I swear I have some weird dogs. It doesn’t matter where we move, Yukon has got to have his cave where he retreats too if he wants to have some time to himself. In Germany, it was the closet. In Carthage it was the Shower and in the new house it’s the bathing tub.

Judge, is kind of like the same way. As a puppy he loved sleeping in this box.

Meanwhile he tries sleeping in laundry baskets not realizing that he’s actually a little too big for it. But that doesn’t keep him from trying.

Thursday the wisdom tooth was surgically removed. I found a dentist via recommendation, called them and got an appointment for the very next day. Thursday morning I went to Great Bend and a young, good looking guy, treated me right away. He’s tried for an hour to remove that tooth and when he couldn’t get it out he decided to make some cuts to extract it surgically. Then he stitched me up, I paid my share and made an appointment for next month for the cleaning.

The painkillers on the other hand had such serious side effects that I ended up in the ER, on an IV, for almost six hours, getting fluid pumped into my body. I would have never thought that dehydration could happen so fast. I got “orders” not to do anything over the weekend and simply rest because if I overdo it, they’d fear I’d get a set-back but of course I couldn’t just do that. I already signed up for that Seminar the day after and I just had to go there. Who listens to the doctors when it’s about the dogs? You? Definitely not me… 

The Seminar was a full success, we’ve learned a lot and what helped a lot is that Indra has some solid obedience on her. In the beginning we were quite uncoordinated but throughout the Seminar we figured it out and in the end she was able to do Serpentine Jumps quite well. 

She also was one of the few dogs that actually held up endurance wise. Most of the other dogs were simply not in the shape to perform during such a heat and I just don’t get it. You’d think that especially Agility people care about their dogs endurance. All it would take is bike riding. Even if it’s just 15-30 minutes each day, it makes a significant difference on the physical endurance. 

Anyhow, today we would have had SAR Team Training but I decided to stay home because I didn’t want to push it. Plus my neck and chest got burned badly. I was outside, cleaning out the pool when my neighbors from next door invited me over and that’s when the next adventure begun. 

His wife and him had some family over and his nephew was playing with a football. He threw it too far and it went into very heavy brush. He searched that ball for half an hour and his family tried helping but they couldn’t find it.
So I told them that I’d get Indra and if anyone could find that ball, it was her. Especially since we heavily trained the Hunt Drive lately.

So I got her, put her into a sit, facing the brush and gave the search command. She followed the scent, which was all over the place, circling the area, closing in on the Football. Within three minutes she recovered the ball and impressed the crowd. Our neighbor wanted to reward her with a Hamburger but she much rather wanted the Football, which was impossible of course but she did leave her teethmarks in it.
She ate her hamburger and then she saw IT and it was love at first sight. The mega-super-big-waterball in the pool. Boy, did she want that ball. She stared it down, trying to summon it to her, since she was leashed and couldn’t just jump into the pool.

Anyhow, they all thanked her for the recovery and I guess she made new friends.

I’m telling you, Lassie is an Amateur, Indra is the real thing.  :p

So I am trying to find a vet that offers a reasonable price on hip x-rays because all we need to do is determine whether or not we have him undergo the surgical procedure or not. 

Seems like most of the Vets are trying to take advantage of Judges condition. All I need is a general picture that shows if he has HD or not and they are trying to sell me all kinds of stuff, from Bloodwork to Microchips plus many different angles and OFA. 

I DON’T NEED THAT!

All I want is to know if his rear can support him or not and that shouldn’t be more than 200 Dollars at all. Most vets said it’d be around 350 Dollars. We’ve already paid 440 for his elbows and 350 Dollars on top of that makes a total of 790 Dollars and THAT IS ROBBERY!

So for now I am supplementing him with Glucosamine/Chondroitin/MSM. Keep him quiet and in the house. I do let him out in the garden from time to time but he’s not as crazy as he used to be. I know something is wrong with his rear but I just don’t know if it is compensation or his hips. 

I still don’t know how we are supposed to afford all that. 790 Dollars for simple x-rays, plus all the office fees and every vet wants to ‘establish’ a relationship, and see the dog first, means, office fee, than another appointment, again… office fee and the x-rays. And all that before we even have his procedure started…

I’ve never even heard of an office fee before I moved to the States. One Clinic wanted to charge me the Office fee over the phone because I called them and that is when I hung up… seriously?

Judge isn’t doing very well. He is suffering from Abnormal Limb Deformity. 

Meanwhile, he can barely walk and he’s his own worst enemy, due to his high threshold and drive. Outside, when I’d let him off leash, he’d run and run and run and would do more damage than anything good to his leg. He’s been x-rayed, we have three different opinions, we’ve been at a specialist and he needs an expensive surgery and no promise of success was made. 

Either way, I had to wash him out of the SAR Training Program but he remains as a pet in my household and I love him dearly. It sucks because he was such a promising dog and all it took was one wrong step to squish his growing plate. 

Anyhow, the Specialist said that he’s not doing anything without having his overall orthopedic health checked. Meaning, his hips need to be okay in order to proceed. If he has bad hips on top of everything else, and seeing that he can barely walk as it is, I will release him from the pain. 

So far I’ve had people say from: “Don’t have him undergo surgery, just let him be” to “You know, amputation is an option, dogs can live long and prosper on three legs, most of the time they don’t even know that they have three legs only.” 

It’s tough. He’s just eight months old, way to young for that. But life isn’t fair… 

I know already that people will judge me if I put him down due to all the health issues. They would rather see me crating him for the rest of his life, just for the sake of keeping him alive. It’s not going to happen. Not with a driven dog like him. It would be more cruel to keep him alive in a crate than putting him out of his misery. 

Sometimes people have to come to their senses, accept the truth and life as it is. The outcome is not always what we want it to be. And if a dog, at that age, can’t walk because of his condition and has HD on top of it, the only humane thing would be to let him go to the rainbow bridge.