We received an email this morning from Mystery's foster mom
Lisa. When she came to her foster home last May Lisa found a
lump on her chest that was subsequently removed and diagnosed
as benign. A little over a week ago another was found nearby.
The results are back from the lab and they are not good. They
say the lump was a grade 2 mast cell tumor. According to these people,
the grade 2 tumors exhibit moderately malignant behavior and
a recurrence rate of about 20% with aggressive surgery. There
is also the possibility that the next mass will be a grade 3.
Only 10% of patients with a grade 3 tumor are alive after one
year.
While Mystery needs a loving home now more than ever, we are
just not prepared either emotionally or financially to take on
another cancer patient so soon after losing Gino and Heidi to
a similar disease. Miss Heidi's treatment cost almost $3000 and
Gino's was near $1000. Gino had insurance but I'm sure they would
not accept a new client with such a preexisting condition.
There is a brighter spot though. We had also looked at Lulu,
a two-year old in Clarksville, Tennessee. Here
is her profile at SSRR and a slide
show provided by her foster mom. She's a pretty little
girl too.
Nov 25 | Walking
Who would have
believed a year ago that I would have chosen a daily walk instead
of sitting on my backside swallowing cordial cherries and watching
TV. I had talked with people who declared this stuff habit-forming,
even addictive, but never would have believed that I would become
a victim to it myself.
Obviously I'm not a serious walker as I stop regularly to
shoot a photo or two with a pocket Nikon that is always with
me. The spot of color shown here was a pleasant contrast to the
otherwise gloomy day in the park yesterday.
Fort Sanders Pulmonary & Cardiac Wellness Center helped
me form the habit of daily exercise and now I feel guilty on
rainy days when I don't go to the park.
Gino played a big part in that change too. Every time I started
to put on a pair of socks in the morning, he would get just as
close as possible to make sure I wasn't leaving without him.
He dearly loved our strolls, especially the ones that ended with
one or both of us in the creek. Now that he's gone, it's not
easy to walk by his swimming hole, but today is not as bad as
yesterday, and yesterday was not as bad as the day before.
My little Mystery Girl (She only weighs 70 pounds) will never
be able to take Gino's place but it won't be because she doesn't
try.
I've gone back into my library and started re-reading the
books I read before I bought my first Rottweilers and I am 'boning
up' on the basics. It's fun reading about what to expect from
the breed and thinking, "Yeah, Gino and Miss Heidi did that
all the time."
Nov 20 | Update:
An email from SSRR this morning. The home visit is on track.
We should hear something within the next few days.
Nov 18 |
I wrote an email this morning to Cindy of Southern States
Rottweiler Rescue to ask about the delay in scheduling a home
visit for the adoption of my little Mystery
Girl then headed out to Victor Ashe Park for my walk.
It was chilly and wet in the park today (and lonely without
Gino) but I walked three miles. The Parks and Recreation folks
were taking advantage of the practically empty park by clearing
some brush in the lower part of the disc golf course. It looks
much cleaner now.
Gino's Swimming Hole
Home again to an exciting evening reading If
Winter Comes on the Kindle.
Nov 4 | Horrible News
Our brave friend and constant companion left this morning
to join Miss Heidi at the Rainbow Bridge after a brief bout with
the same type of cancer that took her life eighteen months ago.
When we bring them into our lives we enter into a covenant
to provide them with food, shelter and loving care. Part of that
care is protecting them from needless suffering and, no matter
how much we hate to part with them, we must be mindful of their
needs instead of our own.
Rest in Peace our noble Gino. We will see you both at the
Rainbow Bridge.
Thank you Tamara for helping us get through this awful task.
UPDATE: We
have applied with the Southern States Rottweiler Rescue organization
to adopt a little girl. Her name is Mystery because it was a
mystery to their staff how her original family could take such
a beautiful dog to a shelter in Alabama where it is not unusual
to have euthanasia rates in excess of 75%.
Mystery's foster mom sent us this photo
Many are saying it's too early, some say a smaller dog would
be more appropriate since they have a tendency to live longer
than the larger breeds. My friend Becky, who has rescued Rotties,
gave us the best advice.
"Follow your heart, Gino and Miss Heidi will guide you."
The preliminaries are done, SSRR has finished checking with
our references. Next we get a visit to The Home so they can satisfy
themselves that Mystery is getting a loving and safe home.
Gino would not want us to live without a Rottweiler to watch
over us.
Oct 17 | The Park and a Kindle Cookbook
It's been a wonderful day here at The Home, if a bit chilly.
The group went walking in the park . . twice, once with the non-dog
folks, and once with little Gino. And, even though the temperature
was hovering in the mid forties with a chilly wind, Gino did
his usual little wade in the creek. He came home and went to
sleep on the rug.
I continued on a project I started last week compiling my
favorite recipes into a .mobi file for the Kindle e-book reader.
The resulting e-book has a table of contents with links to
quickly access individual recipes and is easily modified as new
recipes are added.
Slipping the Kindle into a one-gallon Ziplock bag protects
it from flying ingredients, a necessity with our wild cooks.
The recipe file is available here.
Simply connect the Kindle using the USB cable and download the
file into its 'documents' folder.
Alternately, you can read it with any mobi
reader.
Sep 14 | The Waldorf Astoria Cake
Every year for my birthday Mom made me a Red Velvet Cake with
the original butter cream frosting, not the now-standard cream
cheese icing. I tried baking one with the handwritten recipe
she had tucked into her old Better Homes and Gardens book.
Practically every day this photo shows up in my Flickr stats
indicating that at least one person has viewed it.
Sep 6 | A New Friend
The Home has a new friend. Becky
is from Texas and has three - count 'em, three - beautiful Rottweilers.
She just recently began posting photos on Flickr and started
appropriately with images of her Rott'n kids, two of whom are
therapy dogs. The third is in training. She also has video at
You Tube including this little glimpse of Cassidy,
her little three-legged girl, playing with a 15 pound bowling
ball.
Aug 26 | Playing in the Creek
The last few times that we have walked in the park, Gino and
I have been playing in Third Creek. We brought back a few pictures
and here they are:
The Home has an answer to high gas prices. Put
one of these in every garage.
(Photo from the American Rottweiler Club)
