Thanks For All the Comments

In my last post I asked for comments and ideas concerning pets that are left behind while you might have a medical emergency. Here is my post asking the question, followed by a lot of comments and great ideas.

In the meantime, Al over at The Bayfield Bunch talked about my post on Tuesday and had even more readers suggesting ideas. I think between the both blogs a lot of good ideas have been made, can be implemented, and maybe help some others besides just me.

I've spent the past few weeks looking at the low and high temperatures of different areas out west. I have to say the whole USA is pretty cold lately. Unless you head down to Mexico, Baja, Southern California or Southern Arizona ... there are not a lot of daytime high temperatures. So there is a small pocket of warmth down in the SW corner of Arizona.

I track all of those temps on my iPhone, so at a glance I can tell what it's like, and what's it going to be like for the next few days. After having temperatures in the low teens here in the 'tropics' of southern Indiana, it may reach 50° here on Saturday and mid 40's at a minimum ... that will be a nice change of pace but short lived.

I just wanted to post something short today and thank everyone that commented here and on Al & Kelly's Blog giving some great suggestions.

A lot of simple answers that I could not see.

This morning the temperature had increased to 22° at the time I took these photos, the ground was hard as rock but the hounds still knew they could still smell any visitors that may have came into their yard last night. As usual in cold weather, Heidi was indecisive whether to join the other two. She didn't. Right after her photo, she spun and sprinted for the door to go back inside where it's warmer.

I had my 18-55m lens on the camera and by the time I ran inside to get the 70-210mm, the deer had already sprinted away.

The deer fled when they saw their picture was being taken

Nose always goes to the ground

She never likes cold temperatures

The analyzer

There Has Always Been an Elephant Sitting in the Room

I guess I have kind of touched on this in the past when discussing RVing with dogs. I haven't really said the exact question about what lingers in back of my mind ... it's the "big elephant" that sits in the corner of my mind. The elephant sits there observing thoughts, conversations on the blog or with friends by email. Maybe it wears a slight smile as it listens.

Through the few emails I have discussed this quetion, no one really seems to have an answer.

I'd like to get as many comments on this question as possible, good or bad ... maybe I'll see something I haven't thought of.

This HUGE question I feel has been my roadblock in making a decision:

I would be traveling solo, mostly boondocking. The home away from home could range from a tent, cargo trailer, Casita, Escape, an Older Class A, or a B+.

In the case of me having a medical emergency while on the road, solo traveling ...

What would happen to my three hounds if something were to happen during my medical emergency?

Zero Temperatures Makes My Mind Wander

Long time readers, blog followers know that when my mind starts to wander, things could get interesting. -2° was the high temperature yesterday. What the news calls the "polar vortex" I just call it a normal Midwestern winter. It happens every year. The difference is the tv news has to sell advertising and when they can create a crisis, and can try to scare the public with something like "a polar vortex" that will sell more advertising, more groceries ... still it's just winter and has happened annually for hundreds of years.

I'll get to last night's story later but I will say that I ignored all the warnings to stay inside and not travel anywhere last night as the temps dropped to -7° as I was driving. I know what I can do and can't do in bad weather, no need for the local news to throw out all of these warnings and try to scare me into staying locked up inside the house.

For those interested in my house heating experiment that I wrote about a few posts ago, it's turning out to be very successful in decreasing my "utility footprint", saving me some money and still able to keep fairly warm. In December 2013 with 12" of snow the 2nd week and single digit temps I used 1,495 kilowatts during that month and that was with me at work 5 days per week and gone 8-10 hours per day. During those times away I would turn the heat down or off.

This December, we didn't have the snow but it was just as cold. Actually it was pretty mild, with temperatures in the 30's to 40's range with the temperatures dropping below the 20s the last few days of the month. Even at those temperatures I needed to run the electric baseboard heat at times. My total usage for the the month was 873 kilowatts. A little over half of what I used last December, and only a $20 dent into the $301 credit I have built up after 7 months of billing. (May to May).

With the temperature at 6° outside at 11am, I just turned on my heat for the first time today around 1:30pm. Since this house holds that heat pretty efficiently, I'll turn off the heat when it gets to 65° inside. The house stays pretty comfortable at 60° with the older storm windows taking the brunt of the frozen weather.

During these temps in the teens and single digits I've only allowed the hounds out just long enough for them to dump their tanks, otherwise they would stay outside to the point of freezing their paws and then they would not be able to walk.

After a little over a week of changing Heidi's treatment and getting her off of the Atopica, I would have to say her condition on her paws and rear hucks as being stable. There was a slight decrease of improvement at the start. but I applied some diaper rash cream, more like a paste that has 13% zinc oxide to the red areas where she was starting to lick and chew again. That showed improvement.

I am trying to use that paste as little as possible because I want to see if the change in dog food to a no-grain, all pork diet from Merrick will show any visible signs of improvement. She isn't in any pain, has gained a lot of her energy back since being off the medication and just one paw shows where she has licked it a lot.

So, what about this "mind wandering"?

I wasn't going to complain this year about the cold weather ... and I haven't. It's part of the winter for the place I live, so this year I decided I would live with it and not focus on it.

It took one conversation with a local friend of mine that grew up in San Diego and Hawaii that started me house hunting ... in places that are warm. It's not like I had a lot to do outside in zero temperatures, so I had plenty of time to look on realtor dot com and zillow.

Still, it got me thinking again. Why not finally relocate to somewhere warmer and be able to enjoy outdoor activities year round instead of being locked inside the house during the three months of winter trying to keep warm?

The five main towns I focused on were Casa Grande AZ, Arizona City AZ, Eloy AZ, Alamogordo NM and Las Cruces NM. One area was on a suggestion because a friend had a relative that had moved there and really like it. The NM locations were past interests of mine. Needless to say I have all of those towns plus a few more, added to my iPhone weather app that comes with the phone so I can see and compare the weather of each place.

Between the two realty sites I was able to save different houses of interest. I had made up my mind that I would sell the one I live in and make a complete move west. I even considered moving as soon as I had the house packed up and cleaned, leaving an empty house for sale with a realtor. As usual, the thought of being a home owner raised it's ugly head and it was something I told myself I didn't want if I were to ever move again. I've never been a fan of house repairs or maintenance and cheap enough that I would rather do any of that work myself instead of hiring it out.

So that thought lingered as I scrolled through houses that were mostly trash when comparing them to what I had now, in the same price range. I knew I'd have to spend more to get the same quality I had now. I also knew even with a more expensive house or a newer house ... repair and maintenance ... were and always will be part of home ownership.

The thought of sunshine 300+ days per year and temperatures higher than 30° during the day also sounded great. During this time it was 2° where I was. I factored that in when analyzing my thought process. I remembered how much I liked living here last spring and summer and wrote about those feelings.

Still, maybe it is time to have a change of scenery. I've been retired now for eight months. Things have settled down, a retirement routine has been developed which is nothing different than what I did on weekends or paid holidays off from work. I never see the people I worked with, rarely hear from them so most of the time its the hounds and I.

A list of things to do once spring arrives as far as house upkeep keeps getting longer, just like every year. Winters are hard on houses and maintenance must be done before the next winter if you want to keep your house in good shape. It's like fighting against mother nature as she tries to drag the house away with her. Plus it's time consuming and always seems to be never ending.

The dreaded thought of home ownership was popping up at times while looking at all the houses under sunny skies ... it's something I have said I would not do if I decided to move. What about the hounds? I know from personal experience in my house renting days how hard it was to rent a house with just two hounds that weighed more than the "pet allowance" of 25 pounds. I have a little over 200 pounds of hounds walking around. I don't think condos would like us and even some houses that allows renting with pets ... just smaller than then ones I have.

After a call late afternoon from my old college roommate and friend for forty years, I tell the hounds I'm going on a road trip through dangerous sub-zero weather and I'll be back later ... don't stay up waiting on me ... I take off for a late dinner at Nick's, with a salad, a 12" strom and a few pale ale's.

My friend is also recently retired. His wife chooses to work until she is 70, so traveling is limited for him. He is the hiker that had a tent camping background but all during his younger premarried days.

Our conversation moves to the houses I've been looking at, the locations I am considering, while some of those areas nearby he has hiked many many years ago. Then he said something similar to what I've been say in this post about "home ownership". His house to him was one big albatross. He said if he was single, he would sell it immediately, buy an Airstream type trailer and park it somewhere. Now, he has not done any research on boondocking, state laws for boondocking, nor does he read any rv blogs but he said no matter what he would sell his house and buy a trailer to live in ... something smaller and a way to be more mobile.

He had no idea where he would park it but it would be out west somewhere. That led us to discussing the pros and cons of home ownership, even with ours being paid off, low property taxes and a low cost of living where we live. He lives in a town of of 120,000 people, one small college and a small university, not like me being outside a town of 2,500. By the time it was midnight and we were the only one's at Nicks because the students haven't returned to campus yet, I had decided once again that home ownership is not something I was looking for when changing my location.

As I made the 30 minute drive home watching my outside temperature gauge show -7°, then a -11° by the time I pulled into the driveway ... I thought about houses, the house I have, how everything is comfortable, yet I have the urge to make changes. I wasn't really interested in going through the new procedures (hassle) of purchasing a house by the time I went to bed.

Halfway through my coffee this morning, my mind was going a different direction where houses were not part of the formula. Of course the hounds were but not houses.

I think we've been down this road before.

Changing Heidi's Treatment

Before we get into the reasons why Heidi's treatment is changing direction, I thought I'd post a picture of Winston and Sadie outside on Christmas day with very unusual weather ... like high 40's.

Since they know the weather should be colder, all three hounds have done their annual migration to the leather couch. Luckily when I want to sit there to watch a game, a movie, or read a book ... one of them will move to another chair or spot on the floor.

Like I was saying, Christmas Day did not feel like the typical Midwestern winter day. It was just a few years ago we had over 24" of snow and I was clearing driveways a couple of different times due to the non-stop snowing. Not this year.

I think you will agree this next picture looks like a cool November day in the Midwest.

Christmas Day 2014

Sadie doesn't like the iPhone camera but loves posing in front of the Nikon D3200

I made a mistake in my last post when I wrote about Heidi's Atopica dose. I had put 500mg per day but it was 100mg per day, I've corrected the previous post. Huge difference. That comes in a very large capsule. Since it has to be given 1 hour before her meal or 2 hours after her meal, hiding the capsule in cheese or peanut butter was not an option.

I am not even sure if that would have worked, since she is very good at separating what she doesn't like to eat. Luckily she is a very good dog when I open her mouth and I can slide the large capsule down the back of her throat without her trying to bite me or fighting it.

With the daily dose of Atopica I was seeing improvement like I wrote about the last post. Our goal was a gradual decrease in dosage from daily to hopefully 1 per week or 2 per month.

December 12, as per the vet's instructions I decreased the dosage to every other day. Within a few days I started seeing her itch more, and she was back to chewing her feet. Her spots were not nearly as bad as they were October 28 when we took the initial trip to the vet but her rear hocks were still hairless and red as well as her armpits. 

I had mentioned the armpit issue in my last vet visit November 29 but was told due to the excess skin a basset hound has it was having a hard time drying out and healing after the medicated shampoos. That seemed strange to me because her armpits have never been a problem until October. I can't say I was thrilled with that answer at the time but nodded my head and moved on.

When she recently started itching again, chewing herself again after 8 weeks of treatment ... I decided to read more about Atopica. Back in October I had read about any possible side effects Heidi might have taking Atopica plus what the long term effects were. All the information I read in October seemed to show it was the drug to use for allergies without using steroids. It had been used in people for years but not dogs and cats until 2003.

Someway in that initial research I missed the long term effect  that Atopica had.

Last week I did an internet search for "Is Atopica safe for dogs".  A lot of links showed up, some dog forums where dog owners were discussing their results and of course places to buy it online. The majority of people on the forums and customer reviews said Atopica was great, they had used it for years and they had given their dog a better quality of life by controlling their allergies. All said their dogs lived to be 9 years or older.

Like any medication for dogs, unless it's something out of the ordinary, if a dog lives a healthy life while on the medication and dies at the age or 9 or older, who can say the medication had anything to do with failing kidneys, or a bad heart?

These are the two articles that made me ask myself if I was giving her the right medication. They made me reconsider different options for treating her allergies. I decided a different direction in her treatment might be best:

Atopica: A Dangerous Path - click here 

Is Atopica Safe? - click here

Also the websites you find in searches, I'm using DuckDuckGo instead of Google now, how many of those sites discussing the reasons why you should not use that specific drug are really trying to steer you to buy their recommended dog food or products? As an example when I bought Dinovite last summer, a food supplement that did not work ... all of their email replies were telling me to stop all dog food and use their raw food formula along with their other supplements.

It's like a Catch-22. Which should you believe?

I decided the plan I chose at the vet October 28 was not working as well as I expected. Yes, she did give me 3 choices  to TRY to treat the allergies and I chose the Atopica plan. She also wrote in her notes to call her if Heidi's condition worsened or failed to improve.

"failed to improve" ... While on a daily dose, it did improve but not everything I expected. If Atopica was to help stop the itching and chewing, why was I having to continue Benadryl to stop the itching and chewing?  Like I said, her rear hocks were red and hairless and her armpits were hairless and at times red. 

So I decided that after 8 weeks of treatment, $300 worth of Atopica, plus Benadryl every 8-12 hours to prevent itching ... the current plan was not working.

The Benadryl was suppose to be used up until the time there was improvement yet the itching never stopped after 8 weeks.

I told my problem to a friend of mine that rescues dogs and cats. Some of her dogs have had medical problems and with her medical background she is very informed about different medications. She replied later with a long detailed email describing what Heidi was doing or really what her weak immune system was doing ... along with what Atopica was doing.

She agreed with my idea of changing treatment plans. Instead of just putting a "band aid" on the problem, try and strengthen Heidi's immune system through a diet change and possibly adding pro-biotics to her food. As I said in a different blog post, Heidi had these allergies when I bought her from the Basset Rescue. She was under regular medication, which was later changed by my vet to a different pill, then finally steroid shots after the pills were no longer working more than a week or two.

I spent days reading all I could about Atopica, visited forums that were linked in these articles and also looked again at the dog foods I had fed her over the past three years. I found some interesting things on a forum of Scottish Terrier owners where Atopica was discussed. That is where I read where many owners were happy giving their dogs Atopica, with good results.

There were 3 other owners that stood out. 

They stopped Atopica due to the same problems Heidi was still having. They changed their dog food with some great results. None of them worked for the dog food company, nor were affiliates. All three thought it would take months before they might see improvement but they were shocked how fast they saw change. One of the three said she even saw improvement after two weeks of feeding Merrick's Pork and Sweet Potato blend.

Pork is one ingredient I have never considered in a dog food. I've always fed good quality dog food to my hounds, or at least those that are highly rated by Dog Food Adviser. I've gone back and forth between grain free and regular food as long as it did not include wheat, corn or by-products. Most of those dog foods were Chicken and Rice or Lamb and Rice blend. Most had fruits and vegetables added to the ingredients.

After years of researching dog food ingredients, even filling out a spreadsheet of their first 5 ingredients so I could compare foods at a glance ... there was one thing I didn't consider with Heidi ... maybe she has a chicken allergy.

Was she allergic to Chicken or chicken products? Or was the Canola Oil I found in the Taste of the Wild no grain food causing problems. I normally feed the Diamond Naturals Large Breed with Chicken and Rice or Fromm Chicken and Rice. When I decided at different times to go to a grain free food, thinking that might be Heidi's problem I buy Taste of the Wild .. not paying any attention to Canola Oil that was in the Salmon blend.

Last week I didn't like what I read in either of these two articles about Canola Oil now being added to dog food. Taste of the Wild has added Canola Oil to a lot of their different blends of dog food.

Canola article No.1 - click here

Canola article No.2 - click here

So the search for a new dog food was on. I hate the thought on how much dog food costs now, as they raise prices while reducing the size of the bag but I decided I would go with grain free, no chicken an no lamb. Since three of those people had results with a specific kind of dog food I decided to go with Merrick's Grain Free Real Pork and Sweet Potato. This blend also has Salmon Meal and Salmon Oil.

Yes, all of her allergies could be environmental and probably are but the issue is what I am doing now isn't working. When I combine what my friend told me about allergies and immune systems with the three people that got results using this specific food, I have to try it.

So to finally end this longer than planned post, I started the new treatment this past Saturday by giving her the medicated shampoo bath. I am mixing the old and new food 50/50 while gradually changing to 100% new food over 3-4 days. As far as ingredients such as Canola Oil, or Rice, etc...you might think those are small amounts and may or may not have an effect. I asked my vet the first visit if the Wheat in the Milk Bone brand bone would have an effect on her, the vet replied that even if the dog licked the bone, it was enough to be absorbed and be a potential problem. So, that is the way I look at individual dog food ingredients.

After 8 weeks and 60 Atopica Capsules, this is what Heidi looked like on Saturday:

Rear Hock

Armpit

Atopica did improve her paws and neck area. So that improvement that made me consider that still being an option. Yet, treating her without harsh drugs is my first choice. I do not expect instant results and not even the two week results where those forum owners spoke about. All dogs are different as well as treatments. I plan do this food combination for months before I decide if any changes are needed.

I have started the Merrick grain free pork and sweat potato dog food and for relief of any skin rashes I will be using Baby Spa Shea Butter Diaper Cream based on my friends recommendation for dog skin care.

Below are the before and after pictures.

October 28

December 27

October 28

December 27