The trip with Sonntag to Alaska in 2000 went off flawlessly, before, during and after. (Click here for map.) No snags of any sort. Of course, Sonntag was paralyzed, which was a snag in itself, but that's the reason I took the trip (one last ride in the car), so that doesn't count.
In 2001, I returned to Alaska, with Leben and Erde in tow this time, to scatter Sonntag's and Kessie's ashes over the tundra of the North Slope. (Click here for map.) Leben started limping in Inuvik, NorthWest Territories, 900 miles and five days away from the nearest vet. Had this happened before the trip, it would have been a show stopper. After talking with my vet by satellite phone, she diagnosed the problem correctly, united anconeus, and told me the operation could wait till we got home when Leben would be just six months old, the cutoff for the operation. We did wait and the operation was successful, the first time in recorded vet history that it was.
In 2002, there were no snags before the trip, but during a trip to Labrador (click here for map), Leben started to limp again in Nova Scotia. I continued the trip and when we got home, he was diagnosed with OCD (loose cartilage) and a fractured correnoid process, which surgery resolved.
In 2003, when we were in the final planning stages for a return trip to Labrador and then on to Alaska (click here for map), Erde's immune system collapsed and, among other things, she developed a serious case of pancreatic insufficiency. This turned out to be a trip stopper.
In 2004-2009, because of one snag or another ranging from the after-shocks from a sub-criminal psychopath in my condo who uses an alias (remember, I live in DC, the land of the undercover psychopaths), to other various and sundry reasons, no trips could be planned.
In early May 2010, I took the dogs on a trial camping trip to the Atlantic Ocean at Assateaque Island in preparation for our first road trip in eight years. Plans for the trip were just being formulated when, on May 26th, Leben was bitten by a large poisonous, exotic spider I discovered on my balcony several days earlier. (How that spider got there, on the 9th floor or a condominium in Washington DC in May is no mystery. (The perceptive among my readers who see a connection between this and the "loose psychopath" referred to above would be right.) Leben's leg swelled up twice its size and he could hardly walk. The emergency vet (a resident) made a poor judgment call by not aspirating his inflamed leg and sent us home to see Leben's orthopedic vet a week later. During the process of walking on that inflamed leg for that week, Leben hyperextended his carpus. The surgery this and some other front-end orthopedic issues was scheduled for mid-July and he was in a recovery harness for 10 weeks, which cancelled our trip for that year.
In 2011, we finally got on the road again, with plans to travel to Alaska via Labrador. But in the two weeks before the trip, I had to rush one or the other of the dogs to the vets or deal with an emergency six times. One emergency was when one of the dogs broke into my food container and selectively chose to eat all the chocolate bars I had intended to enjoy along the trip. Not knowing which dog did it, and not knowing how long before, I had to squirt hydrogen peroxide down both of their throats until they surrendered the stolen goods the hard way. As it turns out, Leben was the culprit; Erde had eaten none of it. Poor girl. To reward her for the inconvenience of her having to surrendered all she had eaten before, she was amply rewarded that night with a few Frosty Paws. Snags out of the way, the trip got underway On August 9th, only to be cut short because of my Defender sending false signals that it was overheating badly. Ten days after returning home, the trip got underway again. A slight accident in northern Quebec delayed us a few days in Mt Tremblant, bu we continued on our way with a dented Defender. But then, at Thunder Bay, Ontario, Leben developed a terrible skin infection that caused us to cancel the rest of the trip and return home to treat his infection. (Click here for trip map.) (Finally, this last week, his infection has been cured, after two years of constant treatment for it.)
In 2012, as we were planning our trip to Alaska in early July, I noticed Leben was having trouble running. An MRI a week later showed two serious disc ruptures. Instead of waiting till the end of the trip, or just waiting for nature to take its course on its own, I went ahead with the spinal surgery. After is healing period was over, although he was nothing like the dog he was when he walked into the operation on his own, in mid-September, we went ahead with an abbreviated trip as far north was we could get to Alaska before the cold weather set in. Three weeks into that trip, his recovery failed and the operation left him totally paralyzed. We headed for home a day later after stopping the trip at Thunder Bay, again. (Click here for trip map.)
Elsewhere on this blog I posted details about a number of snags potentially delaying or cancelling this trip. Since I believe there is a solution for every problem, I treated all of them like the pesky things they are and was able to solve all of them, one way or another. Unfortunately, today, a new problem developed with Erde. I noticed on Saturday that she was suddenly scratching her right ear. Fearing an ear infection, i took her to the vet this morning at 7:00 a.m. so i could get the issue resolved before I left on Sunday. She did not have this infection when i took her in for a physical in May. Sure enough, the vet discovered a yeast infection in her right ear. But she also discovered a bacterial infection in her left ear and, to make matters worse, a bacterial infection on her skin. No problem, just clean her ears daily, wash he three times a week, and administer the antibiotics for the three infections. No snags there. Unfortunately, the vet also discovered a tumor (gingival mass) the size of a marble on her upper left gum. Either the vet missed this in May or it has grown to that size since. I schedule a dental biopsy for her on Thursday, but will not know the results until I am on the road. Benign or malignant, this must come off. Of course, the treatment for a benign tumor is quite lame compared to a malignant one. If the tumor is malignant, it must be treated immediately, and unless the surgery and recovery period can be done in a week, which is doubtful, the trip will be off. if the tumor is benign, I still have a decision to make because I cannot be away for two months with this thing growing, potentially causing more damage to her upper jaw. Here are the questions I have for the vet.
1- when will the results of biopsy be back?
2- is there any home or follow-up
treatment needed after the biopsy?
3- based on your knowledge, are these
things usually malignant or benign?
4- based on your knowledge, if benign, do
these things usually get bigger?
5- if benign, does this mass have to come
off as is (and when)? What if it gets much bigger (although I would ant it to
come off then)?
6- if benign, what is the nature of the
operation to remove (recovery)? In other words, if it has to come off, is this
operation a trip stopper?
7- If benign, can it turn
malignant?
8- if malignant, what is the nature of the operation,
recovery, etc? I assume this would be a trip
stopper?
Standby for answers to these questions. (Click here for the answers I subsequently receibed from the vet.) Needless to say, my dogs' health is my number one priority. But right now, if there is a 50 percent chance that the tumor is malignant and a 50 percent chance that the vet will advise going ahead with the surgery now if it is a benign tumor, that means that the chances of this trip going forward have no dropped. Of course, whatever the biopsy shows, I may decide to go ahead with this trip anyway, for the same reason I took Sonntag on his trip, his last ride in the car, and it was.
When I discovered Erde's ear problem on Saturday, I started treating it right away. This morning, just before I took her to the vet, I couldn't even tell which ear had had the problem, it had cleared up so much. I almost cancelled the appointment at the vet's, but decided to go ahead just to be sure. By overcoming that hesitancy in favor of being conservative, I might have killed the trip, but I might also have saved my dog's life.
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