Decorated Daisy, The Holiday Havachon

Daisy may be limping her way through the holidays, but that’s not dampening her Christmas spirit! She was eager to get into – literally “into” – the fun of decorating:

“I’m beginning to look a lot like Christmas” 🙂

As a variation from wrapping herself in garland while we were decorating, this year DD adorned herself with silvery prismatic curlicues:

DD’s Christmas curls!

And Mother Nature has been cooperating by giving us a beautiful wintry setting for our outdoor lights:

I love the look of colorful Christmas lights gleaming through the snow. This is a small portion of the lights in our front yard.

I had to laugh when I looked out the kitchen window and realized that from that perspective, a portion of our lights look like a big Christmas smile:

Smiling Christmas lights 🙂

We’re going into Christmas overdrive here at Casa Daisy, so it may be a couple of weeks before we can post again. But we’ll try to visit our blog friends if at all possible. In the meantime, we wish everyone

MERRY CHRISTMAS, HAPPY HOLIDAYS, AND A HEALTHY, HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Monday Mischief: Cushy Doggy Prison

Now that Daisy is starting to feel better, she’s also starting to feel energetic. She thinks she can go right back to her normal activities, which of course she can’t, since her favorite normal activities are jumping and running. 🙂

The vet said this would be the most difficult time period to keep her still, and boy, was he ever right!

I know her leg still has a long way to go because she still won’t use it much, and if we pick her up the wrong way, she lets out a tiny little whimper. Fortunately that rarely happens.

BUT – during her energetic periods, it can be very hard to keep her from jumping off the couch. So we have to improvise and get a little help from our friend and Daisy’s enemy, The Gate. We expand it, turn it sideways and put it in front of her while one of us sits next to her on the couch, so she’s totally blocked in.

Drat! Foiled again!

It may look like a Doggy Prison, but it certainly is a comfy one!

We’re part of the Monday Mischief Blog Hop!

Daisy Gets In The Christmas Spirit

Daisy got her first Christmas card of the season, and she really enjoyed it! She was so engrossed in it that she would only give me a little peek over the top:

I love my Christmas card!

And then she got so excited about the upcoming holiday that she decided to put on a little Christmas finery.

I feel so Christmassy!

What do you think? Do you like it?

Driving Miss Daisy….Back to the Vet

We decided to make a follow-up vet appointment a couple weeks early because we’re concerned that Daisy isn’t using her leg much at all, even when she stands still to eat (yes, we got her back to acting like a dog at mealtime again!). The original vet said she should have been using it more and more over the past couple weeks.

She still holds that leg up high.

So we went back to our own vet to get his assessment. He’s a wonderful doctor and we trust him completely. He’s so much more interested in his patients’ health that he told us he wouldn’t charge us for any and all surgery follow-up visits, even though his office didn’t do the surgery. And he held true to his word. 🙂

The good news is that she’s healing well. Her reluctance to use her leg is normal because it’s still a bit painful at this point in the healing process.

He did a very detailed exam of her leg and said everything’s going perfectly. We can now allow her to walk all around the house, but she’s still not allowed to jump or run at all. This should be fun, especially since we tried it yesterday and she immediately got excited and hurt herself, even though we tried to keep her calm. This is NOT a low-key dog!

I guess they really are keeping my movements limited for my own good….

In another week, we’re to begin “physical therapy” in the form of taking her for walks in parks on uneven ground to force her to use the leg more for balance. Oh joy, more fun….especially in these freezing temps….

We asked him about the surgeon’s statement that Daisy has a 50/50 chance of developing arthritis in her youth because of this injury. He said that while it’s possible, the risk is far less than 50/50 because she’s a small dog of only 14 pounds, which reduces the tendency to contract arthritis from this injury. If she were to become overweight, that would be a different story. No problem there!

On the not-so-great-but-not-terrible side is that we have to put her back on painkillers in order to get her to use her leg more. Ten drops of a liquid med plus a quarter of the same painkiller she was on every day until we take her back to see him in another two weeks. Then he’ll make another assessment based on her progress at that point.

I guess I’ll just keep hobbling along for now….

But overall, it was a good report. We were very relieved to hear that her leg is healing well and normally. That will be our best Christmas present of all this year!

Princess Daisy, or, How Surgery Spoiled This Dog

We think Daisy has become a Princess Puppy – she disagrees.
We say that surgery spoiled her, she says it didn’t.
She thinks she’s entitled to a softer life of entitlement because of all she’s been through.
We say it’s time she stands on her own 3-soon-to-become-4 paws and start acting like a dog again.

So we’re taking our case to the most fair court in the world – the Court of Blogging Buddies.

You, our blogging friends, are our judge and jury. We are officially filing our case with you.

IN THE COURT OF FAIR PLAY

FAMILY – Plaintiff v DAISY THE HAVACHON – Defendant	* * * * *	CASE NO. 001-The-First-Of-Many
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

COMPLAINT

STATEMENT OF CLAIM
“Family”, both individually and combined, claimants herein, hereby file this claim against the above-named defendant and in support thereof states as follows:

FACTS
1. Daisy had to be given medication 3 times a day, camouflaged in pureed beef baby food, peanut butter, or cream cheese. This spoiled her into refusing to eat her kibble unless it was mixed with pureed beef baby food or rice.

2. Daisy couldn’t sit upright or stand for several days, so we had to feed her little amounts at a time of said kibble/baby food combination on a spoon and give her water her favorite way – via the guinea pig water bottle. This resulted in her refusing water in a bowl now that she’s sitting and standing up and refusing food unless it’s hand-fed to her.

3. Daisy couldn’t go potty on her own, so we had to carry her over to a wee-wee pad and support her back end so she could go. We never knew when she needed to go, so we took her several times a day, resulting in many sore backs. The result – now that we can walk her on a leash around the house, she drops and pees whenever and wherever she wants, despite the fact that we still put her on the wee-wee pad throughout the day AND we have wee-wee pads placed at strategic locations on her “walking path”. And she pees up a LAKE.

THEREFORE, we ask our blogging judges to rule – has surgery spoiled our Daisy and turned her into a Puppy Princess?

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I beseech you….