The Couch Crew : Ziva update May 1

Hey.

Checking in to give you an update on Ziva.

Didn't know you needed one???

As we came upon her 11th month, we knew we were getting close & finally scheduled her spay.

Because our luck is such that it is, she actually began her heat cycle a few days prior. Poor baby.

We checked in twice with the vet, the day it was discovered & when they called to confirm her appointment, if it was safe to happen with her beginning heat.

There are many out there on the web that will tell you to wait until the cycle is over. That you should NOT spay a dog in heat and give you so many reasons why.

Vets actually do this somewhat regularly so it is not unheard of. We went ahead with her spay. The day we dropped her off, the scale said she weighed 75#. A big difference from the 86# Rich had told me about. Two different scales.

Wednesday we had her umbilical hernia fixed as well as her spay.
She's home now with the "Cone of Shame" and doing pretty good. She just finished her rimadyl & is still on antibiotics.

She doesn't hate the cone like her previous siblings have, but she'll be very happy when it's off. We've limited her "play" as well. We don't let her into the basement & we have her on sedatives when she gets a little too much energy. We don't want issues like when Volos had his last tumor removal surgery.

However we do have a new "concern". In a little discussion on her breeders FB page a picture of one of her sisters was posted with her weight (90#).

The Breeder reached out to me because she was a bit concerned about Ziva's reported weight. Her brother, Entei (fka teal) is almost 100#. I don't know about her other sister's exact weight, but since the Breeder has her--i'm assuming it's along the lines of the others.

Because Z was born with a heart murmur that has disappeared over time, she wants us to look into getting an echo for her. While nothing has been said about it in any of her last visits, we think it may be a good idea.

So I reached out to the vet to ask them their thoughts. SO we'll probably be scheduling that test in the future.. Looked up the cost, luckily it doesn't appear to be too expensive. Regardless, we'd have done it even if it was.

She's a good girl though. We're a few weeks away from the big "1" . Can't believe my baby has gotten so big. She's been through so many changes, but she's coming out on the other end as a pretty good girl.
We still struggle with the whole "no jumping" thing, but most of the other major issues have diminished or rarely show themselves..

Lada loves her. Volos loves her. Even Peryn is showing more tolerance of her. She's going to be crazy when she is all healed in a week and a half.

That's the update on Ms Ziva for now.

The others are doing fine.