Our trip back to Dr. Brown went well. Luna didn't even have to be sedated for the procedure. He simply numbed her eye and froze off the little place that had the hair. She was even quite good for him and the nurse. She did, however, show some aggression toward the other dogs at the office--only if they came our direction, though. As long as they ignored us, she ignored them. After that little trip, though, I decided to take her to the farmer's market in High Springs with me to socialize her. She did quite well, and I even let someone come up to her to say, "hello" and pet her--an adult, of course, who understood to be slow and calm. I'm going back to the market tomorrow. If the logistics work, I'll take her back with me.

Recurrence

Tuesday, July 6, 2010
A few weeks ago Marc noticed that Luna's dermoid was back, that yet again she had hair growing from her left eyeball. We, us and the vet, hoped--believed even--that Dr. Brown had been able to get all the aberrant cells, but just enough were left behind to bring a recurrence and that is what we had. Right away I made a followup appointment, and we scheduled surgery for two days later on June 30th. On our first appointment, Luna was such a good girl. We had to wait for about 45 minutes before Dr. Brown was ready for us. While we were waiting, several people came into the waiting room. Each time, Luna barked. At first, she barked for several minutes before I was able to quiet her. With each visitor, though, she quieted more easily, eventually only barking a couple of times to let them know who was boss. When we finally made it back to the exam room, she continued to do well. She was very afraid, but she didn't offer to bite at the vet's assistant or the vet, and she didn't act crazy, just wary. She even took a treat when it was offered. After seeing the new hair, Dr. Brown confirmed we needed another surgery, and we scheduled it for two days later. When we got to Orange Park on the 30th, Luna weighed 49 pounds on their scale, but I think that was a little light. Leaving her at the Orange Park office almost broke my heart because she begged me not to leave her, cowered between my legs. About 3 hours later, they called me to let me know she was ready (I had gone to get my hair cut in the meantime). Even though, I was already on my way, I still had to wait 30 incredibly long minutes to see her. She was quite anxious when she did finally come out, scrambling to get to me, to get out, to get into the truck, to get home. She whined all the way. It was heartbreaking.

We are now 6 days out from the surgery, and the eye, though initially quite swollen, is looking better, appears to be healing. We are putting drops in her eyes several times per day and giving her a pill twice a day. She doesn't seem to mind. We mind, though, because we want so desperately for her to be well and happy and free of vet visits for a while.

In this top picture, you can just see the shaved area on her right front foot where they tried to place an IV. I'm guessing that they weren't able to get it, though, because she also had a similar area on her back foot (lower pic), a less common place to put an IV.

Luna and Abbie were standing close together last week and it suddenly occurred to me that Little Sister had outgrown Big. Luna's back now stands an inch or two above Abbie's. This top picture is from July 2nd. The picture below it is from a couple of months ago.

Again, a couple of months apart with Abbie lying down in the bottom picture...

Luna goes out with me when I do my workouts. Here she has a little one all her own. :)

Mom & Dad Have A Date

Luna and Abbie are fortunate to have a stay-at-home dad who gets to set his schedule around their needs. Since we have brought Luna home, we have only had to leave her alone in her kennel for more than a couple of hours twice, and those two times were chosen specifically to get her accustomed to our having to be away on occasion. We decided to make tonight a longer trial run and have our Valentine's Day date a little early. We left the girls for about six hours while we headed to Gainesville to catch dinner and see Avatar (thus the 3-D glasses :) ). They did well, and Luna managed not to soil her "den." Potty training is certainly progressing better for all parties involved.
Tomorrow we just might head out on a little adventure to build socialization skills.

On a side note, we have scheduled Luna's appointment to have her dermoid removed from her left eye. We had initially thought we had to wait until she was 14 weeks old, but the vet said we could do it next week, just shy of 13 weeks. So we'll be heading over to Jacksonville for that on Wednesday.