An Update

OK, so we took Gracie to our vet. He doesn't think her patellar luxation is anywhere near bad enough to consider surgery. She walks normally and he said grade 2 luxations aren't that bad. He did say she might get arthritis later on because of it, though. He couldn't say with certainty that she won't progress to grade 3 luxation, but I didn't really expect him to be able to - he doesn't have a crystal ball, after all.

With regards her eye, he likened pigmentary keratitis to how the world looks to us wearing sunglasses. He said it would drive a person crazy but dogs just get on with things. We have some steroid eye drops for her, which we need to give her twice a day every day for the rest of her life. Luckily they were only $17 - although that's obviously going to end up costing a lot over the course of her lifetime! At least they're not like $50 a time though. That's what I thought they might cost. The vet said that the drops should stop her condition getting any worse, and hopefully will prevent her good eye from developing the condition too.

I'm still annoyed that we only just found out what APARN already knew - it doesn't seem very fair, really. I'm not sure how to broach the subject with them, obviously we're keeping Gracie but I think they ought to be aware that they should have told us what they knew. It was quite stressful to see that information last night, out of the blue. At least if they'd told us we would've known, and we could've got more information.

You know, I think Gracie knew something was up this morning because she hardly ate any of her breakfast (I mean, she ate maybe 15% of it - that's 15% of about a third of a cup, so really not much) and on the way to the vet she was whining a lot in the car. She doesn't normally do that. The difference this time was that we left Suzie at home. I wonder if she thought we were going to take her somewhere and leave her there? I mean, like her previous owner did when they surrendered her to APARN. In the vet's office she was shaking like a leaf. I just kept cuddling her and eventually she settled down. Poor little girl, I hate when she's scared like that.

It's such a relief that we can keep her - I really was starting to think that we'd have to give her back, we don't have thousands of dollars lying around for really expensive surgery; we're hoping to buy a house this year! Hopefully Gracie will never need surgery on her knees, if we're lucky they won't get any worse. As long as she has a good quality of life, that's the main thing.

Would've been nice to know...

We didn't end up going to see the in-laws on Saturday, as hubby was called for work at 3.30 p.m. and ended up having to work until after 11 p.m. We went over yesterday instead.

When we got home I had an email from APARN - Gracie's paperwork. We were pretty shocked to find that she has 2 pretty serious pre-existing conditions which we knew nothing of. She was seen by a veterinarian the day before we first met her, and they wrote a report stating that she has bilateral patellar luxation and also pigmentary keratitis in her left eye which is gradually making her blind. It's a condition where the cornea becomes covered in a layer of filmy pigment and causes blindness - so far, her cornea is 40% covered so she's effectively almost half blind in that eye. The patellar luxation is in both of her hind legs and is currently grade 2 - I've been researching it and apparently surgery is the only treatment option, and even after surgery there's a 50% chance of some degree of luxation recurring. Oh, by the way, surgery costs between $1500 and $2000 per leg - so it's not exactly cheap. The pigmentary keratitis is something that apparently can be treated with eye drops or ointment - but it won't be cured. I've read some articles that say the progression can be halted or slowed down, but the drops are very expensive.

So what the hell do we do now? We've had Gracie for 10 days. She'd been messed around enough before she came to us, so we'd feel terrible giving her back. None of this is her fault, obviously. However, APARN knew about her problems and they did not tell us about either one. If they had, we could have made an informed decision about whether or not to adopt her. Pet insurance is out of the question - they don't cover pre-existing conditions. We're taking her to the vet at 11 to see what they say. We also probably need to get her vaccinated against rabies and kennel cough, too - there's no record of either being given, although she must have had the rabies shot as she was licensed. I'm guessing we'll have to get the rabies shot again, otherwise we can't get a license for her. It was a different county she was licensed in before, too.

I just don't know what to do. I feel so angry at APARN for not disclosing this pretty important information. I mean, do you not think we deserve to know that she has 2 chronic conditions that are only going to get worse? We signed the adoption agreement thinking that she was in very good health. They had this information before we met Gracie and didn't tell us until 9 days after we adopted her. I know we could return her and cut our losses (we'd lose the adoption fee) and they would take her back - but as I said, we'd feel terrible doing that. Poor Gracie. At the same time though I don't think we can really afford all of this - we wanted to buy a house this year and if we're going to have to spend thousands on orthopedic surgery and eye treatments then that will have to wait. We also want to have a baby and they're expensive.

Obviously Suzie could be diagnosed with a problem like this, and we'd have to sort it out. We wouldn't consider giving her away. But this is something we should have been made aware of prior to adopting Gracie, it's like they deliberately hid it from us. We could've made an informed decision about whether or not to proceed with the adoption. You know, we would've adopted a pug anyway, just maybe not this one. I hope I don't sound awful but it's the truth. There should be full disclosure of any medical issues they're aware of. They can't say they weren't aware of them, because the vet report is dated January 28th and it has the name of the woman in charge on it as the person who took her there. The same woman we spoke with for ages on the day we met Gracie - and the same one who was emailing me regarding the adoption. They had plenty of time to tell us about her issues, and they didn't. It took them 9 days to get that information to me. Fucking hell!!!

We are now a family of four!

I was right when I said that once we got approval from our landlord to have a second dog, everything would move very quickly! A nice lady from APARN came round to do our home check at 7 p.m. on Friday, and she phoned the lady who was fostering Jessyka to let her know that everything was great. We went to collect her right after that!

Today is our second full day with her, and everything is going really well. Suzie (our first pug-pug) was so excited when we brought Jessyka home, she seemed to think it was the best present ever! Suzie hasn't been jealous much, so that's good. We're very conscious of making sure she doesn't feel at all excluded. She's doing so well. Jessyka didn't respond to her name at all, or any variations of it (Jess, Jessie). We've renamed her Gracie, and she responded to it pretty much immediately. I think it suits her a lot more and she seems to like it!

Right now Suzie and Gracie are playing - it's cute! I don't think Gracie is used to playing the way Suzie does, but every so often she'll try. I'm sure she'll get used to it. There hasn't been any nastiness between them yet, so hopefully it'll stay that way.

Gracie walks really nicely on the leash, which is great. She doesn't seem to know "sit" though so we're trying to teach her. She'll do it sometimes, but you have to say it lots of times first and even then she won't always do it. I'm sure as she gets more comfortable with us she'll come out of her shell and be more amenable to training. I'm so impressed by how she's settling in though, she's great!

The lady who was fostering her is so lovely, she gave us a zip-lock bag with some food in it (Gracie was eating a different type of food to what Suzie eats) and she gave us some treats for her too. She also gave us Gracie's favorite toy, a santa teddy. She didn't want her to go without that, it's so sweet of her (it wasn't Gracie's toy originally, it belonged to the foster mom's pugs but Gracie loves it). Gracie also had a little stripey purple and white shirt on which says "CUTE" on the back - too true! Foster mom wanted her to take that with her too, which is sweet. APARN people are so lovely and they do such good work.

Here's a pic of Gracie - she's such a pretty girl! And it looks like she's going to be a Mommy's girl, which suits me just fine (Suzie is most definitely a Daddy's girl!)

An Update :-)

Right now I'm just waiting to hear back from APARN regarding when they can do the home check. Hopefully they'll be able to come sometime today, that would be great! I don't know what the process will be for actually collecting Jessyka - we've met her already so I don't think we'd have to go visit her at her foster home, but I'm guessing we'll probably go and get her from her foster home when the time comes. :-)

Hubby went and got us some lunch, and the gourmet hot dog place he went to had some leaflets from Petco about how you can get a booklet of coupons if you adopt an animal. All you have to do is take the adoption paperwork with you and they give you the booklet - savings of $225 or more, cool huh? We will need to get Jessyka a collar and harness, a crate, a food bowl and possibly a bed. I say possibly a bed, because we have pug-pug's old bed which she can still fit into, and her 'new' bed too. Plus, now she sleeps on our bed anyway so Jessyka most likely will too. I kinda want to get Jessyka's food bowl from our veterinary office, because we got pug-pug's from them - they sell handmade ceramic bowls which are really cute and they're only $3 each, which is a bargain! Some local lady makes them. I'd rather do that than buy a bowl at Petco, really. I'm sure we'll make good use of the coupons for everything else, though!

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OK, now my friend T is really starting to drive me mad. She suggested that we talk on Skype today, she set the time as 1.00 p.m. in fact, and you guessed it - she's a no-show! Again! Bloody hell. It's now after 1.25. I'm giving her until 1.30 p.m. and then I'm logging off. What a time waster! Then I'll probably get an email in 5 days saying she's so sorry, she's such a terrible friend, blah blah blah. Yeah - I've heard it all before. Just stop wasting my time and don't make arrangements with me if you clearly have no intention to stick to them! How many times is she really expecting me to put up with her crappy behavior?

YAY!!!!!!!!

THE ANSWER IS YES!!!!!!!!

Wow! We're going to be adopting Jessyka! We're so very excited! :-) :-) :-)

omg... how long are they gonna make us wait?!

Hubby has emailed the property management company again to ask them if they've heard anything from the homeowner yet. No response so far. Jeez, this is so frustrating! I just hope we know by the end of the day, as I really would hate to have to wait until next week to find out - that would mean a second weekend of wondering.

I keep thinking how great it would be to be able to email APARN with good news, and organize the home visit etc. I guess that even if we do find out today, we probably won't be able to have Jessyka until early next week. That's alright though - at least if we get the go ahead, I can allow myself to get excited at last! I have been getting excited at times, but I have to keep stopping myself from getting too carried away as nothing is certain yet.

I guess the fact that the homeowner hasn't said no right away maybe is a good sign. She made us wait quite a while to hear if she would allow pug-pug, so maybe she's just mean like that! Or maybe it at least means she's considering it, rather than denying our request outright. Or, it could mean she hasn't got the voicemail or email yet. Surely though she would've checked at least one of those things by now - apparently the woman at the property management company sent the email and left the voicemail on Tuesday. Now it's Friday so surely she would have seen one of those things by this point...