Doggy Diabetes? No, It's Cushing's.

I once swore I would never prepare special food for an animal, no matter what. Now here I am preparing hamburger and white rice twice a day for the little dog, because my husband doesn't understand what's wrong with the dog. We took him to the vet on Thursday, because he was lethargic, drinking excessively and had started breaking housetraining. I knew something was really wrong, because for a good year now, he didn't want to play much and he had been putting on so much weight. The vet called me yesterday with a diagnosis of Cushing's Disease which is an excess production of the stress regulating hormones ACTH and Cortisol.

I understood 95% of what he tested for and the results found, so when I got home, I pulled out the old faithful, gargantuan Biology book and found out it can be caused by one of two things. The most common cause is a pituitary tumor that doesn't respond to excess cortisol in the endocrine system, so production of ACTH in the pituitary doesn't stop. The excess ACTH causes even more cortisol to be produced by the adrenal glands. The other cause could be an adrenal gland or kidney tumor that is causing excess production of cortisol that doesn't respond to ACTH levels in the endocrine system. In layman's terms, the biological feedback loop that regulates stress hormones in the body is damaged by a tumor, and so the dog's body thinks it needs to respond with excess fat storage in the abdomen, and unsatiable hunger and thirst.

Then I went on to the WSU Veterinary School website to see the treatment and prognosis of canine Cushing's, and to be frank, treated or untreated lifespan is the same. Untreated, he will eventually get pancreatitis, diabetes, seizures, congestive heart failure and kidney and liver failure. The treatment improves quality of life, but does not prolong lifespan. By the time the disease has progressed to the point where most dog owners notice something is wrong, their immune systems are already shot, and most dogs that actually respond to treatment, end up eventually dying of a quickly progressive form of the disease once the medication stops working.

We guess he's had it for about 3 years, if not more. The early signs were desperate guarding of food, garbage raiding, gradual lethargy, a potbelly and lumpy, calcified fat deposits on the torso. He's had those symptoms for a few years now, and we just attributed them to his age and stress before he came to live with us. He's not really our dog, so we agreed no lifelong medicine or surgery, but the hubby thinks he'll be okay living in the garage and can eventually go back on dogfood and stay inside. Since the dog is in the later stages of Cushing's, this is not going to happen. I am going to have to keep preparing his food, his bowel control is only going to get worse, and I listed the eventual progress of the disease above.

The dog's feelings are already hurt now that he's been banished to the garage at night and when we're gone. I say get him a giant cheeseburger meal, take him to play what ball he wants to play, and let the morphine take him into doggie dreamland. My mom made my sister's dog live outside after it lost its control, and the poor little thing shiverred through the whole winter. It was blind, had no bowel control and was obviously in pain, and banished to the yard. I can't imagine what the dog must have been thinking after living inside for sixteen years. I don't think I'm being the cruel one here, but if we're not going to treat him, how is that not cruel? I'm in a real dilemna.

Amazing Pictures from Earth and My Front Yard

If you haven't seen the video of the underwater volcano erupting near Tonga, you really need to check it out. I'm excited to start my Physical Geography class with two volcanic eruptions occuring. NatGeo also has pictures of Mt. Redoubt in Alaska which is also erupting, although it's not quite as spectacular as the underwater eruption. Some local fishermen in Tonga are now saying that they can see a small amount of land forming on the water. If that's true, then that makes it even cooler!

Here is some color for this so far dreary PNW spring...

Mini Irises

Pink Primroses ala amphibians

A perfect Welcome pot for Spring

Life in my Yard

A quick green blurb for Northwest residents. Costco now stocks flash frozen Organic whole green beans that are grown and packaged in Washington. You can steam them, sautee them or throw them in your green bean dishes, and it's no different than fresh beans. Did I mention they're organic and locally grown? I'm not sure if they stock them nationwide, but the brand is ByeBee Foods Organic.

Since there is a lack of garden to plant my early peas, lettuce and carrots, I decided to buy a flat of primroses for the front pots and back yard flower bed. I think I will throw some fertilizer on the existing primroses in the yard, too. They are blooming, but their leaves aren't big and showy. I think they are hungry.

Today, we're also going down to our wetland and woods for the first time since the snow to see how much we have to clean up after all the storms. I need to make sure the frogs have a flowing waterway so they can eat some skeeters this summer.

Happy planting everyone!

Library Nonsense and a New Trail

Today, I took a journey the M'ville branch of the SnoCo library to return some books and use their WiFi. I fixed the Robot Rodeo video on YouTube and added the Sumo Bot video, by the way. Did you know that library cards expire now?

That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Remember the crinkly piece of paper with your 6 year-old neanderthal signature? I used mine at the WiCo library until I was 13 and moved away. My first SnoCo paper card had a lame attempt at a cursive signature and it was good until it went electronic about 10 years ago. Apparently those electronic cards expire. Whatever.

To add to the nonsense at the library, the girl in front of me was asking one of the librarians if she had to log onto the WiFi or if it was public for any enabled computer. The librarian then asked her if she was talking about a computer chip, and looked really perplexed. Then the librarian told her she could use any of the library's computers if she had a library card.

I had read about the public WiFi in the Darrington paper, so I let the girl know she could just turn her laptop on to use the WiFi. Then the librarian looked relieved. Not much later, a really annoying cell phone ring echoed through the library followed by a shouted conversation. What's up with the library? I feel a little Idiocracy encroaching.

Speaking of SnoCo, the parks department is now 4 miles from our house on the Whitehorse trail. The parks department acquired the old rail road track as part of the Washington Rails to Trails program back when I worked at Kayak Point Park. I'm so excited that they decided to scrap the 3 phase option and blaze the whole trail this spring. I can't wait to go on a trail ride with co-worker MK. Our office manager lives down the trail and neither of us have a bike, so MK offered up some horses when the trail is finished. How cool will it be to go all the way into Arlington from my house on horse back?

Robots, Snow and You Can't Fool Me

I can feel a break coming...so close...gonna make it. I have just one paper left to write, a 3 page, single spaced reflection paper on our projects and teamwork in Engineering. We ended up losing the robot sumo contest, but we found out that one group cheated between rounds, and a rule change half-way through would have given us more wins. They decided that just one wheel off the arena counts as a loss half-way through the contest and that you couldn't win if your robot drove off the arena after pushing off the opponent, so we should have had another two wins. Oh well, it was fun.

I will upload the killer movie I made for our presentation to YouTube on Thursday, since I promised all the boys in the class I would. I knew with nothing but guys in the class that Ozzy's Crazy Train was the perfect track for the movie. We ended up with a perfect score on the presentation, so I'll take the A+ over the bragging rights any day!

I recieved an email from the Environmental Science program at WWU's Huxley College, asking me to go ahead and send in my Huxley application. That must mean my Western application is close to approval. Sweet!

Prospects for my garden are looking bleak, however. I usually have a grand garden every summer, but we have to move it this year to an area that still needs stump removal. We've seen parts of our lawn for a few hours, but it never fails to snow again once it almost melts. I think 3 months of snow on the ground is quite enough. We have had a lot of family nights inside playing Rock Band, Mariokart, and even Texas Hold 'Em.

On the work front, we had 3 stolen blanks for Oxycodone brought in last week. It started on Sunday when Dr. London and I recieved some DUR's from the gal's insurance alerting us to her large amount of recent narcotic purchases, but the lady was really insistant that we didn't get ahold of her I.D. We found out from the doctor's office the next day that she had stolen a narcotic pad from one of their desks. So she was not arrested, but didn't get any drugs from us and she was flagged county-wide. It really set a grumpy mood for my week at work.

On Friday, Dr. Alix and I helped bust two members of a local OxyContin ring, and luckilly the owner of the pharmacy showed up while we were waiting for the cops, because it was all women working again. Those situations usually don't scare me, but Dr. Alix is a newbee and so were the clerks I was working with, and the suspects were both large men. I didn't want to give anything away to the forgers, but I did try to keep the girls behind the second counter until the police showed up. Just 3 more years of dealing with these Oxy morons and then I'm on to other places.

Thursday...YouTube...Robots