Thank You!

I just wanted to thank all of you for you thoughts and prayers for our sweet Isis. It was greatly appreciated.

Everyone is doing much better and the girls speak to her daily by looking up at the sky. How innocent they are... I wish we all could recapture that.

Stay tuned... we have something up our sleeves...

We're crazy, we like adventure...

it's one crazy adventure we're on.

I'm a dork and E is hanging his head in shame...

The Life & Times of Isis

It is with a heavy heart that I write this entry. After a long month of trying to figure out what was going on with Isis, we ended up having to put her down this afternoon.

After our wonderful day at the beach, she just wasn't the same. We thought that all the activity wiped her out, but when she didn't eat and moved very little the next day... we realized something was wrong. Our Vets were on vacation, so I took her to a different animal hospital and was told that she may have hip dysplasia and we were sent on our way with anti-inflammatories and a $290 estimate for sedation x-rays.

We didn't agree with the diagnosis and made an appointment a couple of days later with the fill-in vet. Both she and the vet tech agreed that she was showing signs of a tick-borne illness (E had pulled a tick off her that previous Sunday) and we were given pain medication and antibiotics. After 3 days with no sign of improvement, we saw our regular vet, who also agreed with the tick-borne illness diagnosis and he decided to increase the antibiotic dose to see what happened. Again, no noticeable improvement was seen. It was like a light switch was turned off and our puppy turned into a old dog... she no longer wanted to play or run.

Another call to the vet was made and we decided to do x-rays to see if there was something that had been missed. The diagnosis that came back was Panosteitis... which is inflammation of the long bones. Basically, growing pains for a dog. We switched pain medication and were told that we should see improvement in the next couple of weeks. The following week, she seemed to be doing better... she was learning to shake paws and was constantly wanting to shake. She even picked up a few toys to play with.

Then the past 3 days, she was steadily getting worse. She started whining and yelping when she would get up. The night before last, she was clearly in pain as her yelping increased during the night. Yesterday, I called the vet and got more pain medication since she spent the whole day being extremely uncomfortable. When I spent last night physically carrying her up and down the deck stairs, I decided to take her in today.

Needless to say, the news wasn't good. The thought is that there was neurological damage and we could have gotten a MRI or taken her to a specialist for a second opinion. The specialist is located in VA and I could not stand the thought of driving her a long way when the 10 minute drive to our vet had her in terrible pain.

I called E and we discussed it and decided that we needed to end her pain... which was a horrible decision to have to make. But I believe that we did indeed make the right one. The past few days have been so hard to watch her cry out and not be able to do anything for her.

She was loved by this family and will be sorely missed.

Cuddled up on the couch with her blanket to be more comfortable.

One of the last shots taken.

Maryland has not been good to us on the pet front. It is so hard to have to explain death to the kids. Our ever sweet and emotional e wanted to say this prayer...


'Jesus, please help my dog. Feed her, let her sleep and drink. Please take care of her and train her too. Amen.'

A Great Day

The nice thing about where we are living now is that we have a wide range of temperatures. One day it can be snowing and the next day will be sunny and in the 60s... we get to experience it all.

This past Sunday was beautiful and we all went for a long walk through the woods and down to the water.
There is a great path just a couple of streets away from our house where you get to see this...
or this... I love scenery.
When you get to the end of the path, you climb down this sturdy ladder to get to the water.
and if you're a little nervous about it, don't worry... someone will be there to help you down.
'It's OK... follow me, girl.'
Everyone had fun playing and running on the beach. Isis played fetch and even took a dip in the water. e collected rocks, as usual... our geologist in the making.
Mom and e even braved the cold water...
to retrieve this beauty.
'Can we come back again?'

'The Best Day Ever!'...

according to e.

We experienced our first MD snowfall today. And, as you may remember, e LOVES snow. We grabbed our coats and the dog and headed outside.

The snow was flying everywhere and came down really quickly. Our snowstorm lasted all of 30 minutes. But it left us this.

And we were able to make this.



And Isis discovered that she loves snow just as much.

Since We Have Nothing Better To Do...

and there is something completely wrong with us, we decided to get a puppy. You see E's parents never got him a dog which he has always wanted. He had been talking more and more about it over the past few years and I was able to successfully hold him off. But now, he has enlisted the help of two little girls to help plead his case. e has been asking since Monterey when we were going to get a dog. She actually decided that it would be OK for Buddy to die so that she could get a dog. KK even would ask, 'can me get a dog Mama?'. And now, we actually have a yard... I didn't stand a chance.

Meet Isis... a not so puppy puppy.

We had been looking everywhere over the past few days and just couldn't figure out how to find a darn dog. All of the breeders we found were hours away and we didn't really want to go to a shelter and get an animal with lots of baggage. We finally looked up the classifieds in the Washington Post and happened to find lots of ads for lab puppies and actually found a lady in our area... just 20 minutes away. She told us that she had 2 female yellow lab puppies that were 12 weeks old. The price was right and we headed out to look... cash in hand.

We pulled up to this beautiful house with horses and dogs... a hobby farm, I guess. It seemed like the perfect place. As soon as we pulled up, we saw the dogs in the 'play yard'... 2 English Bulldogs and 1 yellow lab. Bonnie descended from the porch to greet us, enrobed in soiled barn attire and front tooth protruding ever so nicely. She told us that we got there too quick... she was able to get one of the dogs in the house, but the other was still in the yard. We headed over to meet her. Dog #1 was extremely friendly and excited to see us. She was big, but cute. Bonnie told us that she was going to be 100 lbs. After playing, we headed in to see dog #2. We were warned that she was a little shy and would need to warm up a little bit. Shy might have been an understatement... the dog wouldn't even look at us. She sat there while we petted her and e fell in love with her. She wanted to get her 'because she was sad'. That's our girl... she's going to save the world some day. We somehow convinced her to head outside and take another look at the other dog... we were concerned that a 'nervous' dog would not do well with KK (those that know her will understand that decision). When we stopped petting dog #2, she got up and we noticed that she had soiled herself. Yep, good idea to go look at the other dog.

We decided that she was the one. I paid Bonnie our money, signed some sort of document that said she wasn't responsible for anything... including Parvo (see she was selling the dogs for a friend who was in the process of moving), and we were on our way. After further inspection of the document and the dog, we decided that we should call a vet since we had 48 hours to determine whether or not the dog had a life threatening genetic disorder in order to receive our money back. The people that we are renting from happened to leave all sorts of magnets on the fridge for us, one of which was a number for a wonderful vet. The news we received wasn't so wonderful. Instead of being 12 weeks old, our puppy is actually 4 1/2 months old. Although she was supposedly de-wormed a total of 4 times, she was riddled with round worms. She has juvenile cataracts in her right eye, probably due to blunt force trauma, and will probably lose vision in that eye... unless, of course, we opt to bring her to a doggie ophthalmologist. She also has a severe overbite and we have to keep an eye on the bottom teeth when they come in so that they don't puncture the roof of her mouth. If they don't correct themselves, then capping the teeth is an option.

Did I mention that she smelled? I don't think that she had ever had a bath and had spent her whole life outside in a play yard.

We have made great strides in potty training and stair walking... apparently she had never seen a set of stairs... ever.

With all that though, she is a great dog. We are happy to have her. We feel like we did the right thing... a really expensive pet rescue... and she is so happy to be here.