Sick Puppies

I pray that this Monday morning finds you all well and crafty! I am up early due to a coughing spell, and the fact I couldn't go back to sleep. I decided to write my blog post for today filling you in about my sick puppies and a crazy quilt update w/o pictures. 

Cammie not long after getting her

Cammie right before she died

Blaze and Dusty

We adopted two puppies from the local shelter in August 2012 after the sudden death of our precious Cammie (top photos) who was hit by a truck in July. The above picture of Blaze and Dusty is not long after we got them. 

They have helped us some to get over the passing of Cammie. We were closer to Cammie than any dog we have ever had before. Part of it is she found skin cancer on my DH's leg. We may have never found it without her. It was all because she kept licking that spot on his leg. All of these babies are mixed breeds, but Blaze is more Australian Shepherd than anything. He is small/medium build, too. Dusty is getting huge! She is younger than Blaze, but much bigger. She is worming her way into DH's heart much like Cammie did.

Well, to get to their sickness, Blaze injured a paw some how since Christmas. He would not let us get close to it, so we couldn't doctor it as needed. After a week  or so, he started acting like he felt really bad and had a fever to the touch. He got worse and worse, so we called our vet, explained the issue and prescribed some antibiotics. He took them for a few days and some baby aspirin for the fever and perked up like his normal self. Then all of a sudden, Dusty got to acting sick. We thought that Blaze's illness may have been from his foot. But, Blaze got worse again, so we took them both to the vet on Friday. We found out to our dismay that they both have fevers and high white blood cell counts. It was determined that they have Hepatozoonosis. I know, it is a horrible sounding term and is a horrible disease/virus. Pets get it by ingesting a Gulf Coast tick or an animal who has the virus. We live in Alabama, but not close to the coast. These ticks are moving northward. If they don't get treatment with three different medicines early, then it can be fatal. We are praying that we caught their illness in time. Blaze had lost seven pounds since Christmas. He has been sick the longest. We left them at the vet over the weekend where treatment could be started. Blaze had a really high fever, and the vet was very concerned. We haven't heard from them since Friday, but we pray that today we get some good news. They have to take this medicine for two to three weeks, then take some kind of powder medicine for several years to prevent a relapse. So, pray for our puppies and for us that we can take care of them properly. No, we had NEVER heard of this disease before. There usually aren't very many cases in Alabama per year, but we started this year off with two.

Crazy Quilt Update

I have one more horizontal seam to sew together on the quilt and it will all be together. I will then add the border and do some embellishing on the quilt, too. My stitching on the sashing seams are not nearly as good as I wanted them to be, so I hope I can improve the looks by adding some yoyos and maybe a few buttons here and there. Maybe even some crocheted flowers. Keep your fingers crossed that the lady I'm making this for will love it. 

This is all for now. Take care of yourselves with all of this sickness going around. Be creative and make someone happy with your creations!
May God Bless you,
Teresa