Linus and I walked the 1-mile Bay to Barkers walk today in Albany. We had a great time, and raised $250 to help homeless pets. The walk was a blast. Earl came to cheer us on (he’s still on crutches, so no walking for him for a few more months- uck), and we even met some fellow corgi owners during the walk.

As my computer is still broken (I’ve actually bit the bullet and decided to just get a new Mac in a few weeks once school starts), I am hogging Earl’s laptop right now to write a quick update while he takes a snooze. Here’s a quick Race Report:

We got a little lost on the way there, so were running late. We arrived and it was right to registration and the walk was starting right away!
Also, my phone was somehow set on “black and white” mode for a bit without me noticing… hope you don’t mind the lack of color:
OFF WE GO!

The walk went along the Bay and was a really gorgeous route. It was at Golden Gate Fields, which was a pretty cool park! Would be fun to come back and check it out solo. There were lots of people just enjoying the park not affiliated with the Humane Society walk. Runners, people walking dogs, hikers…

About a half mile in, lo and behold Linus met a new corgi friend. I swear, corgis flock to one another!

This little guy was Max. He is 2 years old. His momma and I walked together for the rest of the walk and chatted.

When we were done with the walk, they had lots of fun games and activities for Dogs and Humans. There were various stations set up where you could play games with your dogs. One of them was “nose hunting.” Basically, they would hide hot dogs under various boxes after the dog had a chance to get a good sniff in, and then gave him a “FIND IT” command and let him go to to work. Linus surprised me and displayed a really natural affinity for this! I never knew he was much of a scent hound. He found the hotdogs in three progressively harder set ups, all on his first try. The lady running the booth was so impressed she was trying to recruit him into a tracking class. I might try and look one up near us- seems like a fun, relatively low impact activity that he might really enjoy.

They also had a Rally setup where you could try out an obstacle course with your dog, although we skipped that one because it seemed a bit high-impact for our fragile woof. Linus, did, however, thoroughly enjoy playing “Bobbing for Hotdogs.” He hunted for a submerged hot dog bit a bunch of different depths of dog dishes. He loved it! He made it all the way to the deepest dish and got his whole head underwater to get the hotdog.

Finally, we did PAINTING!!!! This was super fun! Basically, you put your dog’s paws in the different colors of paint, and let him walk through a “canvas” poster to make a work of art. So cute

Linus wasn’t very excited about putting his paws in the paint (as soon as a sniff revealed the paint not to be edible, he wasn’t interested anymore), although with some treat utilization, we were able to create the following, which is now proudly hanging up on our fridge (so dorky, ha ha):

Check out those painted paws:

Some other dogs really got messy with the paint! A few of them we completely covered in paint head to toe. Some had it over their entire rear ends from sitting down in the paint trays. heh heh When we got home, I gave Linus a full bath and got most of the paint out, although one paw is still slightly pink.

Here’s Larry. He won the Dog/Owner Look-a-Like Contest. We’ll just say his owner… had hair like Larry. Hopefully she styled it specifically for the occasion

All in all, it was a wonderful event for a great cause. A very big, sincere thanks to our wonderful and generous donors who chipped in to sponsor our walk! The dogs and cats of the Berkeley Humane Society- as well as Linus and I- give you our deep gratitude and many tail wags of appreciation.

Cheers,
Courtney and Linus the Corgi

Last year in March, the Berkeley Humane Society suffered a pretty devastating fire. A large percentage of the main building burned to the ground overnight, and sadly- many pets perished. They’ve been working to rebuild and never missed a day of caring for lots of unwanted and needy pets. But there’s still a lot of work to do.

This walk also marks a really significant victory for my pooch, Linus. Last fall he had a spinal cord and neurological emergency. We either had to operate or put him down. He had surgery- 7 months, lotsa rehab, acupuncture, physical therapy and hydro-therapy later Linus can be a (kinda) normal dog again! He’s still pretty wobbly on his rear legs- he doesn’t have the best control of his rear feet- no feeling in his toes and lacks awareness of where his feet are exactly in space. But he gets around okay. And if he can’t make the whole mile, I’ll gladly carry him (or put him in a wagon). After all, he aint heavy, he’s my corgi.

I set a rather humble fundraising goal of $50. Maybe you could find it in your heart to kick in $5 or so for the Humane Society? That would be stupendous! Linus and I- and many, many homeless and needy pets- would be deeply appreciative. Donations of any amount are tax deductible. Berkeley-East Bay Humane Society is a registered 501(c)3 organization. The tax id # is: 94-1347069

Thank you for the consideration!
Love,
Courtney and Linus the corgi

Here’s the link to the website where you can donate to support our walk.

It’s tough, because I want to let Linus run and play and romp and chase with other dogs, but I stand there watching and inwardly cringe each time he jumps up or takes a tumble. I guess we’re just destined to live out the rest of his life in fear that he’ll have another back problem! It’s hard to strike a balance between letting him have fun playing and get some exercise while still being conservative and taking it easy on his back.

One adjustment I thought of this morning was to replace our tennis ball thrower with a small Linus-sized soccer ball. I figured it wouldn’t bounce as much as a tennis ball, so less chance of him jumping up to catch it. I was happy to kick it around for him and let him chase it (herd it… heh heh). He seemed to really like it. Also, he stayed parallel to the ground a lot more and didn’t take any real tumbles, which was the goal.

He did bark a lot, I guess it’s from the excitement of “herding” the ball. He would bark when I kicked it and he would bark when he chased it. We’ll have to work on that, although I don’t really know how to train him not to bark.

Some photos:
The soccer ball. Picked it up at a soccer store on Mission Street. It’s a nice tough leather, so I don’t think he can chew through it. He has been carrying it around in his mouth sometimes.

OH BOY IMMA GONNA GO GET IT!! COME BACK HERE BALL I’M GONNA GET YA!!!!

Welp, I’m off to the pool for a swim in the sunshine! Gorgeous day here in SF…

One of these days, I owe everyone a big post detailing all the rehab we’ve done. However I’m in midterms at school and otherwise far too busy so for now you’re just going to have to settle for the cute pix!

Here he’s on a 30 minute “swim walk” … towards the end, which is why you’re seeing the full-on open-mouth pant. Woof! Keep it up, Buddy!

corgi in tahoe

We are walking further and further each day. His neuro surgeon is having us build up walk lengths, adding one minute per walk per day! This one in particular was rather tiring- I think buddy was feeling the altitude, and there are lots of hills in the ski house neighborhood.

We also did some physical therapy walking on snow… basically it’s really good for his paws to be walking on various surfaces- sand, pebbles, dirt, woodchips, pavement, water, snow, what have you… the variety spices it up and gives his neurons new textures to learn and send to his brain. He’s still feeling pretty disconnected- walks with a DISTINCT wobble and always seems on the verge of toppling over. He’s feeling better, though. At one this weekend, he took an enormous LEAP off the couch- really sent himself sailing- he looked like Superman or the corgi doing the corgi flop. Earl and I were both like, “NOOOOoooooOOOOO” in slow motion while he did it- I was sitting right next to him and reached over to stop him but it was too late.

Fortunately, as far as we can tell, the Leap of Death didn’t seem to do any permanent damage… and technically at this point we are almost exactly four months out from his surgery, which means he can add in “high impact” activities. However, I don’t think we’ll EVER be letting him jump on and off beds and couches or even do stairs himself anymore. Just too high risk. This one time was a fluke and we are lucky and happy that nothing bad came from it.

Btw- the above pic was taken on the camera of my new droid phone. You like? So far I am pretty happy with it! Just got it on Monday.

Even though he mostly stayed on leash and we walked very slowly doing rehab exercises, I could just tell how excited and overjoyed he was to be out there on the sand, hearing the ocean, and seeing other dogs running around and playing!

All in all, we have been *very* happy with his progress from back surgery, although the rehab has been painful, arduous, slow and expensive. Linus walks well now with his rear-support sling, and walks poorly without it. It’s been cool watching him progress! Even little things- seeing him re-learn how to wag his tail (nub), or when he regained the ability to scratch with his back feet- are huge celebrations around these parts.

We don’t know 100% if he’ll walk without assistance ever again, and he could plateau at any time. Although at this point I think while we hope for continued improvement, whatever point he makes it to we will be happy with.

The rehab process, which effective, is both a huge pain in the ass and astronomically pricey. Honestly one of the reasons I haven’t been updating on here is the huge time-sink that it’s been to get Linus back and up on his feet! Every six hours, every day, we give him about 20 minutes worth of physical therapy sessions. Once a week I also take him to acupuncture treatment, with Holly who is wonderful. Also once a week I drive him up to a session with the Dog Physical Therapist, who is an hour and a half outside the city!! So that takes almost the entire day, with three hours of driving and 1 hour of appointment. Then in the meantime he’s been having regular interval checkups with both his orthopedic surgeon (who treated him for a bladder crystals/UTI- a cool $390 we weren’t expecting) and his neurosurgeon.

The exciting news is we saw his neurosurgeon on Wednesday and Linus has been cleared off of “bed rest” (crate rest) which he’s been on for the past two months. So he can now walk around the house! This is happy news for us, because mentally we don’t feel like we’re “trapping” him in his kennel all the time, and also we get to enjoy his company around the house while we get stuff done. It’s a very small thing, but it really makes me happy to hear the pitter patter of little paws underfoot zooming in to vacuum up crumbs in the kitchen while I cook! So funny how you miss those silly little things.

We are also cleared to start walking him longer and longer distances on our 3x daily rehab walks. We get to add one minute per day. This is GREAT because it means we can bring him to the coffee shop again! One of our biggest weekend or weekday routines was to walk over with Linus to Que Tal and sit outside with him on the benches while we enjoyed our morning. I really missed that with him! We would still go over to Que Tal, of course, but it was sad with no friendly faced corgi eagerly accepting pets, treats and attention from everyone who walked by.

Part of the reason I stopped posting for a bit was that I think I was suffering from caregiver fatigue. For the past two months, prettymuch my entire existence has been devoted to getting Linus back up and walking on his feet. We had to carry him everywhere, even in our apartment, up and down stairs constantly all while being terrified we would break his back again by holding him wrong! For the first month, every SINGLE time we walked him 3x a day it took the two of us- one steering the front leash and one supporting him with the back harness. Kind of served as a crash course in intensive relationship counseling “Go left, no go right, you’re going to fast, wait why are you letting him go over there? hey my head is hitting these branches woah watch out wait speed up you’re lagging” etc…

The other reason is that I have been extremely busy. We’ve been heading up to Tahoe to ski almost every single weekend, and then I also am doing school FULL TIME this semester! Yay I love it, but it’s certainly been an adjustment. I’m taking medical terminology, a basic entry level bio, a basic entry level math (to get me up to speed to test into a higher math so I can take physics, chem and whatnot) and yoga. Yes, yoga is a college course around these parts! It’s awesome- 2x a week and I even get 1 credit for it. Next semester Earl and I might take swing dancing together.

So that’s the update! Lots of dog stuff, lots of skiing, lots of studying. I hope you’ve all been well.

I’ll try and post time photos of the rocker therapy balance board Earl and I made for Linus last weekend- it’s a wobble board that he stands on and you coach him to balance while you rock it back and forth. It strengthens his core (which is a lot of what we’ve been working on). Also, I took some great photos of him in the hydrotherapy tank underwater treadmill which he’s been doing once a week, so I’ll get those up soon too. Miss you all Thanks for reading! Cheers.

The surgeon gave us two main options: kicking up our efforts to a more aggressive rehab, or ANOTHER MRI/CT scan and another surgery.

I just don’t think more surgery is the answer. Going through it the first time was SO hard- both on our mental state and wallets, and on Linus himself. He’d certainly lose bowel and bladder control again- and we wouldn’t be sure if he’d ever get them back.

Right now, he’s continent and can poop and pee on his own, but he can’t walk.

Hearing the news at the vet’s… I felt exasperated, deflated, and … annoyed. SELFISH. I am so sick of all this dog stuff ruling my life! All I ever do is think about the dog, worry about the dog, care for the dog. I go to work to pay for the dog’s needs. My entire days off are spent carting him around, bringing him to doctor’s offices and acupuncture, worrying I am carrying him wrong and going to injure him further. Every six hours he gets physical therapy. Every spare dollar we have goes towards his rehab and his care. All this and it’s still not working!!! I am so sick of this!!! ARGH!!

I want to concentrate on my classes, my career, my future, my fitness, my LIFE. I miss when my dog that fit into my life… we would walk to cafes, go jogging together, play at parks, go the beach. Now my life revolves around the dog and none of it’s fun.

Whine, whine, whine.

With that out, I have resolved myself to spirited caregiving for the dog. I know he deserves it, and I know I want to do it. A little bout of selfishness, but it’s over.

Linus is booked to see “the best” canine physical therapist in the Bay Area… she’s over an hour away- up north in Rohnert Park, near Santa Rosa. I think he’ll be seeing her 1x a week for physical and hydro therapy… combining that with acupuncture, hopefully that will be the trick.

Please get better, Linus!! I want to see you run around the beach and play again.

I was decorating the tree last night and found Lucy’s elf costume. All cats should have an elf costume

Can’t you tell how much she just LOVES wearing it? heh heh

The funniest part of her wearing this is that immediately after I put this on, we both went downstairs and got distracted doing something else, so poor kitten ending up wearing an elf costume for about three hours. Lol. She was curled up in an disgruntled ball with her back to everything when we found her!

Both trees are up, and the stockings are hung. I haven’t hung any outside lights yet, mainly because it’s been raining, raining, raining almost every day here (or, at least raining on all of my days off!), so I may have to skip the light hanging this year. I’m a little freaked to climb up on the roof and be nailing stuff into the house if it’s at all slippery… give it another week and see if I can find a nice sunny day to attempt.

Yesterday at about 11:30am (my day off… thank GOD I was home/around), due to the rapid deterioration of what had previously been our dog’s slight limp, I rushed him to our Orthopedic surgeon vet. It came out of nowhere… it was almost like he was getting worse by the minute. By the time we were at that vet he was completely dragging his back right foot (not the leg he’d had ACL surgery on).

The orthopedic surgeon, who had repaired dogger’s ACL just five weeks ago, quickly assessed and determined this was neurological, spinal related issue and referred us to his colleague, the Neurologist Surgeon Vet at the Specialist/emergency pet hospital clear across town. He called his direct line and got us right in. We headed over. I did my very best to use every rapid but gentle code 3 low g-force driving maneuver I had in my arsenal because poor puppeh quivered and shook in pain with every single bump and turn.

After a very detailed assessment the surprisingly (!!) young and handsome Neurologist informed me that the dog needed to have surgery that night, asap, and he could hopefully repair him to full function. He gave us a 90% odds of a full recovery. “Recovery” in this case meaning the dog would be able to walk and urinate on his own. The alternative to the surgery is that the dog would be paralyzed, not able to walk, urinate or defecate on his own, and would most likely have to be put down.

By this time Linus couldn’t even walk with EITHER back leg, he would just drag them behind him… sadly all askew at odd angles and folded over onto each other all mangled up looking

It was getting late (3:30pm). The neurologist had scrubbed out from supervising ANOTHER surgery to see us. He would have to go finish that one 1st then call in his Emergency Night Surgery Team to work on our pooch- they would start at about 8pm through midnight or whenever they were done.

“I’m going to give you a few minutes to decide what you want to do.”

Fucking hell.

The projected cost was 6k. Have I mentioned that you have to pay the entire cost up front?

He’s 7 years old. We’ve only had him 2 years. He’s a HUGE part of our lives… a beloved member of our family. But 6k isn’t mere pocket change to us. It was really tough decision.

Particularly when your significant other is at his office, ducking out from a meeting to have this conversation over the phone, can’t look each other in the eye or give each other a hug, and you both feel totally blindsided because this decision just came out of absolutely no where.

Remember this cheesy but kinda nice 90′s song…?

Specifically, the part where it says,

“The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind: the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.”

…. seems pretty darn accurate right now.

We decided to do the surgery.

In a nutshell, our rationale was basically, “he’s been a good dog.” Linus has been nothing short of incredibly loyal to us. We would be loyal to him.

Could you say no to this face?

Sticker shock?

itemized breakdown:

Back on the homefront, kitten (sportin her OWN post-op cone of shame) swooped in to enjoy her newfound status as Sole Possessor of All Beds in The House:

Today we sat on tenterhooks for call from the surgeon about how it went, and if he’s walking yet. I was participating in (trapped in!) this all-day mandatory training session with these tough macho Paramedics and firefighter-type dudes. Didn’t know many of them that well. Was the only girl at the meeting. Every time my mind would drift off protocols and wander to Buddy, wondering how he was doing and if he was gonna pull through… my damn eyes would start tearing up. Not exactly the best environment to bring on the waterworks!!! Tried to play it off like allergies and my sniffles like a cold. Don’t know if I fooled ‘em. Freaking sucked.

Got off work, met up with nerdlove and beelined to the good meat market where we stocked up on thick cut, high quality bacon. Cooked it up and off we went to visiting hours at what is basically the doggy ICU.

He’s not walking yet, but he’s alive and his ears perked up when he saw us.

Rear legs still sadly draggin. They psuedo-carried him out to us in sort of a rear end hoist, with him walking on his front legs only.

ze coup de grâce:

If he doesn’t walk within 2-3 days, we’ll know the surgery was a failure. Can hardly bear to write that out, it’s deeply troubling just to contemplate.

I guess… if he doesn’t make it and after all this we still have to put him down… (not like in that case we would get reimbursed for the procedure!) I won’t regret it. Ultimately I guess it’s good to err on the side of your heart when making a decision like this, and not your wallet.

3 days. 3 days to walk on his own.

Please send vibes for Linus!

Walk, Linus, Walk…

PLEASE FUCKING WALK, dammit.

good dog.