Just another DogDaz morning at the zoo ❤ 
Just another CATDogDaz morning at the zoo ❤
Just another DogDaz morning at the zoo ❤
Can you name all of us? 2 of us look a lot alike in black and white and one of us is still in color.
Just another DogDaz morning at the zoo ❤
Noel was almost 2 back then (she is 14 now).
Zack and Cuddles (our Russian Blue twins) and Miss Constance Kitty (the funniest cat ever at the zoo) have been over the bridge for many years now. But we remember every cat with great fondness. Especially at Catmas.
Just another CATDogDaz morning at the zoo ❤
Tuesday, December 21 is the Winter Solstice if you are in the Northern Hemisphere and the reverse in the Southern Hemisphere. On the Winter Solstice, we observe a Germanic holiday that pre-dates the Christmas holiday by thousands of years – YULE. Yule celebrates the wheel of the year with bonfires, decorations of holly, mistletoe, and boughs of evergreen trees (sound like Christmas?). There are also feasts and gift-giving. This is a celebration of the rebirth of the sun and the light that it brings to the Earth (remember from here on it starts to get lighter every day until Summer Solstice in the north).
It is interesting to look at the similarities between Yule and the Christmas traditions:
Just another DogDaz morning at the zoo ❤
Tortie is short for “tortoiseshell”, a popular coat pattern seen on many cat breeds. In the world of cat fanciers, some coat colors elicit more curiosity than others. Tortoiseshell cats attract attention wherever they go.
Standard torties have a mix of orange and black fur, either finely interspersed (a brindle tortie), in big splodges (a patchwork tortie), or somewhere in between (just a tortoiseshell tortie!) Dilute tortie cats have a tortoiseshell coat pattern with one remarkable difference: instead of the striking, dark mix of orange and black, dilute tortoiseshell cats have a muted, almost blue and yellow color.
Just another DogDaz morning at the zoo ❤
Just another CATDogDaz morning at the zoo ❤
We got the results from pathology regarding the growth that was biopsied in Louise’s mouth. It is a fast-growing tumor that destroys the jaw called Canine Acanthamotous Ameloblastoma (CAA).
WARNING: Stop reading now if you will get uncomfortable with the details.
Basically, she has a mass in the lower part of her front jaw that is visible and is around her front teeth. The good news is that CAA has never been reported to spread to other parts of the body (metastasize), so it is often called ‘benign.’ However, it is locally aggressive and her tumor is doubling in size every 10 days or so. Underneath what we see it is destroying the jaw bone. It is life-threatening.
The first option for treatment, due to a large amount of underlying bone involved, is to surgically remove a portion of the jaw, called a mandibulectomy (graphic link), and to take large margins around the tumor to ensure it is all removed. For patients, like Louise, where surgery is not an option because of multiple reasons, the second option would be radiation.
Louise turned 12 last October. The normal life expectance of a dog her size is 10 to 12 years. She has pancreatitis and irritable bowel disease. Figuring out what health intervention is in her best interest is one of the hardest decisions we ever had to make. We do not want to put her through either of these options. The surgery would take her lower jaw, which I think at her age would be a difficult recovery to regain function, and the side-effects of radiation are horrible (if her IBD would even tolerate it.)
I have started a Facebook group dedicated to this journey. It is called Canine Acanthamotous Ameloblastoma – Dog Oral Tumors Please feel free to join if you want to follow what is going on. I am not going to fill DogDaz with her medical stuff because it is graphic and sad, so I will put it there.
Keep us in your prayers as we go through this thing. We are heartbroken.
Please, don’t post any negative comments on the choices we have made for Louise’s care – they will be deleted.
NOT Just another DogDaz morning at the zoo ❤
Just another DogDaz morning at the zoo ❤
DogDaz Zoo 