Critter Update

When we had Jaydon it took Mav (our cat) about 6 months to even acknowledge us and probably another 3 months after that before he dared grace us with his presence on our bed at night. Well with Tylor, Mav has taken a whole different approach and has decided that there’s a lot more warm laps around that are (partially) available to him. Athena (our dog) stopped eating when we brought Tylor home. It took a few days to realize this in the chaos of bringing home a new baby but after 5 days of no food and Athena drinking tons of water I raced her to the vet in between Tylor feedings. At first they thought it was an issue with her liver, the cause unknown but could be anything from poisoning to cancer. After a few weeks of medications her blood work looked much better but her lymphoids were still very swollen. We finally decided to get a biopsy done to confirm the cancer suspicion since she wasn’t making any noticeable improvement on medication and it turns out that’s the culprit – lymphoma cancer. Apparently it’s very common in dogs and unfortunately the prognosis is not good. Most literature says average survival after detection is 2 months. There are some treatment options including chemotherapy but with 2 young kids in the house we’re not inclined to go that route and have decided that our priority will be quality of life rather than duration for Athena. She’s on cortisone treatments now and is responding well so far. Today, I realized how often I go to the vet because my autopilot has now been re-programmed for that route. I was supposed to be going to the toy store and had to take the long way because I went to the vet instead.