Super Sammy

Happy 5th Birthday to Sammy! Such a happy milestone for us as we really were not sure 7 months ago when he was diagnosed with osteo if he would make it! Sammy turned 5 on Saturday, October 1st. He had a fantastic day. In addition to October 1st being Sam’s birthday, it’s a double great day because it is the first day all the beaches open back up to dogs. It always seems a little silly to me that we can’t share beaches during the high season, but we are confined to the one beach across from our house – it’s pretty rocky so no one bothers us. But as of October 1st, we can go anywhere we want! So we headed to a nice big beach with lots of room for the boys to run….and run (and swim) they did. Sammy spent the majority of the time in the water. He swam up and down the beach parallel to the shore with an occassional break on the sand to rest (and to make sure we were still there!). I think he is his happiest in the water.

And then we celebrated his birthday with a doggie birthday cake. I will confess, I put the birthday hat on only for a photo op and took it right off – as you can see, he didn’t like it very much.

But he did like the cake! And Macklin got a very special big brother treat.

And then the not so good – Sunday morning I woke up to Sammy absolutely gnawing on his back leg. When I jumped out of bed and took a look, he had completely chewed the inside of his back leg raw! It was just awful looking. I brought him downstairs and cleaned him all up – I used some peroxide and an antibiotic spray and then just watched him for the day. We kept a good eye on him but then he also started chewing on his front leg. By yesterday morning he had a bunch of sores all over him. Poor bugger. So I took him to the vet and he has a massive infection in his body. They think it’s likely because of his compromised immune system from all the chemo. As always, he was the perfect patient. Our vet was not in the office yesterday so we had to see someone new. She was shocked at how wonderful he looked – she agreed with us that he still really does not know he is sick and she commented that she had never seen such a happy looking sick dog. Sam is so funny! Any way, he’s now on a high dose of antibiotics and a low does of a steroid. That’s all fine with Sam as I think he was missing his peanutbutter covered “treats” when we took him off the metronomics! So not super bad, but not great. The sores are just itchy now so we just need to keep him from chewing – he’s been good so far. And in the spirit of glass ½ full — we had a horrible thunder storm last night so Sammy ran around barking from 3:30am to 6:30am – so while JB and I are running on fumes today…..at least it stopped him from biting at his legs! Sigh…I need a nap!