Wow three whole months. 91 days to be exact. I am absolute enamored. I couldn’t have been any luckier to get three more months with Eva and I hope she feels lucky to have more time with me, too! And now she’s even got a little brother! I just am elated every day that goes by that she is happy and seemingly healthy!

Here are some pics 🙂

took eva for an emergency vet appointment yesterday because she wasn’t eating normal. no big deal but i wanted to get it nipped in the bud. anyway, they gave us raglan and now she is eating perfectly fine.

really i just came here to post more pictures, but i figured i should put some sort of actual update too lol. all is well in our doghouse!

Eva’s two month anniversary of her operation was Tuesday. We celebrated by being nervous and worried about her chest X-Rays the next afternoon. Well, maybe that’s just how I celebrated, her and her brother played all day at the park. I wrote this post in a different order than I’m posting it so I’m sorry if the continuity seems a little weird, but I’m rather scatterbrained anyway and I don’t wanna give anything away.

We’ve been undergoing chemo for six weeks now and so far things have gone well. Her platelets drop the second week after chemo basically everytime we’ve done chemo. At the second week mark after the first round of chemo, they were low and she had a nasty mucous coming out of her vagina (she has an inverted vulva) so cystitis was in question. Also she developed a hematoma after a blood draw so we had to do a coagulation panel. Great, just what we wanted…. Surprisingly it was all nothing. The mucous in her vulva and vagina was just staph which happens actually all the time with her inversion. No cystitis. The coagulation panel came back normal too so we’re not too sure what happened with the blood draw aside from maybe something got poked wrong or pulled too hard or who knows what. We went ahead and did a second round of chemo and then decided to test her blood at two weeks post carbo since that was the lowest point for her that they had been at. SO. We tested them at two weeks this time, which was last week ( the 21st,)  and her platelets were even lower than before. So for a week I sat on pins and needles. No rough play with the puppy which is hard because her energy is back with the most obnoxious vendetta for me. She was sick for so long, I forgot what she REALLY was like, and sometimes I question if I can even HANDLE a healthy Eva with a puppy. Luckily, Bowie is the sweetest babe in the world.

Eva’s second monthaversary was July 28th, which should’ve been a chemo day with chest scans. But our oncologist was full so we had to go in Wednesday. This is the first time she has had chest X-Rays since her diagnosis. When she was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, we knew things potentially might not always be good. The probability of every vet visit being a happy one when you go once or more a week just isn’t there. So, everytime it’s a big visit like this, I get nervous. Especially when the last two-week-check went so scarily, and then this one was so low…

But we came to the appointment, and they took Eva back, and I waited, and I was scared. And they brought Eva to me, and I cried on her. I held her and I cried because for the first time since her amputation I was actually scared. I had always said I was planning for things to go wrong, but I must’ve forgotten that in this moment where I thought everything was going good and then the possibility of it not hit me right in the face.

And then the door opened-

So, this post was supposed to focus on the fact that I got Eva’s Convert harness in the mail but something else huge has happened in the last 24 hours so this is sort of a double huge post. So, we got Eva’s harness, and I love it. I am pretty sure it fits perfect and as someone who has always used no pull harnesses I can say I am surprised with it’s ability to keep Eva at an appropriate pace. This is good cos I was fairly nervous about the entire front strap being velcro. Boy- was I nervous! 

But it held her in great! We’ve used it a considerable amount because Eva loves going on walks, and since it’s been over two weeks since her operation I’m slowly reintroducing her to the back door steps that are slightly steeper than the front yard steps, and made out of tile. They have grip strips on them but the handle assist on this harness is SO helpful in making sure that I can help ensure she doesn’t slip and fall.

which is great, because now we have this thing under our feet all the time

THIS IS BOWIE!
We call him bubba a lot. He’s a big chubby silly baby. He’s fumbly and dumb and a giant puppy. He’s a rottweiler mix and he’s really sweet to Eva, she seems so happy about him! They met and absolutely adored each other. He LOVES her! She pretends she doesn’t like him until he falls asleep or is outside and then she tries to mother him to death. She’s pretty good about sharing her toys, unless she’s already playing with something. Then she’ll antagonize him until he wants it and then bark at him for trying to take it, and he’s a baby so he gets scared at her for barking and she feels big and strong and accomplished. He just came home yesterday so I’m sure we’ll figure it all out, this is all so new to all of us. Luckily he came from a home with lots of other dogs so he’s used to it, and Eva’s a big love bug so even if she barks a hard game that’s as far as it ever goes.

I think everything is going great! I am more sad about the addition than Eva is- because half the time she’s more interested in him than she is in me! He’s not very keen on walking and he’s a lazy butt so I get some alone time when I take her for her few walks a day we do around the block, and that’s nice. I don’t ever want her to feel like she doesn’t get enough love or doesn’t come first. She’s always gonna be my number one.

I figured after I did the first six days in rigid detail, I could ease off the constant reporting haha. So far so good, I gotta say. Technically today is day twelve, so not exactly two weeks, but two weeks enough for me! Eva’s suture site is almost completely healed up with all the scabbies off of it! there’s a spot up at the top giving us a little trouble, I’ll get into that more later.

Does anyone feel like their dog has allergies this season? I don’t wanna jump to conclusions and immediately think there’s something awful wrong, but man Eva has been sneezing up a storm. Usually when she first wakes up from a nap or right when we go out to go potty, which is why i assume she’s just sucking up dust or pollen or something up into her nose. Her head’s a little itchy and I just think it’s allergies. We have an oncology appointment next tuesday so I really dont wanna take her to the vet before then. I was just there Monday. UGH.

Monday I took her in to see a surgeon, not her surgeon, but another surgeon. Because Eva has this spot on her incision that does NOT seem like it wants to close. Well, it was closed, and I left Eva with my FIFTY EIGHT YEAR OLD FATHER who is competent and capable for about fifteen minutes, and I told him to just let her sleep. He took her cone off because when I came back in the room he was watching TV and she was licking her suture site. Great. Just a tiny bit, and just up at the tippy top. It didn’t burst open or anything like that, and we were nine days healed, but still. So Day ten which was monday, she wakes up from sleeping with me she stood up and I noticed that spot was still open, and it looked like it had some junk in it. So I called the vet since Eva was due for a re check anyways, which we were supposed to be able to do via photo and email. I send them the photos over and when they call me they’re like “well her suture site looks pretty normal but we can’t really tell from a photo.” WELL THEN WHY DOES MY PAPERWORK TELL ME IT COULD BE DONE VIA PHOTO?! So after going in circles on the phone for about 30 minutes asking them, “well do you want me to bring her in? or is it normal?!” finally we made an appointment and brought her in. The surgeon we met with isn’t who we’ve met with before, but she squeezed eva’s little spot and nothing really came out so she said it was fine and sent us on our way. I guess I’m just nervous because E isn’t on any antibiotics. Today it looks way more closed up but still doesn’t look to be doing as good as the rest of her incision (but i guess i shouldn’t expect it to since she busted the scab off two days ago.)

Eva’s starting to eat her old food again. Which is good. She’s got some energy back but she doesn’t run or anything like that. We play a little in the yard and she romps around but when we go for walks if I try to jog with her, she goes as slow jog as possible. Which kinda cracks me up because she used to DART when I would start running, she’d get so excited. Now she trots. Hahaha. She’s the cutest mush ever.

This was what her suture site looked like monday morning. Surgeon squeezed and squeezed but nothing came out. I should take a picture today but shes laying on her suture site so I cant get a good one.

(For whatever reason, I can’t get these last two pictures centered)