Aaron has worked really hard to train her to sit, lay down, get back up, go to her bed, go to her crate, etc. She can obey voice commands and hand signals.
She is very smart. She can be very sneaky. She's very excitable. She's wonderful with the boys and very gentle.
She thinks Akuna, our miniature Australian shepherd, is her personal dog-toy. She bites his fur relentlessly, and sometimes she appears that she has a beard but it's really just Akuna-fur hanging around her mouth.
She also LOVES to snuggle Akuna. She will purposely sit on him when we tell her to get in her bed. Sometimes, though, these two can get in sync and share a dog-bed and snuggle.
She's very messy when she drinks water, and instead of coming up to us to lick our hands, she will run her jowls on our hands or our pant legs. She earned the nickname "Jowly" through this behavior.
Her other nicknames include "Merry Jerry" and "Merry Derryberry." Her official name is Merry Grace.
On Monday of this week, we took Merry to have her fixed. This is something we planned to do anyway, but it was important to have it done since she was the runt of the litter and might not have been able to support a litter of puppies on her own.
We took her to the local Animal Alliance Spay/Neuter Clinic, where all they do are spay and neuter surgeries. This seemed like a good option to us because they are skilled at what they do, they are able to provide the surgery for a lower cost than our normal veterinarian, and we had a personal recommendation by a family friend who has a female Boxer who went there to be fixed.
Before surgery, probably after starting anesthesia, Merry had a seizure. It lasted less than a minute, but she did lose consciousness and urinate on herself. Once she was stable, they moved her out of the operating room and gave me a call. My mom and I went to pick Merry up to bring her home.
I spoke at length with the Animal Alliance Clinic, as well as with our veterinarian office, and to Aaron. If we were to reschedule the surgery for a later date, the Animal Alliance Clinic does not have medicine for which they could administer to Merry via IV if she happened to have a seizure during the surgery. If I took her to our normal veterinarian for blood work, they would confirm the diagnosis that the Animal Alliance gave us which simply states that she has seizures. There is no cure for seizures, and medication might not always help. So, instead of paying for the blood work (which is more expensive than the cost to get her fixed at our vet's office), we are going to give her some time off from this added stress. In the future, if we get her fixed, we will take her to our veterinarian for the procedure, where they would be able to administer seizure meds via an IV during surgery, if needed.
For now, we are letting her just be. We're keeping things low key and letting her self-regulate. She was pretty droopy on the car ride home as you can somewhat tell from the picture above. However, once we got her inside our home and she saw Akuna, she instantly started prancing around and jumping on him-- like a normal little sister. :)
Merry, we love you and the spunk you bring to this family. We wouldn't trade you for anything in the world. You're now our puppy with seizures, but we love you still. And you're here to stay!
Until Next Time,
Much Love,
Reba
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