Vet update...

OK, another update. I have just had the vet on the phone about Mickey's progress. Mick can come of the antibiotics. The steroid dose can be cut down to just 8 tabs a day. To make sure that he stays 'regular' he has to go on cod liver oil capsules. The vet (Richard Davy from the Ardmore Veterinary Group at www.ardmorevets.co.uk) seems to think that he is doing ok sofar. We need to make sure that he doesn't loose too much weight so he is going to get a protein rich diet from now on to bulk him up a bit. As to how long Mickey has got left is very much a case of 'how long is a piece of string'. So far so good!

More later!

Just came back from a nice walk with Michael at Assington Thicks with Marion. Marion is Mickey's dogsitter. Whenever we went on holidays Marion would stay at our house to 'babysit' the dog. This actually meant Mickey dragging her out for walks and her spoiling him rotten with specially cooked meals... Who's the thick one?

With regards to his ongoing troubles, he is doing his best to disprove that he is sick. He is happy as Larry, eats like a horse and is enjoying his special walks as usual. His guts are a bit upset because of all the heavy steroids and anti-biotics he is taking. So for the moment all is as well as can be expected.

Marion is now a member of this Blog as well so I'm sure she will be adding to this Blog. Marion is the gallery manager at the Quay Theatre and into all this art crap, eh sorry, art stuff. Watch this space for additions by her.

The pics below are Mickey gambolling through the woods...

More later!


 

Progress at lunch time...

Report from Jackie on Mickey...

Went home at lunchtime to check on the patient, no change. He helped me eat my pate on toast but didn't want to go out for a wee. Not noticing any side effects at the moment from his medication, not drinking a lot or anything. I guess not every dog is going to get a bad re-action.

More later
Jac

Look to the future...

What a day yesterday. Went to the vet to pick up Mickey. The vet took us to the side and showed us the Xrays. His whole lungs are full of secondary tumours. The vet was ever so sympathetic about it all. He explained what the options where. First of all Mickey has got days, maybe a few weeks but that is it, in his opinion. We could take Mick to a oncologist but besides giving him chemo which will make him desparately ill it will not cure it. The other option is to give him steroids and some other meds to make him more comfortable. We have chosen that option. Mickey is not one of the best patients and making his last time uncomfortable is something we can't do. So we now really treasure our time with Mick and he is getting spoiled rotten. Last night he had chinese take away mixed in with his food. He loved it as that has always been one of his favourites. He has to take a lot of pills everyday now but that is no hardship. When wrapped in ham he devours anything.

This has all been very strange for us. What is weird is that according to the vet he is desparately ill but he eats like normal, plays like normal, enjoys his walks, in fact he is fitter now than what he has been for a while. This morning on his walk he dove into a hedge and came out with a dead rabbit in his mouth, so much for being a sick patient. Last evening we took him on a nice walk out in the countryside. He was jumping and running around as per usual.

We are going to take it all as it comes. We will make sure that he is comfortable for the last few weeks. We will treat him as normal as we can (besides all the spoiling that is....). Jackie and I are trying to cope with it as well as we can. Jackie summed it up well yesterday when she said: That dog has a way of worming himself into your heart. That is true.

I'm going to try to keep updating the blog with progress reports. As you can see in the pictures below, which were taken last evening out in the fields, at the moment Mickey is doing great.

Bye for now.



 

A sad end...

Damn. Just had the phone call. Mickey has got cancer and it's spread. Basically he has not much time left. He has cancer of the lungs and throat. The vet decided not to do anything as there is no sense in doing anything painful as he has days rather than months... I'm gonna miss my big buddy... At least he has had a lovely retirement from racing. My missus is cut up about it as well. More later...

Alex.

Like I said pathetic or what?

Cheerio! 

Michael at the vets....

Just dropped Michael off at the vets. He showed his displeasure by immediatly urinating all over a dog food display stand in the waiting room. He does get grumpy when he doesn't get his food
in the morning, hahahaha, bless him... The vet will knock him out, check his throat and gullet, X-ray his chest and then take all the bad teeth out. He should be ready to come home tonight at 6. We'll see. He is the master at looking pathetic and looking sorry for himself just to get the fancy painkillers. Who says dogs have a hard life.... He should be back to normal after a few days, he normally heals quickly anyway. OK, I'll update this when he gets out tonight.

Cheerio!

Mick on the countdown....

Mick the dog has just enjoyed his last supper of spaghetti bolognaise. He can't have food now till tomorrow after he has had his teeth out. He is laying asleep blissfully unaware of what's about to happen tomorrow. I will update this after he's had it done...

Cheerio!

Who wants to be a Millionaire?

This one thing I wanted to add to the Blog. When I was in Cairo in Egypt in january 2006 and was flicking through the tele channels I happened to come across the Egyptian version of the Millionaire game. I had to take a piccie. This was something else. This was the couple version of the game and if you look closely you can see the man's wife on the left. I can't remember if they won much but they surely had a good go. (If you are the person in this picture maybe you can tell us how far you got!)

Cheerio! 

River Lossie at Lossiemouth

Oh, here's another one I quite like. This is the river Lossie at Lossiemouth in Scotland near Aberdeen. The light that day was just magic. Effing freezing too..... This was in the beginning of January.

Cheerio! 

I had to post this picture. It was a stunning sunset over the mediteranean in January. This was taken from the Sheraton Hotel in Alexandria in Egypt. The colours are just incredible. The camera used was a Konica Minolta Z3 4megapixel 12x optical zoom. ( I still can't afford a good digital SLR and this camera is very good for its price...) If anybody out there knows of a decent digital SLR with a good reputation for a resonable price drop me a comment...

Cheerio! 

This is a piccie from my wife's birthday trip in february. As a suprise I took her to New York. We had a whale of a time, saw all the sites and did our best to drink the town dry. Unfortunately it was absolotely freezing that week. I haved never been so cold in my life. Bar crawling was a challenge to say the least. The picture is the Statue of Liberty taken from the Brooklyn Bridge.
OK, gotta go again...

Cheerio! 

Wheyhey, managed it. Had to download that Picasa tool from Google but at least it works. This is a recent picture of my dog "hiding" under the pampasgrass. He is an Irish greyhound and is registered with the greyhound breeders database including some of his racecard. Unfortunately he must have been as lazy then as he is now as he only achieved 4th and 6th placings. (Out of a field of 6....) He was retired because of a broken hock (leg). Here is the webaddress of the breeders entry:

//www.greyhound-data.com/d?d=tall+boy+mick&sex=&color=&birthyear=&birthland=
More later... Cheerio!

Mickey...

Ah well, so much for uploading a picture of my dog. The upload page keeps bouncing... Maybe there is a max file size?
My dog is a retired racing greyhound who used to race at Mildenhall. He is nearly 10 years old now. On thursday he's going to the vet to have most of his teeth out. While greyhounds race they get fed a sloppy protein rich food which usually leaves their teeth in a godawful state. He's already had a batch taken out twice but this time they are going to take the canines too. At least he won't stink so much out of his gob after its done. He'll be on soft stuff for a while so he can heal up. I'll post how he gets on.
The DIY at home has ground to a halt. We started off just building a new kitchen but it has now escalated into: a new heating, a new shower room, a new ceiling... God I hate DIY....

More later...

OK, here it goes. This is my first attempt at a blog. I thought it might be interesting to sort of log where I'm travelling. My work has taken me to loads of countries recently and as I have a memory span of a goldfish I have to start doing something to keep the memories.

Just last week I got back from Tunisia where I did a job in Jbel Oust. This is a small town in the middle of Tunisia. I got to stay in Hammamet on the Tunisia tourist coast. Not bad digs, the Sheraton on the beach...

I am supposed to go off to Egypt next week but the customer has just cancelled. Has anybody been to Suez in Egypt? I've not been there yet so if anybody knows any interesting facts drop me a line.

The piccie above is from a job in Ankara Turkey a month ago.
In the last few months I have been to Turkey, Tunisia, America, Egypt etc. I the coming months we have a load of new (for me) countries coming up. We have some work in Indonesia, Puerto Rico, Vietnam amongst others. Can't wait.

More later...