Surviving Mondays

I guess our current goal is to simply survive Chemo Mondays. Hokey is calmer when I bring his breakfast (at least the kibble part) for him to work for after his blood is drawn. So we go into the clinic, he has his blood drawn & then while we wait for the blood count, we do obedience & tricks for his "treats". That does help. Unfortunately his veins are hurting after so many weeks of chemo & it took 3 tries to find a good one this time. Plus the doxorubicin has to be given slowly (over 10 to 20 minutes) to minimise cardiac side effects. He hates being still that long, especially with the catheter in a rear leg. We made it though & just 4 more treatments to go as long as he stays in remission! His full blood panel was perfectly normal once again!

There is a wonderful community sense among dog owners who have dogs with cancer. We all share tips, treatment things that worked, the small successes & the hopefully infrequent losses. It does bring out the best in the human halves!

This did mean Hokey couldn't do classes this week so I took Tia to agility. We have fun together - she is good & not too fast.
Deb E

From Hokey:
This STINKS!!! *I* have to get the needles & then I miss out on class & fun too! At least I could come home & run around in the snow with Queezle while wearing my stunning blue coat. Deb thinks my hair may be growing in a bit - doesn't really make sense with the chemo continuing but I know I am handsome no matter what!
My sister T has a camp up in the Adirondacks & she got to play in LOTS of snow this weekend. Some of our snow melted but I still had enough to chase Queezle through & dig into.
Ooops. Deb said I can do my obedience training here at home - yay!!!
Hokey