Joe and LeeAnn visit & Heather's IL Trip

Joe and LeeAnn will leave from IL on Friday and be here on Saturday. We are looking forward to the visit. I'll still have to work, but will get to spend time with them each evening. May get to take Joe fishing somewhere and drive them up over one of the passes (12,000 ft) to see a few mountains and breath some clean air (if they can breath at that elevation).

On the following Friday, they will start driving back to IL and Heather will be driving along with them for a 2 week visit back home. She will go to Lacey's wedding at Gulf Shores while visiting. I will fly into Nashville at about 10:20 pm August 7th, stay at mom and dad's Friday and Saturday, then start driving back with Heather and the kids Sunday.

While Heather is gone I'm getting a new pup from the same parents Bow came from. I wish I could have him now, but the owners are coming to CO on the 30th and considering gas prices, I'll let them deliver. The pup will be 15 weeks old by the time he shows up. Owners have already brought him in to start crate training and they are working with him on retrieving, so we should still be ok. I'll have to kennel him at the vet when I fly to IL. It costs too much for him to fly with me.

The kids do not know we are getting him, so it will be a nice surprise when they get back to CO. We all miss Bow quite a bit. He was a great dog and could have had a really great future with grouse hunting.

Very Sad News

Bow made it through the surgery on Wednesday and they called me to tell me they wanted to keep him a couple days. They removed the ball, but he had some damaged small intestine. They warned me of the possible problems, but then said their gut feeling was he would recover fine.

At 6:30 pm the doc called and said Bow was bleeding and he needed permission to go back in and see what was up. He was really concerned about the amount of blood. In about 30 minutes he called back and said it looked really bad. Bow's entire small intestine had died and the only option was to remove the entire small intestine and reattach the large intestine to the stomach. He felt that even trying that was a very long shot of survival.

They had told me what the problems were with only small sections of the intestine removed, but I could not imagine him having any kind of life without his small intestine. The other option was to euthanize him. He was going to be in terrible pain if he were to wake up and he had very little chance of survival. Reluctantly, we decided we had to euthanize him.

We are a very upset family. Bow living in the house with us had made him part of our family. He never hesitated to show us his love. He was our friend and we miss him.

Bow is in surgery!

Bow eat something in the last few days that will not pass and he has been sick. Today it became clear that the only way to get it out was with surgery. The vet has him right now and should be nearing completion. I'm worried about it. A dog living in the house quickly becomes a family member. Hopefully they'll be calling with a good report very soon.