All About Tripod

I hate to tell anyone this, but Tripod passed away over the holidays.  She was at a no-cage kennel while we went out of state to visit family.  They noticed she started having blood in her urine, so they kept a closer eye on her. Then she developed a bloody nose.  The wonderful people took her to an emergency vet, where they did blood panels.  Her liver was shot. Normally, the liver enzymes in a healthy dog is between 0 and 30. They determine how bad the liver is on a 0-100 scale. Her enzyme count was well over 1000.  The chances she was given were slim to none, and would leave her in tremendous pain, as she would need constant blood transfusions and possibly surgery to try to stem the bleeding.  We decided that she shouldn’t suffer just so we could come home and say goodbye. The kennel staff put us on the phone so we could say good bye as she went to sleep for the last time (they stayed with her so she wasn’t alone).

We miss Tripod terribly, but we didn’t want her to be in pain.  She passed away at 2:10 am (est) on December 23, 2014.  She was a beautiful, mellow dog.  She was great with my son, kept at a distance from my bird, and protected us when we felt unsafe. Tripod stayed with me when I felt alone, and made me feel like nothing was wrong, when everything was falling apart. I feel blessed that she  was part of our family.  She’s not in pain anymore, and I know she’ll be waiting for me when I pass.

I love you, Tripod. You were a very good girl.

Well,  there’s been a lot of changes since I was last on here.

Let’s start out with: we made a cross country move last year.  We now live in the desert, but I guess it’s not that bad.  Tripod still loves to run.

Tripod’s a big sister now.  In April of 2012, I had a son.  Tripod immediately became enamored with him.  She’s extremely protective of him, and will do anything to be with him-even jumping over a baby gate to get into his room. <3

Now to some unfortunate news.  In March of this year, Tripod was shocked out of sleep, jumped off the bed and hit the base of her head (where it connects to her spine) against the corner of the wall.  🙁  She ended up having her first seizure.  She was brought to the vet, and they deemed her to be alright.  About a month or two later, she had another seizure.  She suffered from her third seizure two nights ago.  The vets said there’s nothing that we can really do, as the medication wouldn’t work with her since she’s not having 2+ seizures per month.  We think that the injury earlier this year triggered them, and now when she relaxes to go to bed (every once in a while) she’ll have a mini one.  🙁

It’s something I hate watching her go through.  I am absolutely terrified that I’m going to loose her every time she has an episode.  Luckily, my son’s in bed when she has her seizures.  I don’t know what to do about these, but to just be there for her.

Every day, Tripod shows me that she can outsmart me.  It’s….astonishing. 🙂

My husband, Peter’s in the navy, which means that there are many lonely nights.  Tripod has gotten into the habit of sleeping in the bed with me when Peter’s not home.  I encourage this.  When we first got Tripod, I’d be asleep inside 15-30 minutes and could sleep for hours on end.  Well, about a month ago it became hard for me to stay asleep for more than 2 hours.  I’d go to sleep with Tripod in the bed, and wake up to her being gone!  She at some point left me to go sleep in her bed that she sleeps in when Peter is home.  The past week’s been worse, it’s now taking me at least an hour to go to sleep.  But I found something out:  Tripod stays in bed with me until she thinks I’m asleep (which was as I said earlier 15-30 minutes), then gets up and goes back to her bed on the floor!  <3

To some, this may seem like she’s just been getting uncomfortable and leaves, etc.  To me, it just shows how much she loves me.  She’s kind of a comfort of security when my husband’s not home…she makes me feel a little bit safer.  She gets back in around dawn to make sure she’s in bed when I wake up.  I think she knows my insecurities about my being alone, and she wants to make sure I feel safe.

I’m so glad I have her.  I know people say how lucky she is to have us, but really it’s the other way around.

I feel like I’m rambling, but I just wanted to get this out.  She’s showing how smart she is (I would never have thought about doing that) and how much she’s bonded with us.  I can’t wait to find out what else Tripod’s capable of.  🙂

This is the picture that made us fall in love.

Tripod’s been a handfull the past few days.  I shouldn’t be surprised.  She gets really depressed when Peter’s not home.  Last night, she decided that she was going to destroy my underwear. 🙁  I didn’t even find out about it until this morning.  Sh also thought that the cable guy was Peter.  She got so happy and started jumping, but then realized it wasn’t him.  This was another man coming into the apartment.  But it was still attention, so she overlooked it so she could get scritchies.

Tripod also has shown that she will never get along with Sylvia.  Because Sylvia lives in a cage (parrot, remember?) I don’t have as much quality time with her as I would like.  I decised to have some momma-birdie time and oh, boy, was tripod jealous!  Barking, whining, jumping, and trying to “get the chew toy that Mommy won’t let me play with”.  If Sylvia chirps, Tripod runs over to the cage and starts whining.  I just wish they’d get along to the point I can have Sylvia out while Tripod is playing by herself.  At least Peter comes home in a few days, he’ll be able to distract Tripod enough that I can play with my baby bird.

Today’s a weird day, Tripod hasn’t really done anything.  I guess that’s the depression from Peter not being here.  I try to make her happy, but I know she just absolutely loves Peter.  I never see her tail wag harder/faster as when he walks through that door. 🙂

And, we’re back!  Tripod has been getting into all sorts of trouble recently.  She even proved that she was smarter than her humans.

Memorial Day weekend, my family went out to visit my in-laws.  That was a dastardly affair all in itself.  My mother-in-law (MIL) has 3 dogs: Holly (an spaniel), Willy (a lab), and Barron (a puppy of which I don’t know origin).  They got along with Tripod thankfully, unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of them all playing, I was being tortured in other ways.  I now refuse to bring Tripod for a visit because we were not allowed to feed Tripod in my MIL’s house.  She was only allowed to eat outside or in the camper where we were staying.  All Tripod wanted was to eat with the group and be part of the pack, but myMIL wouldn’t allow it.  What’s worse was Tripod HATED the camper-it was infested with spiders and had a slight aroma of mold.  The only one who slept that night was Peter (I hope Sylvia did, but she was allowed to stay inside the house).  Tripod didn’t eat Sunday morning before we left, and didn’t eat until we got home Monday afternoon.  I was LIVID.

We got home and I gave her food, then a treat to prove that I still loved her even though I accidentally put her through Hell.   So over the next 2 days, I watched to make sure the visit with my MIL didn’t make her sick/stress her out too much.  I gave her food and she maybe ate half a bowl for the whole day (where normally she’ll eat 2 bowls a day) on Tuesday and Wednesday.  I talked to Peter, expressing that it was worrying me that she wasn’t eating, so we decided that if she didn’t eat Thursday, she was going to visit the vet.  I ended up going grocery shopping that morning and whatever didn’t need to go in the fridge/freezer was left in the bags on the floor; I was too tired to put it all away and proceeded to nap on the couch.

I woke up to the sound of rustling.  The first thing I thought was “Crap!  Tripod’s getting into the groceries!”  I ran into the kitchen to see Tripod coming out of the attached bathroom with 2 treats in her mouth.  Her ears went back because she knew she’d been caught.  I went into the bathroom (which is where I keep her food and treats because we have no room in the kitchen) and the bag of treats, which was full on Monday, was now completely empty.  She wasn’t eating her food because she’d been filling up on treats!  She doesn’t know how close she was to getting poked and prodded by the vet techs.  She’s now not allowed to have treats.  She’s proven she’s smarter than we are; we never even checked to see if that’s what she was doing!   Because of the previous weekend, we thought she became overwhelmed with stress or became sick.  I have to admit, I was so relieved and so pissed at the same time that all that I could do was laugh.  In the back of my mind though, I think Sylvia may have told her to do it…I didn’t know a dog would be that incredibly conniving. 🙂

Okay.  Apparently this is my first post.  🙂  This blog is dedicated to my 3-legged friend, Tripod.  My husband, Peter, and I adopted Tripod at the end of February 2011.  Let me tell you her story.

In the beginning of February of this year, our local Animal Control picked up Tripod as a stray in Virginia Beach.  She was barely 35 pounds and really skinny.  They didn’t know anything about her except that she had 3 legs.

They thought she was a pharaoh hound/pit mix and is gues-timated at about 2 years old.  What the people at the AC did let us know was that whomever had her before us must have loved her very much because not only did the surgery take her leg, her entire shoulder and joint is gone (indicating an expensive surgery).

I would love to find out who owned this precious baby, but if given the choice of meeting them and giving her back, or keeping her, I would keep her hands down.

Another thing the people at AC told us is that typically 3-legged dogs “go quick”, like within 3 days of being publicly posted.  People have soft spots for tripawds (duh).  Fortunately for us, she was there for almost a month. We’re really lucky.

Tripod joins into my motley family.  There’s my husband, Peter, who’s in the Navy, my 14 year old Senegal Parrot, Sylvia, and me, Brittany.  I have no description because I do nothing with my life except take care of my kids (bird & dog).  Tripod and Sylvia aren’t the best of friends, but they will get along with each other when I’m sitting right there.  Tripod does have separation anxiety though, whenever Peter leaves.  She just gets so depressed and ends up laying around the house when he’s gone.  When I leave though, she’s just happy because she still has her daddy. 😀

Hopefully, there’ll be more later.  I just can’t type anymore.