Awesomely Domesticated: Happy Birthday Gunnar and Rhea!

On January 21st, my puppies turned 8. And thank god for that.

2013 was a tough year for them. It started off with promise... In Feb, Rhea started a 3 month stint of no seizures. But that was followed with her spiraling into a seizure every 5 days or so. We were frantic to find her some help so we upped her meds, we tried new vets and then we tried new drugs. Unfortunately, one of the vets we visited suggested stepping her down from her main drug at a risky interval. Against our better judgement we did and that didn't go well for us. One morning she started seizing and just never stopped. She had somewhere around 15 legitimate seizures that day but she was never fully "back" from any of them. This was as close to Status that she's ever gotten. She ended up spending two days at the NC State Neurology department on a constant drip of anti seizure drugs. Those were the saddest days. Walking two of my pups and not three..getting asked from neighbors where our pup was and explaining she's at NC State which usually means the worst. We thought we were going to lose her. The first time they tried weening her off the drip she seized again but on the second attempt she held it together. Now she's on different meds and careful watch. She's up to about 10+ days between seizures and that might be as good as we'll ever get. In conjunction with all this, Gunnar broke a 7-8 month seizure free stint. There's no winning with epilepsy.

Masi, bless her soul, is perfectly fine.

To celebrate their life so far I thought I'd post a timeline of them growing up. It was so much fun going through my old photos and finding their puppy and adolescent photos. Made my heart go pitter patter.

This was the day we brought them home from the farm in Hillsborough, NC. Just for scale, those tennis balls are about the size of a ping pong ball.

Fluffy girl herself when she still had a pink nose, no name and all her ears.

Look at that face. The tiny little blaze on his forehead. The ears!

This must have been a couple weeks later. Funny note - Rhea still sleeps next to the toilet.

Fast forward a year. Just after our pups 1 yr birthday, we adopted Masi. Now we had 3 Border Collies in a 1500 square foot townhome with no yard. I believe that is considered constitutionally insane. (But no really, having no yard is no excuse to not have a dog. It actually forces you to go walk your dog for their exercise. If you don't want to do that to begin with, you don't need to have a dog).

This is sometime after their 1st birthday I believe. (Special note for K-man-Kato in the picture. The greatest Rottie I'll ever know).

This was as close as I got to their second birthday. I wasn't very good at taking yearly photos in the beginning. Notice how Rhea's still pretty "smooth" in this picture.

This is one of my all time favorite pictures of the pups. This is at the Scott Kerr Dam in Wilksboro NC where the Burn Race is held every year. We went in November and woke up to frost and a steaming lake.

3 yrs old puppies! Rhea's finally starting to fill out now. At this point we're still in the townhome and Rhea had just started having seizures (Gunnar at this point had not).

This is during the snow storm of 2010. We were in our second home at this point. Gunnar has started having seizures and we had a foster pup named Lucky (not picture). This was the first good snow the pups had seen. Man they loved it. Rhea still had all her ears at this point!

5th Birthday Photo! Rhea in her full plumage! We hadn't started buzzing her yearly yet. Oh man, her ear is lobbed off in the picture already. Not so funny story...don't trust box fans. I came home to check on the dogs at lunch one day to find the tip of Rhea's ear chopped off. The culprit was the box fan we'd left running to keep them cool. Now she has a U in the tip of her left ear. Poor girl....she's still cute though.

6th Birthday Photo! I was getting good at doing this yearly now. This was the last year that Rhea and Gunnar had regular intervals between seizures. This was also the last year Rhea's right ear stood up at all (Masi bit it during one of Rhea's seizures and scarred the cartilage so it won't stand up now).

7th Birthday Photo! So yeah, this was last year and already featured on this blog but oh well. This was probably smack dab in the middle of Rhea's 3 month break from seizures and we had no idea how much we were about to go through with her.

Rhea's haircut for 2013. She looks like she did before she went POOF with all the hair!

And then the pups turned 8 this month. It's so sad to know that considering their breed and their health issues they're already over the hill. It's also sad to see them slow down. They're Border Collies, so they've been going strong for 8 years without a hint of tempering their energy. Now all of a sudden they're slow to get up from laying down. They limp after hard runs, they fall a lot more easily and an injury takes a couple days to recovers. One thing remains the same though...the spark in their pretty brown eyes that is the calling card for their unrelenting spirit. Such good pups...

For their birthday cake this year the pups got gourmet (as in I bought them and didn't make them) doggy peanut butter cups!

Rhea was very confused at first. It smells like chocolate...she knows she's not supposed to eat chocolate... Gunnar on the other hand wouldn't stop inching forward long enough for me to get a decent picture.