said he was writing me a prescription for Rimadyl that I could pick up in the morning. He had obviously had enough of the other vet!

We upped his pain med overnight and Alex greeted us with wagging tail and got up much better than he had the previous day. His continued improvement over today has made my heart glad. He moves around from room to room, goes outside for business without incident (still a little ouchy) and is so much better. This afternoon when I went outside to get the mail he got up and was looking out the window barking at me! Hurray! He also was sitting and waiting to be fed and ate out of his bowl on the stand without coaxing. After that we had a walk on the leash into the backyard with me holding him back from breaking into a trot!

Go Alex!

I feel so much better today than I did with all the stress yesterday. And, so does poor Alex!

We are looking forward to Daylight Savings Time starting on Monday and drives in Mia (whose insurance we just turned back on after the winter). And, hopefully a good outcome of the biopsies. Fingers and paws crossed.

Thank you all so much for caring. Alex thanks you too!

So ... not exactly the weekend that was planned. Our plans were to do some shopping at the up-scale grocery store in Franklin Lakes, The Market Basket, and then go on to a liquor store in Wayne that was hosting Kathy from Real Housewives of New Jersey as she promoted her new Cosmo drink. I was looking forward to seeing her in person but it was not to be. As you know we spent Saturday in and out of vet offices. I’m not all that sorry about my lost chance to meet a “celebrity” since family comes first.Our dogs and cats are like our children.

Alex came home last night and passed the night fairly comfortably. I slept downstairs on the blow-up bed on the floor just to keep an ear out for him if he had any difficulties. He didn’t. One time he came and joined me on the bed and wanted his belly rubbed. His poor stitched-up shaved belly. The incision looks good, though it’s a long one. I can’t imagine how much he is hurting from having all that skin and muscle cut through. Right now he is on a pain medication that contains opiates, Tramadol, so he’s a little not-quite-with-it at times. He’s been getting lots of rest with short intervals outside to stretch his legs and pee. His appetite isn’t great but he will eat biscuits. Anything to kick start his appetite!

So, to recap a little. After acting off on Thursday evening, he was acting better on Friday. We were assuming it was because sister Bella had jumped on him again and wrenched his neck. I gave him aspirin throughout the day and he seemed to be better. But Saturday morning he was not better and we just knew something else was up. We took him in the vet who found an enlarged spleen on exam. Not exactly what I wanted to hear since the cancer hemangiosarcoma runs in his lines and one of the first places it shows up is the spleen (or lungs/heart). She did x-rays and blood work and when the x-rays showed a large mass she sent us down to the specialty vets in Paramus for an ultrasound. It was crucial to take a closer look and rule out involvement with other organs. His chest x-rays were clean which was a good sign.

In our consult with the vet before the ultrasound he was not optimistic. Alex’s blood work with higher than normal white cell count plus the mass in his spleen was not adding up to anything good. So, we left Alex for his ultrasound and went to eat lunch (which I could not force myself to eat). I was already preparing in my head to have to say good-bye to him before too long. BUT, it was a little bit different than I had imagined it would be. The vet said that actually the mass was pretty solid and not fluid filled like they normally see with hemangiosarcoma and it was completely contained within the spleen (something you could not see on x-ray). Added to that better than expected news was the fact that none of the surrounding organs (kidneys, liver) looked to be affected. Also on ultrasound they noticed that his prostate was larger than usual (he is intact and not neutered) so the high white blood cell count could be coming from a case of prostatitis and possibly nothing to do with the mass at all. At that point we knew we had to go ahead with the surgery and give him the best chance for a longer life.

Of course it was consultations, ultrasound and surgery on the weekend, so emergency fees were in place. We felt we could not take the chance on the mass bursting and rupturing the spleen if we waited until Monday at our regular vet. No way could we do that.

Another good thing was that once they opened him up for surgery there were no surprises and all the organs looked good, so a good chance whatever it is had not spread. It’s no guarantee of course, but a good sign nonetheless.

So now we just nurse him back to health. I have to keep in mind he just had major surgery and with all that opiate stuff in him he’s not going to be feeling all that good. He’s a trooper. He’s our Boo and we love him dearly.

Thanks for all your good thoughts. I’ll tell him for you.

Out for a quick yard visit this afternoon!

When I left Alex at the emergency vet I whispered in his ear “Be strong, Alex. You can do this.”

Our nine-year-old baby boy had to have an emergency splenectomy yesterday late afternoon. We spent the entire day starting at 8:50 a.m. at our regular veterinarian to 4:00 p.m. at the specialty/emergency vet clinic down in Paramus. What a day.

Alex is doing well and expected to be home later tonight if he tolerates the step-down in his pain medications this afternoon. More to follow ...

Please keep good thoughts as to his continued recovery!