The Good Life

I have stopped feeling sorry for my pup, having seen that she does not seem to mind the fact that she only has three good legs. Azuki's hind right thigh bone may be dying of a a slow death, and her leg muscle might be atrophying by the minute as we speak, but her spirit hasn't changed. She is still a bundle of joy and energy. Azuki is one pup that never forgets to stop and smell the flowers (because she likes to eat them).

In fact, Azuki has mastered the art of running and jumping on only one hind leg--and is back to fully enjoying her walks, sniffing dog pee, eating grass (and then puking them out) , and laying around small patches of grass.

Using only three legs, however, does seem to tire her out more easily. So these days she spends more time snoozing in the evenings. We took the below pictures in one evening, in sequence:

She starts off with sleeping on our comfy, furry rug (bought just for her!)...



Then her pa gets on the rug with her and massages her legs while she continues to snooze (he does this every night, hoping to restore some blood ciculation in her legs---what a great pa!)



Azuki then decides that enough is enough, leave-me-alone-already-I-need-my-uninterrupted -beauty-sleep-damn-it-don't-you-know-that-it's-hard-work-being-this-cute?!?

She proceeds to sleep in her doggie bed by our computer.



Then we look over, and saw that, funnily, our pup is sleeping ON HER BACK, with all four paws up in the air, twisting into difficult yoga-like positions. How this is comfortable we do not know:


Upon closer examination (another ingenious work of Matt), we discover that the pup is not only sleeping soundly depsite annoying humans flashing camera light in her face, but that her one lower tooth is sticking out prominently (Azuki has a clinically severe underbite and a little fang on the bottom of her mouth that doesn't fit into her jaw....so it always sticks out even when her mouth is closed):



If your mouth is not formed in a "o" shape right now with an audible "awwww......" coming out of it, induced by the above cuteness overload, you are some kind of dead inside. Seriously, can you believe we were able to handle this much cuteness without spontaneous combustion?


Azuki goes under the knife on Monday, 9/25. Let's hope everything goes well for our little rock star!

Update on Azuki's Diagnosis and Her Monster Truck

We went to a orthopedic specialist on Friday, and Azuki was actually diagnosed not with hip dysplasia as we originally thought, but with another hip condition, called Legg-Calve Perthes Disease. Now, this makes a lot more sense because hip dysplasia is known to be really rare in small dogs, but leg perthes disease is very common in small and toy breeds. Although, the two conditions result in very similar symptons and outcomes---lameless of the leg and arthritis of the hip. It's just that instead of her hip bones being out of socket, now it is thought that her thigh bone is dying of a slow death from a genetic condition which interrupts blood supply to the head of her thigh bone, where it touches the hip bone. It is not a better diagnosis by any means--maybe even a little bit worse since without surgical intervention, more and more parts of her bone will deterioate. In fact, from new x-rays that he took, the vet already saw a fracture in her thigh bone, which would explain a lot of the pain that she is experiencing.

In either case, the surgical treatment would be to surgically remove the ball and socket part of her hip joint, in anticipation that a false joint will be formed by muscles and cartiledge over time. With proper recuperation, her leg should be without pain and recovers most of its originalyfunctions---she should be able to run, jump, and play as she wishes--although it might take over 6 months for that to happen. She might always look a little funny because she will not have a hip joint on one side, and might have one leg shorter than another. I have come to accept her fate, and with Azuki's positive outlook on life, I highly doubt that would stop her from enjoying her life. Plus, wouldn't that just make her more special?? She will be a skinny, lanky, hipless crippled dog--but she will be OUR very own defected little pup, and we think she will be so much cuter for it.

We have scheduled her surgery for September 25th, just two weeks from now. I would want to do it even sooner, except the surgeon is very busy, and that is the earliest date that he will be able to accomodate her. She will be hospitalized for one week until her stitches are removed.
Since she will be hospitalized anyways, Matt and I decided to go ahead with our originally plans to visit Kyoto that week--we had thought about canceling them because of Azuki's condition, but since she will have to stay in the hospital anyways....heck, why not enjoy ourselves while our beloved pup languishes in a tiny metal cage in a foreign hospital, utterly alone, all bandaged up and suffering from post-surgery pain? Actually, it is the hospital's policy that she must stay for that long, and as bad as I feel about it, it's probably a good thing that I do not see her right afterwards. I have heard that the first week after surgery is truly heartbreaking, because your little pet is indeed in a lot of pain from HAVING HER HIP BONE SHAVED OFF BY REALLY SHARP SURGICAL SAWS. If I had to see that, it might really upset me. I might have to run out and buy even more ridiculous pet objects, like the pet stroller I bought above.

Okay, I feel the need to dedicate some space to defend my purchase. Before you make any judgements on the state of my sanity, I must first say that I was indeed in a rather fragile emotional state when I bought that piece of near-industrial equipment. I had just found out that my dog was born lame and that I should stop taking her out for walks and confine her to her cage for the rest of her life (the vet later clarified, when I cried in her office, that she only meant for one month, not forever, but the damage to my psyche was done). I had meant to buy a pet cart to take her around so she doesn't have to live her entire life within metal bars, so she can at least go out and see people and get petted even if she could never run like the wind again. And of course, only the best will do for my furbaby. Like I said, I was in a very fragile state of mind.

I saw a regular pet stroller (if such thing could be considered normal) in a pet accesory shop, but when I put Azuki in to test it, the cart inside actually TIPPED OVER, causing Azuki to crash into the ground, PROBABLY FURTHER DAMAGING HER BAD LEG. The pet shop person was like, "Oh, sorry, this could be a little unstable so you have to be careful." And I was like, "are you F*CKing kidding me your defected product almost killed my dog you B*TCH." Okay, I didn't say that. But only because I didn't know how to say it in Japanese.

Well, it turns out that the carts they had in the store all had "removable" (aka. DANGEROUS) bags inside, because the point is that you can remove it and then use it like a doggie carrier, so they are clip on bag plus wheels and does somewhat serve a dual purpose. Well, I have a doggie carrier/bag. In fact, I have three (two of them are now too small so we bought the third one so her nose and front paw wouldn't be pressed against the end of the bag, making web indents on her nose because she was too long to fit). So I told the shop keeper that I would like to have something more sturdy. What I meant to say was, I wanted a dog stroller that won't cripple my dog's other good leg.

The shop keeper proceeded to whip out a catalog (yes, a doggie accessory catalog), and showed me this beautiful doggie strollers made in the style and shape just like a baby stroller. Except much fancier. They are like the creme-de-la-creme of baby strollers. Instead of 4 wheels, it only has three. But, with three wheels, it can better navigate different terraines--between sidewalk and grass!. It is perched much higher than a regular dog carte, so the dog can look out without having to stand on its hindlegs (which of course, Azuki cannot do anymore). I hesitated at the price. Would a dog need such an expensive, over-the-top stroller? What would Matt think? But most importantly, what would MY MOTHER THINK (hi mom!)??? Why should I care about what my mom thinks when I am no longer spending her money, you ask? Well, how much do you want to bet that I am going to get a phone call tomorrow that starts out with, "Are you crazy?? blah blah blah spending money like that...blah blah blah" hehehe.

But, as I was very emotional, you see, I ordered the stroller anyway. From just a photo. After all, how ridiculous could it be??

Well, a week later, I went to pick it up. When they took it out of the box...my eyes BUSTED OPEN and I think my jaw dropped a few inches. This thing was HUMONGOUS. The wheels....they are like...bicycle wheels. The stroller itself....it was like the type of strollers that people take their baby JOGGING. Seriously, it was an exact replicate of the high-end jogging stroller that I saw at Baby Emporium in Hawaii, a baby boutique that sold leather baby sofa chairs. How do I know that? Because we bought one for our neice.

I was so embarassed to even take it home. Azuki looked like a human equivalent of a hobbit in that huge ass stroller. From the back, people really couldn't tell if I was pushing a baby or, like a 5 year old child, except when they got ahead of me, and realized that the creature inside was a dog. I felt the need to explain to every passerby that pointed and laughed, that my dog had a bad leg and she can't really walk. It was a mortifying walk home.

When Matt saw the stroller, his first words were, "I don't even want to know how much that costs." And I said, "No you don't, and I will never tell."

But since I got the monster, I am determined to use it. In fact, this weekend, we took Azuki to a neighborhood Masuri (summer festival), where vendors sold Japanese street food, children dressed in yukatas, and old men wore equivalents of see-throw white tighties. Since it was really crowded, with the danger of Azuki being trampled on, so we took her in a stroller. Afterwards, we went to the supermarket and I waited outside while matt bought two bags of rice--which we carted home!

Matt took a few pictures at the matsuri. You can see from one photo that Azuki's stroller is SO MUCH BIGGER than that of a human baby stroller rolling by next to us (that was the ingenious work of Matt, who got yelled at by me because he took FOREVER to wait for the other stroller to go by). In the other photo, Azuki is being mopped by a bunch of over-enthusiastic little kids, whom we later had to run away from because they gave her too much love than she can handle.

Craziness? Yes it was. I comfort myself by saying that when we have a baby (a human baby!), we can stick him/her in there too. Maybe we can stick both the dog and the baby in there--I bet they would both fit. Did I mention that I was really emotional when I made the purchase?

Bad News

I have bad news. Very bad news. While we were away on vacation last week, Azuki was diagnosed with a potentially debilitating genetic disease called hip dysplasia. This condition essentially means that she was born with with badly formed hips, which would causes her pain and eventually arthritis. Because of the pain, which will only get worse as the bones wear and tear as they age, this condition greatly restrict the thinngs that dogs can do--like run, jump, or even walking long distances. In severe cases, dogs can have trouble just getting up or laying down.

No one could have suspected this would happen to Azuki. First, although this condition is rather common amongst large breed dogs, it is actually very rare in small breeds. Second, for a lot of dogs, the symptons also don't show up until much later in life, after 8 or 9 years of age.

Last but not least, Azuki has been one of the most active pups that ANYONE has ever known. She has never shown any indication that she would have any trouble with her legs--I mean, this blog actually documents how hyper active she has been---she jumps all over the place, runs like a wild animal, hops around on her hind legs---in fact, we have always thought her legs must have been stronger than most puppies from the circus tricks that she performs for us on a daily basis.

In the last couple of weeks, however, I have started to notice that Azuki is slowing down a bit. She doesn't walk nearly as much as she ususally does, especially in the morning, and she gets tired more easily. She is also not as hyper as she was before. But because she is still super genki all the other times, I have always thought it was because the summer heat was slowing her down, and perhaps at 11 months of age she is just maturing into a calmer adult.

Well, when I went to pick Azuki up from her puppy kindergarden after boarding her for one week while we were away, the trainer sat me down and told me that we needed to talk. My first thought was that perhaps Azuki got bitten---or perhaps worse yet, she bit someone or another dog. But, in very elementary Japanese, the trainer explained that they took her to get X-rays at the vet because Azuki was acting a bit strange---reluctant to do commands like down and roll over which she already knew. Then, they noticed that she raisesd her rear right leg just ever so slightly off of the ground when she is standing at times, and started to bunny hop when she is running. I have actually noticed this at one time or another in the last month, and I have even asked Matt if he thinks she is running kind of funnny. But whenever I have suspected something, Azuki does something that makes me feel silly for worrying, like doing a 360 degree flip in the air and hop around in circles.

The trainer proceeded to tell me that the vet said she was born with a bad leg. Now, it was really hard for me to believe, since I always thought azuki was born with EXTRAORDINARY powerful legs. The stunt which she used to pull on walks, where she would hop on her hind legs like a baby kangaroo, was so impressive, that one time Matt was walking Azuki and a little kid saw her and pointed at her in awe, "Doggie, in super mode!"

So I was very concerned but didn't actually think it was the end of the world. Until I went to the vet next day to see the x-rays myself.

The vet pulled a medical dictionary, which had English beneath the Japanese. When I saw the words canine hip dysplasia, I was really shocked--because everything that I have read about it before always made it sound like it was extremely rare in small dogs. Which means that our pup is just really, really unlucky. And that totally sucks.

Things started to get worse as the vet explained that there really is no cure, and the reason why we had no idea was because she was so light and small before, that there was never enough weight to create pain in her poorly formed joints. But now, just topping a whopping 3 kilos, coupled with all the strain that she must have had put on her joints from running, jumping, and hopping...all of sudden are causing her to feel pain. The vet said that because there is no cure, the goal now is just to manage the pain. She shouldn't take walks, play, or move around too much.

At this point, tears were streaming down my face uncontrollably. I had lost it. What is the point of living, I ask the vet, if she can't do any of the things that she enjoys? What kind of life is that for a dog?

The vet quickly explained that this is only temporary, until the pain subsides. And after that, she can go for short walks. Surgery is a possbility down the road---but it would only be a salvage operation and she probably would never fully regain the use of that one leg, nor would she be guaranteed to live a life completely devoid of pain.

Come on, short walks? People who think that my dog can be somehow satisfied with a brief walk down the block has obvious never met Azuki. If you have seen her run, if you have seen the blissful crazed look in her eyes--you would know that running is her way of expressing herself--like how humans dance to their favorite tune.

I wouldn't feel nearly as bad if Azuki started showing symptons much later in life, when she has lived a life satiated with joy and pampered bliss. There is no way that she has ran through enough bushes, rolled in enough dirt, wrestled with enough puppies, or sniffed enough doggie butts. I am well aware that there are much greater sufferings in this world, but since I primarily live in the world that only consists of me, matt, and our dog, I couldn't help but feel a great sense of injustice---why must this happen to my dog, especially when the chances were suppose to be so slim to begin with?

Matt and I had the inevitable semi-talk over the phone (he is still in New York) of what we should do with Azuki from here onwards. Although no one said it, I am sure in the back of both of our minds the terrifying idea surfaced--the possibility that one day we might have to put her down if her condition does not impove. Well, Matt talked sensibly while I just cried over the phone. Being always the logical, calm one, he doesn't question why it happened, just what we should do to make her better. "We can try to get her to swim to strengthen her back legs. Let's spoil her more. Remember, we will take care of her no matter what," he said. At that point, I think I could have melted in my own puddle of tears, I was overwhelmed by my sadness for Azuki, but also so touched by Matt's love and sense of responsibility. One thing Azuki does not lack is people who love her.

I came to my sense and we decided that of course we would take care of Azuki and make sure that she has a comfortable, enjoyable life--no matter what the costs. Heck, we have already spent a small fortune on our dog just for all the non-essential stuff, why not spend a large fortune to ensure her wellness? We have committed ourselves to this little furry creature, and I will certainly find the best medical care for her possible.

Even if one day, she is unable to use her legs and have to go around in a custom-made doggie wheel chair---then so be it. As long as she is happy, well-loved, and not in pain, we would make that happen!

Next week I am taking Azuki to see a specialist in canine hip dysplasia. Right now, I am mostly concerned with getting her the best anti-inflammtory and pain medication, as well as the most effective supplements (for cartiledge formation) so she can start using her bad leg again. The goal right now is actually for her to feel as little pain as possible so she would start using her bad leg during walks, and build up muscle mass, which would take some strain off of her joints. I have also done extensive research online, and found that at least in one veterinary specialist hospital in the US does total hip replacements (must like how it is done in humans) for smaller dogs, which I believe until recently was not available to dogs under 25 pounds. Total hip replacement apparently is the ONLY option that would give her almost complete function of her hips back, pain free, and allowing her to have the most normal life possible. I am still not sure if Azuki, at her size, is a candidate, but at least there is some hope.

In the meantime, Azuki is getting even MORE attention than before, if that is actually possible. She seems to be still a happy dog, although I am sure she would like to go out more, like before. I have been taking her out on very short walks and then carrying her around a little so she can be outside and people-watch. I just ordered a ridiculous pet stroller, so I can still take her out to see the world but not have her walk more than she can handle.

Hooray to Azuki the very tough pup!