Happy times!

This blog update has been in the works for a long time. I’ve been thinking about writing it since last December! Obviously it’s been busy, not only in the dog world but also in my personal life. During this past year, Vixey has developed into an amusing young adult, Vanilla has continued her career on the agility fields and Gin has finally gotten rid of valley fever meds and is doing great (more on valley fever in a previous blog post)! On the unfortunate side, Vixey too got valley fever this past April and is still on meds (only half a dose anymore). She is doing great though and got into treatment quickly so hopefully getting off meds is in the near future for her as well. Although, there is one interesting thing about her case which is that her valley fever titer keeps coming back negative. So can we even be sure it really was valley fever? Another scary event was when Gin either ate or licked a poisonous toad or got into some other kind of poison somewhere on our previous yard and again was at the brink of death spending a day at the animal hospital on fluids and meds and several days on meds at home. But yet again, she beat whatever it was and is still among us, as happy as ever! She’s one tough dog I got to say!

Vixey’s training has been going great, she is the fastest, most agile dog I’ve probably ever had. And I thought I’d never say this after having Vanilla. So beware fellow agility people, I own a rocket :). That is..  if I can ever control that rocket in a way that would enable us to actually finish an agility course! But competition is not in our near future yet, we are still training fundamentals. We just started training weave poles (we are doing channel method) since she’s finally getting old enough to do that and also only recently introduced the full dog walk and jumps at full height. We took it pretty slow, mostly practicing shadow handling, free shaping jumps and un-agility-related tricks, getting good contacts and cone work (out-command, front/rear crosses) with the excellent guidance of our wonderful trainer Denise Evans. Of course this has been paired by training with both treats and toys, clicker training and basic obedience training.

 

Agility aside, the other interesting venue we’ve been doing lately is sheep herding. Watching Vixey literally gives me goose bumps! She is a natural! I will post a couple videos on this site later so you can take a look :)  I can’t wait to get my own sheep! Oh wait.. I wasn’t supposed to say that out loud! I’m still working on the hubby.  But you get the point, I’m excited, Vixey is excited. Right now I’m just working on trying to find a place to practice somewhere closer than Tonopah, which is almost 3 hours away. It’s a great place though, run by Maci McGraw and her family. They are the most welcoming, wonderful people one could meet! They really inspire me! They offer great clinics a couple times a year, one of them being with Vixeys breeder Patrick Shannahan which was one of my dog training highlights last year. He has real talent and a way with dogs that impresses me over and over again. His style gives a lot of room for the dog to learn to read sheep on its own, with guidance from us handlers.

Other good news in the dog world is that Vanilla is, finally, after years of (not so focused) training, competing in the 3^rd class in agility (putting it the Finnish way). Here in Tucson it’s called excellent class in AKC. That has always been my ultimate goal with Vanilla and I’m so excited we got there! I wasn’t sure if we ever would and hadn’t really put any pressure on it, which makes me appreciate it even more! Go Vanilla! I’m so proud of that little fur ball of energy!

Our year has been full of other kinds of activities as well and the dogs are almost always with us enjoying life to the fullest! Gins favorite activity by far is sailing and then roaming the empty beaches hunting fish! This goes for any lakeside/river trip as well and she has successfully been able to catch some fish! While she’s hunting the Border Collies usually enjoy running full speed on the beach, possibly chasing birds or bringing us sticks to throw in the water. One of the greatest things to notice has been seeing Vixey grow up into a really stable, confident young dog. She loves sailing (and the boat) and even swimming is now in her list of fun activities even though her first couple times weren’t so great. Blame on me! We were swimming from the boat to shore one time when the boat was anchored and miscalculated the distance to shore (at least from a point of view of a little puppy) and she got pretty tired and we had to take turns swimming with her. Luckily she is tough and forgot about the whole incident the minute we hit the beach. 

We have done a bunch of long road trips as well. Another trip to Grand Canyon, a trip to the mountains in southern Colorado, a summer trip to see family in northeastern Oregon and several trips to San Diego and Mexico. The dogs seem to love the exploring and the excitement and are always waiting at the car ready to go when we are packing! They pile up in the back of the car, fall asleep usually on top of each other and then wake up right before the activity starts. If I didn’t know better, I couldn’t tell I was traveling with three dogs. People always ask me, how we deal with the dogs on all our trips, and I have to say, so far there’s never been a time I would have rather left them home. Sometimes dealing with dogs is tough, like when you go eat in a restaurant on your road trip (especially since we don’t usually do any fast food). But it’s pretty remarkable how many puppy friendly eateries there are out there! Of course there are times that you just need to park the car in front, leave it running with the AC on or the other person in the car, and go get food as quickly as possible and eat in the car. Then at night we either book a room in a dog friendly hotel like La Quinta which doesn’t charge a dog fee or go to a camping spot and sleep in our tent which we always have with us. It can get a little crowded in there with the pups but I sort of enjoy having one dog warm my feet, one my side and use one as a pillow ;). 

Trips are only a small part of life though. Our everyday life is what counts and there has been many improvements in it lately from a doggie point of view. We moved to a house with a walled yard that sits right next to a wash which enables long, mostly off-leash, morning runs! I am absolutely thrilled about it and so are the dogs who have pretty much become wild (or at least they might think so)! We also got a little kiddy pool for them for the hottest summer days and they love playing in it!

In my opinion, we’re truly living the happy times! :)

Valley Fever

Beautiful Gin.

Not all has been roses and sunshine since we moved to the hot Sonoran desert. The first real setback came a couple weeks ago when Gin got suddenly sick. That Friday morning I took them on my regular morning walk, that's a couple miles long and goes by a nice little river where the girls can go for a swim! Everything seemed normal and it was a wonderful morning and seemed just a little cooler than usual so I was fully enjoying my, for once, sweatless walk! Later in the afternoon I wanted to take the girls out again on the yard but Gin got up really slowly, almost like she didn't hear me calling her. Finally she got up and we went out. I didn't think much of it until that evening when she all of a sudden couldn't walk straight! That's when I got worried and we headed down to the vet. She was wobbly, and couldn't even jump into the car. The vet asked about all her symptoms, and we really couldn't tell her much. Yes, she had coughed a couple times during the past days, like once a day maybe. And one time she sort of coughed some slime out but that was over a week ago. Nothing I would ever had worried about. No appetite loss or sneezing. I was wondering about these questions, they seemed a little odd since I was thinking maybe she had meningitis or some neurological problem. Until the doctor said there is a disease called valley fever in the area. After getting blood work done and realizing she had fever we agreed to take the valley fever test which is pretty expensive (at least compared to veterinary costs in Finland), even though the doctor said she didn't have the typical symptoms of that disease either. They gave us antibiotics and anti-inflammatories to start with and a painful 5 days of waiting started.

And she got worse. By the time the test results for valley fever came, she was hardly moving. She couldn't get up, she would fall when trying to go to the bathroom and literally looked so miserable that we were sure she was dying. She slept between us on the bed and I was hoping that she would still be alive when I wake up the next morning. And of course we found all these possible diseases she could have from the internet and everything seemed hopeless. Cancers, autoimmune diseases... the list looked bad. The test results finally came and it was positive for valley fever. The teeter count was the highest possible. It was bad. We felt relieved to know what was causing her pain but at the same time everything we read about valley fever wasn't all that positive. Some dogs did die of it. Some dogs needed to be on medication for the rest of their lives. Some maybe JUST a year. Human's can get it too! This was shocking. How did I not know about this?

After doing countless searches on valley fever on the internet, talking with the vet, reading their info on it, I felt I finally got used to the idea, that first, it exists and second, my dog has it and third, it's not the end of the world. It is caused by a fungus that lives in the soil (as a soil scientist I should know right?), but it's only present in a small area of the world. Mainly the Sonoran Desert (which makes it common in large parts of Arizona), some desert areas in Southern California, New Mexico and some parts of Texas. You get it by inhaling the dirt where the fungus grows, so if you live in a area where it's common you're more than likely to get it. The thing is that most people or dogs don't get sick. In dogs about 30 % can't fight it off with their own immune system. Sometimes they get sick but it's not bad. Sometimes, and its a very small chance, they get really sick and sadly Gin was one of them. Normally the symptoms include coughing and sneezing and fever that gradually gets worse and later on if the infection spreads from the lungs it can go into the bones and the nerve system and cause pain (limps) and a variety of other symptoms. The doctor said that most likely both of our dogs got exposed at the same time and Vanilla seems fine, so I'm hoping this will be the end of it. Luckily it's not contagious.

Now we are taking everything one day at a time. Gin has been on antifungal medication for a couple weeks and is already doing a lot better! According to the vet we'll need to keep her on meds for over a year, since the infection got so bad, but at least she's alive and happy again! She's back to her normal behavior minus a couple set backs here and there. I suppose it's normal to have ups and downs in her recovery but we can already see the light at the end of the tunnel! I'm trying to keep her hole-digging to a minimum but it's hard when all you have around is dirt and ground squirrel holes that smell so yummy! I would love to let her be the dog she is and do her thing but valley fever definitely looms in my subconscious. Maybe I'll have to keep my yard-work to a minimum too, hmm.

The irony of the whole issue is that we just spent almost a year sailing around Southern U.S and Central America. Tropical countries with thousands of diseases and stray dogs running amongst our dogs and nothing happened. They didn't even get a common cold. And the minute we settle into a nice new home and are back to "normal" a thing like Valley Fever hits. Never would have guessed.

Girls enjoying the sunset in Patagonia, AZ.