All About the Heart

SUMMARY: Well--not all about--just some useful stuff in general and Tika's in particular.

Tika has congestive heart disease. Depending on which veterinary web site you visit, either cancer or congestive heart disease is the leading cause of death in dogs.

So, what's going on in her heart?

Here are the parts of the heart. A dog's heart is essentially the same.

(image from this site.)

Found this video that shows how the heart works, and a dog's works the same way.


The vet kindly drew a sketch on a paper towel of what's going on with Tika's heart. High-tech! This drawing is reversed from above--Left Atrium (LA) and Ventricle (LV) are on the left here.

Tika's mitral valve--between LA and LV--has become enlarged and hardened. So (a) it doesn't close all the way and (b) it's prolapsed--it opens in the wrong direction as well (picture a door that should open inward now opening outward). So, when the heart pumps, instead of the proper fluid staying in the proper direction as shown in the video, some of the fluid squishes backwards, increasing the pressure in the Left Atrium. (That's about as technical as I can get.)

The additional pressure has caused her Left Atrium to become greatly enlarged--the dotted line--which means that the muscle wall is stretched badly and no longer pumps as well; also, it's encroaching on the Right Atrium, making that part work harder to do its job and to get enough blood flowing.

What happens eventually is that the valve or the left atrium stop working entirely, for various reasons. In that case, it's all over, and it could be very sudden.

Some places have done valve-replacement surgery on dogs, but not that many and (a) it's really, really expensive, (b) very involved surgery with lots of risks, which I don't really want to put Tika through, (c) Tika's left aorta is in bad enough condition that it's not really worth it to try fixing just the valve, and (c) she's nearly 12, so even if everything else were to go right, I don't know that I'd get more than a year or 2 anyway.

Example discussion: http://www.vetinfo.com/vets/answers/can-dogs-get-heart-valve-replacement

And now you know.

Friday Morning Thoughts

SUMMARY: Top Ten, bored dogs, nifty dog stuff in nondog catalog, agility class and schedule and training and weaves, dog noses.

Top Tens

• Why does USDAA have Top Ten Tournament for Championship dogs but not for Performance? I notice this because maybe Tika would have had a chance to be there this year. Maybe.)

Bored dogs

• I've been finding out what my dogs are like when we're not doing agility. Why? No class Oct 22 (Power Paws Camp preempted it). Class Oct 27. No class Nov 5 (Disneyland). No class Nov 12 (USDAA Nationals.) Class this week. No class next week (Thanksgiving). 
• We did have agility competition Oct 31-Nov 1. And will have one day Nov 27, then two days Dec 12-13.  Feels like long times between when we're short on classes.
  
• Doesn't help that  I've been trying to do an early 6:00 Thursday class; leaving home at 5:00 is still in my normal work day, plus traffic means it's a 45-50 minutes drive instead of 20-30, all of which means I have been getting in 15-30 minutes late, therefore missing class time. Am going to have to switch back to Wednesday 8:15 which means no more Sierra Club hikes until some other later class opens on another day.
  
• Meanwhile pesky bored dogs. Walking a couple of miles a day isn't a good substitute for classes & competition, apparently.

Improvements Catalog supplies the well-heeled dog (so to speak)

• Beautiful folding wooden gates if you don't want to use cheap-looking standard gates to keep your dogs out of certain rooms.
• Back when I had a Siberian Husky--for 16 years--every year I meant to get around to making a light-up Santa and sleigh display pulled by huskies. Good intentions, not enough time to figure it out. Now I could just buy one! And it's gorgeous, too.
• Or how about just a light-up doggie holding a gift?
• Check out their pet listings; a "Paw Plunger" for cleaning dirty paws; an embossed "Potty Rock", beautiful wooden crates, plus several actual useful items.
• Wish I had implemented click-through payments for this site so that if you went to these locations I'd get 10 cents for it! Ah, well, another opportunity missed. Get in line behind making a husky santa sleigh.

Don't you wish you had a nose like a dog?

• Boost always knows when one of Tika's  treats has rolled under the closet door at some time earlier in the day.
• When I sent Boost out to get the paper yesterday morning, she stepped outside and then went into ferocious danger action--hackles up, bouncing on stiff legs while making some serious barking, looking at my porch, my tree, my eaves, my fence--and Tika followed suit, barking up an angry storm.  I saw nothing. It was an hour before I could get Boost out the door without the same reaction. What did I miss?

Agility training

• My yard is just not big enough for all types of agility practice, for dogs who can cover 18 feet in a single full-speed bounce jump, 60 feet is nothing--not enough space to GET to that kind of striding.
• Both dogs have been making some nice, tough weave entries in the yard. And in class last night. And then--missing some in the yard. Gah. It never ends.
  

Do Those Dewclaws That You Do So Well

SUMMARY: Poor Booster's little toeie has an owie.

Dinnertime last night, and Boost is lying in the corner lick lick licking her paw. I check it out: Dew claw toenail is broken in half at the quick and it's bleed bleed bleeding. Gotta hurt, too.

I don't trim them often enough, and it was pretty long, so I blame myself for this one. Thing is, Tika's dew claws (and back in the day, Amber's and Sheba's) kept themselves trimmed down--proof positive that some dogs indeed get traction from their dewclaws when running. Jake's *never* wore down at all; Boost's wear down a bit but not enough. So with one dog who doesn't need it at all and one dog who needs it seldom, I just forget.

I was able to trim off most of the broken part with no sign of pain on her part. A little styptic power to stop the bleeding, a nice flesh-colored bandaid (couldn't find any merle-colored bandaids) to cover it for a little while (chyeah, that stayed on for hours--not!), and some constant reminding to leave it alone.

By bedtime the bandaid was lonnnng gone and she was leaving it alone. Just trying to decide whether I want to wrap it in a bit of that mesh tape when she's outside running the next couple of days. In class tonight. And how about at the trial this weekend? Since I know that she uses them a bit, since they wear down a bit--

argh, decisions! [Gnaws at own nails--]

Once More With Feeling

(Read more about heterochromia and see a more detailed view of her right eye: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterochromia.)