Echo and I will leaving for the ASFA International invitational in just a few weeks, so I thought she could use just a general exam and bloodwork. She gets these strange little growths on her from time to time that eventually dry up and fleck off, so I also wanted the doc to take a peek at one of those. Her general exam was unremarkable and her blood panel came back perfect, so she’s now got  clean bill of health! The vet said the little growths are nothing to worry about…most likely just a build up of oily skin material in her coat.

Melody was also in for a general exam and follow up bloodwork to check her kidney values. When she was at the specialist to have her toe amputed last year, her kidney values were off the chart. We put her on kidney-friendly food and rechecked at several weeks intervals and the levels did drop down. And ultrasound showed nothing unusual. This visit was just to take a look at her values and see if her kidney issues have progressed or stayed the same. Her creatinine was 2.7 (up from 2.1 6 months ago) which is elevated from what’s considered “normal” for a greyhound, but her BUN was within normal limits at 27. At this point, we are going to keep her on the kidney food and just recheck. However, the vet did clear her for toe amputation surgery, so we will be scheduling that in the next few weeks.

Tater was spayed last week and I noticed a little bit of fluid pooling around her spay incision, so I decided it was best to have the doc take a look. It wasn’t painful to the touch and the skin color along the incision looked great. It was just a little….puffy. The vet examined the incision and said he could feel that all the abdominal layers were intact, that sometimes the muscles just sweat a little fluid. He put her on an antibiotic just to be safe and said to keep her as quiet as possible. We’ll be keeping a close eye on that, for sure.

Peanut was in for a wellness visit last week and to have some baseline bloowork run…something we like to do for all new pups as soon as possible after coming home. Well, one of her values was a little high so they just wanted us to bring in her urine so they could make sure it was concentrating properly. Since she has had a few peepee accidents by the back door, it’s always best to rule out anything medical. I decide to bring her along with the urine specimen “just in case” they wanted to lay hands on her again for some reason. Turns out, her urine looked good and was properly concentrated so Peanut was just along for the ride. Which she didn’t seem to mind. She rides really well in the car and is just soooooo curious about everywhere she goes and everything she sees.

$200 and four healthy hounds later we headed for home…until the next visit!

And then one evening I was extremely bored. So I randomly clicked on a link to an adoption group in someone’s signature on Greytalk. I admired all the beautiful hounds…even some very handsome reds! I followed a link on the site for dogs that were still at the track waiting for a space in the adoption group. As I scrolled, one particular dog struck me. I immediately thought: That looks like a red version of Harmony! I clicked on the ‘more info’ link that took me to the greyhound-data.com page for that hound. Lo and Behold, the racing name was Jetabb Catfish. As I read the name I simulataneously exclaimed to Ken “Oh my Gosh! Harmony’s sister is up for adoption! …and she’s red!”

Ken was on the phone with the adoption group within a few minutes. As luck would have it, they had a load of dogs scheduled to come down to Maryland from the track. There was just enough time to have ‘Catfish’ spayed and on the hauler for us to adopt! After an excrutiating wait, Ken drove – with Harmony of course! – to Maryland to get our new family member. After hemming and hawing over names the entire time we were waiting for her, we knew the name had to be a compliment to Harmony…so we named her Melody.