Happy Birthday Furface!

Little Paulie Walnuts is 2 years old today. Paulie is a purebred, wirehair miniature dachshund. My husband purchased him from a breeder in California as a wedding gift to me. I wanted another dachshund - there was nothing wrong with the one I already had, mind you, doxies just lend themselves well to groups. I really wanted a wheaten female to name Saucy after my favorite childhood book, but there were none available. Instead, the breeder told my husband that she had a wild-boar male that was "very sweet". She was partially right.
Paulie came home to us the day before we returned from our honeymoon. Our in-laws picked him up and kept him the first night. They also were watching Indy (our black & tan doxie)...who was "not very nice" to the puppy. As you might be able to see from his picture above, he had some blonde fur, with a wirey overlay of black and red...true wild boar coat. He was very sweet...the breeder was right about that. But what we soon discovered after a botched first haircut was that he wasn't a true wild-boar-coated doxie.

The groomer was instructed to cut (by hand!) the knots out of his fur and then just give him a trim to remove the fuzzies. What we received back a few hours later was not our multi-colored boy - instead we received a VERY blonde boy with the softest, curliest blonde fur. He was a wheaten! Granted, he was shaved and had to look like a dork for about 3 months while his fur grew out...but it's still blonde today. He has some black fur on his ears and tail, so he's not a true wheaten...but close enough.
We were batting around a few names for him before he came home. When we finally got him home and saw the little silver wisps of fur above his ears, we knew that we had to name him after our favorite Sopranos character - and so Paulie Walnuts Gaultieri Funk was official.

He is very attached to Indigo and loves to play with Indy whenever he'll let him. Both older dogs tolerate him - but to my husband and I he is a sweet clown of a dog and we love him so much!

Indigo

Today was an emotionally taxing day. We picked Indigo up at the ER this morning, fully expecting to have to put her to sleep. Instead, Dr. Lehman told us that Indigo did really well, the diuretics worked and that she ate as much food as they could put in front of her this morning. That relieved all of us. We were able to get an appointment at 10am with a cardiologist at the vet school.

We took her from the ER directly to the Vet School at CSU. Because it is a teaching hospital, we sat there for about an hour and then went through the initial interview and workup twice. They wanted to do an ultrasound on her heart. They asked us to leave her there and they would call us when she was done. About 4 hours later, we got a call. When we went back, they had us pay the bill - which included 5 new medications: three diuretics, an ACE inhibitor and an inodilator. She also has to stay on her thyroid and blood pressure medication.

The doctor confirmed last night's diagnosis of late-stage, severe congestive heart failure. With these medications, the average life span is 6 months. We are going back on the 11th to follow up with this doctor and see if the medications are working. If they are, we will be watching to see when her kidneys start failing. When that happens, it's time to put her to sleep. If they are not working, euthanasia will have to happen sooner.

We had to change her prescription dog food too - she no longer needed a kidney protection diet, just low sodium. The doctor said to cut out the treats - so "no more hot dogs or cheese". Chris and I both laughed at that...she would be so happy if those were her treats instead of dry, yucky milkbones on rare occasions. We bought a (much cheaper) "senior diet" dog food at the local pet store chain. We also purchased some wet dog food to entice her to eat more. Tonight though, we celebrated by giving all three dogs a dinner of wet dog food mixed with their dry food. Everyone was happy - Indigo was back and it was definitely cause to celebrate!