Esther

I've had a request to put more pictures of Esther up on my blog. I love this picture. I don't know if anyone else will... but here you go.

We were in the backyard. The dogs were playing and Esther laid down to rest. I don't know if you're aware of this, but it's kinda hard to get a good picture of a black dog. I have some others that are better. But they were taken by a far better photographer and it will be a bit before i post them.

Esther has had an eventful summer. In July she woke me in a panic about 5:30am one Saturday morning. It was her normal "MOM! MOM! There's a thunderstorm coming!!!!" method of waking me - stomping on my chest and knocking books on my head. Except, we weren't supposed to have any storms. I checked out back. Checked out front. Suddenly Esther is going potty in the living room. I looked at her and told her she had just earned herself a trip to the vet. Yes, i did bring a sample with me. The urinalysis revealed two things. She had an infection and her specific gravity was very very low (10.05). In the words of the vet, "lower than i'd expect if her kidneys were failing". My thought, "that's good right? Because kidney failure is very very very bad." He then mentioned Cushings disease. Also not very good, but better than kidney failure. However, i had to put her on antibiotics to get rid of the infection before we could move forward with investigating what was causing the low specific gravity. Two and half weeks later i took another sample in to the vet. Specific gravity of 10.04 this time. Couple of blood tests later and Esther was cleared of Cushings. No Cushings for Esther. You go girl!

Then the vet recommended we check her for diabetes insipidus. This is not sugar diabetes, which is diabetes mellitus. What they both have in common is lots of drinking and lots of urinating. The test for diabetes insipidus is to treat it and see if intake and output drop off. Treatment for dogs is to give them a drop of medicine in one eye twice a day. The vet assured me that it's easy to give dogs eye drops. Yeah, right. All i could think is, you've not given eye drops to Esther. Of course, he's a vet with many years experience and an amazing ability with animals. Even my dog sitter laughed at the concept of giving eye drops to Esther. I'll spare you the details because this is getting long; i will say we made it through, but it was tough. I couldn't tell if the medicine made a difference, so i finally decided if I couldn't tell, then it wasn't a significant enough change to warrant continuing treating for it. I called the vet's office. I spoke with the receptionist and asked her to tell the vet there wasn't a significant change. That was a week ago Monday. I haven't heard from the vet. So i'd say she doesn't have diabetes insipidus either. Yea!!!

I know, you're all asking, so now what? Honestly, i have no idea. I suspect just watch her for any issues in that regard. In the meantime, i'm making sure she has enough water as well as potty breaks, of course.