Saving Cody: An Introduction….

My name is Michelle and Cody was my six year old Labrador Retriever (he was five when I started this blog and he was two weeks shy of seven when he crossed over). We lived in a house with two other boys, an orange 13 year old cat named Jimi, and a four year old all black crazy cat named Albert. Since Cody passed I spent about four months dogless, but I could not handle it and I now have a “Black dog” named Oscar. I call him the Black dog because he is a rescue and a “Lab Mix” which basically means, they think he has Lab in him but who knows.  I am completely outnumbered.

July 15, 2005 – June 29, 2012

This is the story, actually it started as a diary i had been keeping in another format on my computer, and is now an online diary/blog of our battle against Canine Lymphoma with Cody, since his diagnosis in mid-September 2010, and what is happening in our lives since he passed on. If you are not familiar with Blogs, the most recent posts are first, so page back to start from the beginning. I write here constantly, documenting his chemotherapy, diet, ups and downs,  the costs and the steps I took to, if not cure him, at least put up a fight like no other. It is a terrible prognosis. This disease spreads rapidly in dogs, they can be dead within weeks, and it is highly prevalent. The statistics are shocking. My boy was only five years old and I could not with good conscience just let him go. So this is our story. I hope this in some way helps other pet owners facing this long road.

As you may have seen in my previous posts, 2010 had been a year of Cancer for me. It started with a friend dying of brain cancer in January, an Uncle dying in May of Lung Cancer, my own terrifying battle all summer, my step sister fighting breast cancer and having a double mastectomy in August and chemo, and culminated in September with my boy and his diagnosis. As much as i felt down trodden and beaten… this is not something I was going to take sitting down. I have never fought so hard and i sleep well at night knowing I tried my hardest to keep him healthy, happy and alive, and I tried EVERYTHING. I made him a promise that I kept every day to the last…

As long as he stays the happy boy I know and love, I will keep fighting for him. But if he ever starts to suffer, becomes so sick that he is no longer enjoying his life, i will not prolong his agony for my benefit. I will let him go.

So this is our story….

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During Cody’s chemo treatments I was collecting donations for his vet bills. Now I am putting any donations towards helping other pet parents who are going through this ordeal by sending them info and keeping this site going and updated. I am also putting myself through school right now as well. So if you feel inclined to help out it is well appreciated… or you could simply order a Pet Portrait! I would be happy to paint your best buddy for you!

We all thank you from the bottom, top, middle and all around our hearts!

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Jimi’s New In Town…

Jimi is my fourteen year old cat. He is NOT new in town. Sorry I cannot help the Seinfeld references. I have had Jimi since he was a wee kitten. Jimi is an asshole. I mean that in the most admirable of ways. Let me explain…

I got Jimi when I was working at Disney Feature Animation in 1999. I was wearing bib overalls this lovely day and went into the ladies room where a woman I worked with was washing poop off of him in the sink. This should have been a red flag of what was to come. I was not that surprised to see a woman washing a kitten in the bathroom at work… this is Feature Animation after all… a workplace full of eccentric artists and freaks galore… like going back to art school yet getting paid for it. I loved working there. Anyway… she asked me if I could hold him while she did her business, and it was all over. Yes she was giving him and all his brothers and sisters away and that is why she brought them all into work. So Jimi spent the rest of that work day in the bib of my overalls and the rest is as they say, history.

He has tortured me throughout the years. He was a holy terror as a kitten attacking me in the shower through the curtain, ripping my flesh to shreds whenever the idea occurred to him, pouncing on my feet and biting me as I slept through the futon covers. But all in all we went through thick and thin together, relationships coming and going, moving from state to state, job after job… he was my constant.

I call this one “Synchronized Sitting”… circa 2006

Besides the random bitter attacks, other aspects that contribute to his overall assholiness are:

• Once I brought another kitten home thinking (silly me!) since we lived alone just the two of us and I was working for a start up very long hours, that I could get him a buddy. I had that kitten less than 12 hours. He TORTURED it. He HOWLED and scratched and hissed at the door when I finally sheltered the lil one in the bedroom to get away from his horror. I was up all night and promptly returned the kitten the next morning, for the kitten’s sake. Sad and awful.
• He has torn up my couches and furniture even though there is an abundance of various cat scratching posts, furniture and toys all over my house. I know… this is normal. Still makes me upset that I cannot buy nice furniture with him in my house.

• He STILL hisses and howls at Albert, my other cat that is now four and has lived with Jimi his entire life… and Albert does ask for it SOMETIMES but for the most part Albert could simply be walking by him and he hisses.
• Jimi does not cover his lil golden nuggets in the litter box EVER. He just leaves the gift of love right on top of the litter so it permeates the entire house and gags me til my eyes are teary and I have to hold my breath and cover it for him.
• There is a fine line of love with good ol Jimbo… he could be sitting on my lap purring LOUDLY and drooling out the side of his mouth where his fang is broken off (from when he was a young cat somehow) creating a disgustingly smelly pool of wetness on my shirt… as I pet him and rub his ears. All is well until you cross that invisible line only Jimi knows and he suddenly bites me REALLY hard and his head goes flat and he hisses and jumps off me…. Hmmm… ok…

• Jim likes to wake up at the crack of dawn and be let out on the screened in porch. Crack of dawn meaning somewhere between 5:30am and 6:30am depending on his whims. That would be fine if Jimi’s way of waking up did not involve him HOWLING to be let out and waking up the rest of the household including the dog that jumps off the bed and then needs to be let out and then it is over Johnny… it is also a mad dash to find Jimi’s puke so the dog does not find it first. So my morning because of Jim is startled out of bed and mad dashing.
• That leads me to Jimi’s puking. Jimi is a long haired tabby. Jimi incessantly cleans himself. INCESSANTLY. Jimi pukes every single day, turds of a hairball mixed with food and water somewhere in the house… mostly on my couches, pillows, rug, cat bed, dining room table or spare bed. It is RANK. He also leaves Jimi tumbleweeds all over my house. These are tufts of hair that are somehow round with a nice little hole in the middle of them I imagine from his nails. They are everywhere and i am constantly vacuuming.

But what REALLY makes Jim an asshole is when he shits somewhere in the house, out in the open… like the last couple of mornings. Let me back up a few…

So there is a stray cat in my neighborhood. He (I am just assuming) likes to come into my yard, drink out of my pool, and I imagine he marks it up really nice as well. I have found cat turds in my front yard in the mulch among my landscaping…. I have not seen any in the back but that does not mean they are not there. I know sometimes he nests in the front yard too and when all the windows were open during the winter this year I heard him in the back yard jumping the fence and knocking things over.

Well Jimi sees this cat. Smells him. I have found them nose to nose through the screen on the back porch. I know Jimi has peed on the porch because of this cat, and he has left some turds out there too. And now for some reason Jimi feels it is necessary to mark my LIVING ROOM with his feces to show this cat, who is outside my now closed up air conditioned house, that this is Jimi’s House.

So here we are Monday morning of this week. I had a rough night’s sleep because the dog is still sleeping on the bed kicking the shit out of me all night but he has such separation anxiety that he will not sleep on his own dog bed on the floor. YET. (we are working on this) Jimi gets up with his usual howling at 5:30am. IT IS DARK. I am frustrated and I throw the covers off me cursing at him telling him to come on so I can let him on the porch so he shuts up. Dog jumps off the bed like ” OOOooo ooooo where we goin’?!!” and I stumble in the dark into the kitchen and promptly step barefoot into a puddle of puke.  AAACK!!!!

I hop in the dark over to the kitchen sink and wash off my damn foot. I dry it with paper towels I am surprised I could find in the dark… all the while Jimi is howling and hissing at the dog who is trying to lick up the puke which I have to referee while I clean my foot… and I walk into the living room to open the back slider to let him out….

When it hits me….

Like a smack in the face with a litterbox of uncovered Jimi turds…

WHERE IS IT???? Holy shit (no pun intended) it is still dark in here and I am barefoot and this is my LIVING ROOM FOR GODSAKES!!!!

Jimi  is out… I get the lights turned on and there it is. Right next to my guitar and CD shelves. A nice big warm pile of Jimi just stinking up the living room – on my carpet.

Sidenote: I hate carpet. Just thought I would throw that out there. Someday when I can afford to re-floor my entire 1900 sq ft house I will install easily cleanable wood floors.

Anyway… I gag picking up poop. ALWAYS. Even outside. Like seriously GAG… my eyes water, I cough, I pretty much hold down the urge to wretch with all my might. I clean it up while gagging and coughing, and wash my hands and light an incense and make coffee all while coughing the rest of the morning. I went for a really long run that day…

Now I know this is because of the stray. I get what he is doing. We went through this before when Albert first got here… marking boundaries etc etc… It does not make it any more acceptable or easier to deal with.

And then there was this morning. Again Jimi wakes up around 6am… HOWLING… he wakes the dog up and of course creates the morning dash which is now part of my repertoire. Running into the living room yelling at the dog because he is black and cannot be seen in the dark, the sliding door is open and out goes Jimi and then I smell it. AGAIN???!!! Lights go on… dog is in the corner by the guitar and CDs sniffing around and I yell at him to lay down. He does…. and I look… and look…. I can smell it… but where is it??????????

No poop. BUT I SMELL IT.

Oscar had to have eaten it because the search ended with no poop being found.

And that folks is where I will end this story. Because if I go on the gagging will start all over again and it took a long run and some morning outside time to get it to stop this morning.

I will say this… I cannot kiss my dog today without thinking about him eating what is the most disgusting part of Jimi aside from his breath.

Oh…

And… Jimi is an asshole.

I Am A Total Dog Person…

Both Cody and Oscar seem to have the same habit of waking me up at 6am with tons and tons of incessant kisses. Oscar is so adamant about it that I get kind of grossed out after a while as my entire arm, hand, face and neck are soaked each morning,  and as I try to pet him I get greeted with tongue slobber. So this article on NPR yesterday hit home for me and I had to share…

Bacteria On Dog Lovers’ Skin Reveal Their Affection

by Michaeleen Doucleff

April 18, 2013 2:01 PM

Should we say Germ-an shepherd? Mango Doucleff, of Washington, shows off the bacteria living on her tongue, which also flourish on her owner’s skin.

Well, it looks like there really is such as thing as a dog person.

Humans who share their homes with canines also share the similar bacterial houseguests on their skin, ecologists Tuesday in the journal eLIFE.

In fact, two dog owners who don’t even know each other have about as many of the skin bacteria in common as a married couple living together.

The signature doggie blend is a mixture of harmless bacteria from their tongues and paws, the report finds. Microbial sharing from pooch to person occurs primarily through two routes: tongue to skin and paw to skin.

That’s right, dog owners have bacteria from Fido’s tongue and paws flourishing all over their bodies.

There wasn’t an analogous germ signature for cat owners, the scientists say. Cats are more selfish?

Dogs, cats and people are all coated in microscopic critters. They cover our skin, grow in our mouths and completely dominate parts of the gut. Your body has about 10 times more bacterial cells than human cells and up to a thousand different species.

Collectively, this microscopic zoo is called the . And it plays a in human health. It helps to set your metabolism, fine-tune your immune system and even freshen (or sour) your breath.

To see how canine cohabitation could alter the species in this zoo, and his team at the University of Colorado, Boulder, characterized the bacteria shacking up with 60 families – 25 of them had at least one dog, including big breeds, like German shepherds, Labrador retrievers and huskies.

The scientists took samples from each inhabitant’s forehead, palms or paws, tongues and poo. They then sequenced the DNA in each sample to determine which species of bacteria were living there.

Humans living together shared similar bacteria at all three body sites: skin, mouth and gut. But for dogs, it was all about the skin.

Two types of pooch bacteria were flourishing on dog owners’ skins: , a group of critters that hang out on dogs’ tongues, and , which live in soil and like to nestle in the nooks of dogs’ paws.

These findings are “consistent with a common occurrence of oral–skin transfer between dogs and their owners,” the authors write.

Looks like, all those slurpy dog kisses really do have a long-lasting effect on your skin’s ecology.

Could they also affect your health?

This study can’t say. But we do know that innocuous bacteria on the skin the immune systems learn the difference between good and bad germs. And allergies can crop up when this ability short circuits.

Recent have even linked up contact with pets when we’re young with a decreased risk of allergies and autoimmune disorders later in life.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go snuggle up with my very stinky German shepherd.

Oscar D. Sammartino…

The D. stands for DESTRUCTOR… or it could stand for DELIRIOUS… the jury is still out…

Cody never did this. He never ever chewed or destroyed things. He also was not a totally insane whiner full of separation anxiety, barking and hyper crazy for no apparent reason.

So yesterday (and every day for that matter) I took Oscar for our morning run. I am avoiding the dog park (see As The Dog Park Turns) so I take him for a three mile jaunt around the neighborhood. We are working hard on our loose leash training and he has moments of pure clarity and bliss… but mostly it is a small battle. He pulls and cuts me off while walking, stops, jumps at birds and does not understand pacing at all. He has seriously hurt my hand and my pinky finger in my left hand where the knuckle is full of fluid and hurts all the time. He is a bit nuts at times… jumping at me as we run, trying to bite my hand that holds the leash. It keeps me on my toes I must say… I have learned to anticipate his antics and jump out of the way as he tries to get in front of my feet so I do not trip over him. I also see him start to turn his head up at me with that shit eating grin of his that he gets right before he tries to bite the leash and my hand (all while we are running ) and I yell “NO!”… and that sometimes works to make him stop. Sometimes.

He has some very trying behavior issues. Other things that he does while we are walking or running are when we pass another dog or people, he gets very excitable and tries to jump on them. I do not like jumping on people… so I try to hold him back and keep him down. All of that is normal… but it gets out of hand when he turns to me, bares his teeth and growls as the dog/ people are barely away from me. I literally have to grab him and put him on his back to stop him from standing off with me and get him to look away from me (a Caesar Milan move and it works), but it is a bit horrifying for passers by to witness. I feel like a bad Mom. But he is growling and baring his teeth at me… LOUD. I think this is him pissed that I am keeping him in any kind of check and he is protesting in his own way. He is always vocal. I do not find it terribly aggressive, more dramatic than anything else.

Because he is terribly overly dramatic!

Like yesterday. So we get back from the run and he is tired and panting. He lies down and is really mellow… passes out and I cool down and take a shower. After I shower I take him out to pee, and then I leave for an hour to run some errands. This is what I came back to…

He has a terribly habit just lately of taking my shoes and tearing them up. This time he took my shoes, the cat’s two different beds from two different parts of the house, one up on TOP of a high table (no idea how he reached it) and tore them to shreds all over the living room. He tore up the shoes so bad that I had to toss them. This is the third pair of shoes now. And yes I put them away… he finds them. He has taken bananas and organic home grown tomatoes off the counter and eaten them peels and all (he left non-organic tomatoes alone… that tells ya something doesn’t it? ha!). He steals socks and clothes and chews them.

So… unfortunately he has earned the crate once again. I hate to do it… he is now 7 months old and I thought we were past the crate. Apparently not. Like I said, he earned it.

So after taking another hour to pick up all the debris, and vacuum the entire house because I was finding pieces strewn about in every room… I realized that I was going out that night and would have to leave him again. He had not been in the crate for months, so I called the restaurant and they said dogs were permitted at the outside tables. Cool.

So me and my guy get him in the car and we have to get gas, and so I hop out (windows down) to pump my gas and Oscar LOSES HIS MIND! He is whining and barking and crying out the window at me… I am literally standing at his face through the driver’s side window and he is losing it. He is CRYING non-stop… pacing and whining. Everyone in the gas station is looking at me. It was mortifying. Tim is just looking at me like “What do I do?”… This is exactly what happened last weekend when we were both running with Oscar. Tim was holding the leash and I said I was going across the street to a water fountain to fill Oscar’s portable water bowl. I start to walk away from them both and Oscar LOSES HIS MIND! His is jumping, pulling on the leash, barking at me, crying, whining and freaking out. He did it the entire time I was getting the water and on the way back barking at me, and as I got close to him he started jumping and freaking out at me like he had not seen me in years. That was bad and I chalked it up to walking far away from him. Not acceptable but somewhat understandable. But the car thing was simply ridiculous… I was two inches away from him.

He calms right down when I get back in the car and then we go to the restaurant. Oscar is a royal pain in the ass the ENTIRE time. He is antsy, anxious, panting, whining, pacing and crying the whole time we were there. It was simply awful. He was fed, peed and pooped, he had water, his antler to chew on and I was distracting him with treats to keep his attention. Nothing worked. It was exhausting. And inexplicable.

I am kind of at a loss as to how to handle some of the things I am dealing with now, so if you have any advice please feel free to leave it here in the comments. The biggest issues being his reaction to my even leaving the vicinity of where he is.  I get that it is separation anxiety but what do I do about it? I leave the house and him every day so I think he is used to being alone at times. And he balances all of this craziness with just pure absolute adorable love…

And the craziest thing is I took him down to the Keys last weekend to go to a day festival and he was great. he was great in the car, on the beach and at the festival. So he CAN be good…

So here is my thought… I mentioned Luke a few posts ago. Unfortunately for me but very fortunate for him, he was adopted quickly. I really wanted him and was disappointed that we did not get him, but it was not meant to be. I do however think another older dog in the house would be good for Oscar. Any opinions? I think a more dominant calm dog would be good for him and all his energy, especially his weird Mama’s World energy. He needs a distraction from just me. When he is at the dog park he does not even know I am there. I really think another dog would be good for him. What do you all think?

Suuuuper Genius…..

I am a Facebook junkie. There I said it. I use it for business networking… personal connections… and I am on a ton of feeds for rescue orgs and pet stuff in general. Especially Pitbull rescue and education. Well, someone posted this on one of the many sites I monitor and I was BLOWN AWAY! The amazing potential that this captures in this breed is stunning… they are NOT AT ALL the demons folks make them out to be.  They are a complete reflection (like any dog is) of their owners. But they are feared and demonized and it is sad and frustrating!

Example: I took Oscar for his first trip to Camp Canine, a doggy daycare and cageless boarding facility that I used to take Cody to when he was healthy, and i had to go out of town for the weekend. I never asked them anything about their breed policy since Cody was a Labrador. Well, when I told them about Oscar and that I was not sure what kind of mix he was, they told me that I would need to bring him in for evaluation and if he RESEMBLED a Pitbull, they could not take him. It was simply their policy and that was that.

WHAT?

Wow I was floored. I had no idea. It took them down a few pegs in my book… however he did pass the Pitbull test and was admitted with no problems. I am still shocked however.

Anyway… here is this amazing video! Just look at this beast! He is AMAZING!!!! And happy!

On another note, but same vein… I saw a post on Facebook from Labrador Rescue of Florida that this sweet baby Luke, an 11 year old Chocolate Labrador, was abandoned and is looking for a home. Again… how does this happen. I saw his picture and fell in love, submitted an application online, paid the donation fee and asked about Luke.

The org is coming for a home visit on Monday and I may end up with a wonderful senior companion for my lil terror Oscar. I know I can make Luke happy in the time he has left on this planet. I will be sure and make up for the abandonment issues his previous owners instilled.

It sickens me that people do this.  Look at that face.

I am sure I am crazy for adding another large mouth to feed to my already furry home, but my heart breaks for these senior dogs and I just can’t look away. I will let you all know what happens.

Cody’s Regimen…

Someone just asked me recently what I did to treat him when I found out Cody had Lymphoma, besides Chemo. When I started to tell her what I had done i realized that it was a lot of information and it is spread out all over this blog… but not concisely in one place to reference. So that is what this is…. I have not  thought about this is a while so hopefully I can remember everything… although I do not know how I could forget it…

1. The very first thing I did was take him immediately off of tap water. He got bottled spring water ONLY from that day on. This is because our tap water here in Florida is notoriously laced with remnants of meds, bacteria, pesticides and it smells like bleach. I was told from random places that I called all over the country getting advice on how to treat Cody that Florida especially was one of the highest rates for Canine Cancer and they suspect it is from the water. There is also the lawn treatments for pesticides, mosquitoes, that scare me so I would walk him and then have him step in the pool to wash his feet.
2. I changed his diet. ABSOLUTELY NO GRAINS OR CARBS. This turns to sugar in the blood stream and SUGAR FEEDS CANCER. I actually prepared his food for him. I bought ground turkey, chicken and sometimes for a treat, beef, from Whole Foods that were antibiotic and hormone free. I would saute that in a tiny bit of spring water and then add veggies galore. Mostly leafy greens like spinach and kale, broccoli (he loved it and loved the stems to chew on), some carrots and squash, zucchini…  whatever veggies I could find to bulk it up. Then  I took organic olive oil and would add that to his food without cooking and mix it in with flax seeds. He maintained his weight on this diet too. Sometimes I would add a boiled egg to boost his protein as well.
3. I gave him a ton of supplements a day. He got them mixed with each meal and never spit them out:
   •  Tahitian Noni (both meals)
   • Omega 3 (not 6!) very important (both meals)
   • Spirulina (both meals)
   • CoQ10 (mornings only)
   • Probiotics (both meals)
   • Echinacea (mornings only)
   • Mulitvitamin (mornings only)
4. No milkbones or any treats like that (Carbs and sugar again) so I got him organic jerky for treats.
5. Exercise!!! I took Cody running every single day. He loved to chase the tennis ball across the street and we did it like clockwork every morning. No matter what was going on with me in my busy schedule I always took him to run. And no matter how he was feeling he absolutely loved it and I would have to force him to stop before he got too worn out.
6. PEANUT BUTTER. Organic natural peanut butter was our best friend and helped with his meds and was his favorite treat. NO SUGAR ADDED!

I am not going to lie to you… it was expensive and time consuming but it was so worth every penny and hour. I would do it all again. This regimen gave me almost two extra years with him that I would not have had otherwise. He never went into remission, his cancer was that “hot”…  incredibly aggressive and evil. But we did our best and we got added time together. Time I would not trade for the world.

Feel free to email me if you have any questions at all… I am happy to help. And I highly recommend looking into Veterinary Oncology Services (I linked that blog entry here), the experimental treatment we tried when chemo was no longer an option for Cody. Apparently the other dogs that Dr Butzer has tried this treatment with are still doing great. I find that treatment more in tune with my beliefs than traditional chemo… but who knows if it would have worked for Cody’s aggressive cancer had we started it earlier. One mistake I made was the steroid (Cody could not handle Prednisone so it was a derivative of that) during that treatment to reduce his glands because they started to get huge in his neck and he was uncomfortable. Apparently that hindered the treatment’s ability to attack the cancer. I had no idea and neither did Dr Butzer. I am not sure however, that it would have made much of a difference at that late stage for him.

I hope this helps anyone going through this. It is not easy on your wallet but mostly  on your heart. I would be happy to talk to anyone who needs guidance with any of this. Hang in there!

Dogs Have Perfect Pitch!

I had to share this with you all… I cannot say it enough… dogs are amazing!

Portlandia – The Dog Park

Someone posted this on my Facebook page yesterday commenting on my post As The Dog Park Turns… I just had to share… too funny and scary accurate!