pet connection

It’s a little scary when you drive up to the entrance gate of the park where you’re having your event and the guy at the gate doesn’t have your name on the reservation sheet. Even more so when you’ve already been dealing with a contrary park ranger who seems bent on throwing up every possible obstacle as you try to obtain permits beforehand. Fortunately, the woman who wields the wand of power and persuasion and dogged determination–my friend Tamela–drove up right behind us and all was quickly resolved.

The third annual Darcy FUNDay took place on Saturday, September 26, which happens to be my husband’s birthday and is close to the actual founding date of the Darcy Fund three years ago. For the past five years I’ve had a pretty good run of scheduling special events for Jerry’s birthday–think full moon hanging over Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania, for instance–so I’m going to have to go all out next year to top making him work like a, well, dog moving tables and hauling boxes and taking pictures in the hot sun and just generally being my errand boy. He did get presented with a painting of Darcy by artist Betty Turner, though, so I guess it was a fair exchange.

The Gang of Four–Tamela Klisura, Rima Gerendas, Petra Tiber and I–have been planning this event for six or eight weeks. Tamela, aka the blonde tornado, is the general, assigning tasks and following up to make sure everything is on track. She’s not afraid to crack the whip if she thinks we’re slacking off. I think she was Eisenhower in a previous life. Rima and Petra are her incredibly able colonels, hustling up amazing gift baskets from Three Dog Bakery, White Lotus Day Spa, Dawgy Style, California Fine Wine Tasting, Pet Junction, Crown Valley Animal Care Center, Romantic Style, Wild’s Animal Supplies and more. They planned the color scheme, shopped for all the decorations, organized the sign-in and silent auction sheets, and wrapped all the donated items. Pam and Mike Becker and Suzie Cordes couldn’t come because of previous commitments, but they showed up early to help set up. Now those are real friends! Our husbands are the muscle and transportation. We couldn’t do without them.

Me? I write the songs, I mean the checks, kept track of the registrations, rounded up speakers, and did my share of acquiring prizes. They included  books and magazines from publishers TFH and Bowtie; decorative Cavalier items from our good friend and breeder of Bella and Harper Joanne Nash; signed copies from D. Caroline Coile, Ph.D, of her book Cavaliers: A Complete Pet Owner’s Manual (if I couldn’t write this book, I’m glad Caroline did); the gorgeous Cavaliers in Fact and Fancy by Barbara Garnett-Wilson, generously donated every year by Barbara and her husband Roy; a fancy Private Quarters dog bed, donated by Oklahoma dog lover Ann Campbell (yes, I hit up my relatives, too); and a really large and excellent donation of food and treat gift baskets as well as samples for everyone from The Honest Kitchen. Besides being dehydrated and thus the perfect travel food for our many road trips, HK is cool because the company is switching over its chicken-based foods to use only sustainably farmed, free-range chicken from Petaluma Poultry. When it comes to pet foods that are natural and environmentally responsible, they do their best to walk the walk.

Approximately 60 people gathered for our games, speakers and potluck picnic. We’re not a typical breed club. We call ourselves the South Orange County Cavalier Companions, and we’re pet owners who started meeting informally at a Mission Viejo park about 10 years ago. Through word of mouth, we’ve grown to approximately 250, although not everyone comes to every meeting.People have moved or live an hour or more away, but usually you can find 20 or 30 of us at one of the regular meetings and 40 or more at a Darcy FUNDay. There are always a few who have been there since the beginning and knew the Darcinator in person, but everyone seems enthusiastic about the cause, or at least the good time that we have.

We don’t discriminate. Along with all the Cavaliers were a Boston Terrier, a Tibetan Spaniel, a Cocker Spaniel and a pretty little mix who might have been a Lhasapoo or a Cavachon. Someone with a Bernese Mountain Dog walked by our site. Tamela’s husband, Mike, laughed. “Look, a giant tricolor.” The more typically sized tricolor to the right is clearly in, uh, hunting mode. Also seen were a ladybug, a cheerleader and a firefighter.

Pet edu-tainer and my cocktail buddy Arden Moore made her second appearance at the event, sharing tips on petiquette in public. If Tamela was a general in a previous life, I think Arden was a bouncer in a biker bar. How else could she give such great advice on breaking up fights in dog parks and, even better, preventing them in the first place? “If you see dogs starting to look tense, use a happy voice to distract and divert them,” she says. “Change the mood by making yourself the object of attention or getting them to chase a ball.” Arden travels with her dogs even more than I do, so she also had good tips on hotel stays, dining at cafes (hint: don’t let your dog sit in a chair or lick your plate) and air travel.

On a more serious note, veterinary cardiologist Sarah Jane Miller addressed the basics of mitral valve disease, including signs and treatment, and new medications such as pimobendan (Vetmedin) and took questions from the audience about diet, exercise and lifespan. I can’t say enough good things about veterinarians like Dr. Miller who are willing to give up their Saturday morning to help educate pet owners or participate in health clinics so that people who might not otherwise have a chance to take their dogs to a specialist can have the opportunity to learn more or to get a baseline report on their dog’s condition. We hope she’ll come back sometime. I spent a lot of time worrying about Bella, concerned that she would be stressed by all the people, dogs and activity, not to mention the heat, even though the pen was in a shaded, breezy area, but she was a trooper and did just fine. I was still glad a cardiologist was there, though.

I always feel bad for my dogs during this event. I don’t think they’ve ever gotten to participate in any of the games or contests. No “fastest biscuit eater” or “race to owner” or “longest ears” or “oldest dog” or “cutest costume” for them. They’re stuck in the Cavalier corral, begging for attention from strangers while I make the rounds to ensure that all is going well or make announcements or answer questions. (I think they’re grateful that they’re not in the costume contest, though.)  Tamela’s dogs didn’t get to come, either. The English Toys stayed home, and Farley, a handsome ruby boy, was in the hospital with pneumonia, fighting for his life. Tamela had planned to bring him home yesterday afternoon, but when she got to the hospital he had taken a turn for the worse. We’re all pulling for him. He’s a sweet dog and a poster boy for Cavaliers: 9 years old and murmur-free. I just got the good news that Tamela is picking him up from the veterinary hospital. That makes me happy. He and Darcy were special friends, as seen in the photo above, and I’d hate to see anything happen to him.

Arden did a brief video of the event, so if these photos leave you wanting more, here is where to see it. We haven’t totaled the amount brought in yet, but it’s well over $1,600 so far.

When I started the Darcy Fund three years ago, I wasn’t really sure how exactly we would raise funds for it, but Tamela gave me the first FUNDay as a birthday present, and we’ve continued them ever since. I can’t thank her enough for coming up with the idea. These events have been more fun than I ever imagined, and I have been surrounded by wonderful people  who are really the ones who make it happen every year. My goal now is to see Darcy FUNDays spread to other Cavalier groups around the country or to inspire people in other breeds to start their own fund. Together we can make a difference in all our dogs’ lives.

I have unlimited faith in my immune system and overall health. They have taken superb care of me over the years. So when my blood pressure started to creep up the past couple of years, I blew it off and encouraged my doctor to do so as well. “It’s just the stress of my job,” I would tell her. We agreed at my last visit a few weeks ago to just keep an eye on it and recheck it in a few weeks.

Just call me the Queen of Denial. I was working last night and my right arm just didn’t feel right. Knowing that my blood pressure was already on the high side, I decided to walk over to the drugstore and test it with their blood pressure monitor.

It was off the charts.

“Well, it couldn’t hurt to go to the ER and have it checked out,” I thought. “They’ll probably tell me that those machines aren’t calibrated very well and send me home.”

So all I brought with me was my cell phone, which appeared to be fully charged, and a 400-page book. I finished the book in five hours (”An Accomplished Woman,” a retelling of Jane Austen’s “Emma,” with hints of “Pride and Prejudice” and “Sense and Sensibility” and a pinch of Georgette Heyer’s comedy of manners “The Grand Sophy.”)

The cell phone conked out at 2 a.m. when I was talking to Jerry–who’s on the East Coast–telling him that I was being admitted to the hospital for observation. Fortunately, I had already sent a couple of texts to the neighbors and my friend Tamela to make sure someone could go over to the house early and walk and feed the dogs. I didn’t get moved to an actual room with a phone until a little after 5, and I waited impatiently for it to be 6 a.m. so I could start calling the neighbors and make sure they got my texts without feeling too bad about waking them up.

So, here’s my advice.

Kiss your dogs before you leave.

Bring two thick books. Or your Ipod or Kindle or whatever it is that gets you through not having anything else to do or that distracts you from having needles poked into your needle-phobic body.

Bring your cell phone charger, especially if you’re like me and have very few phone numbers memorized anymore because they’re on speed dial.

Have pet care directions on file so you can just leave them out on the counter for anyone who needs to come in and care for your pets. I used to always have these ready to print out, but they haven’t been necessary in so long that I’ve gotten out of the habit.

Don’t forget your favorite pillow–you’ll need it–and ear plugs to drown out the Maury Povich show and other dreck that your elderly roommate is watching because she can’t sleep.

Oh, yeah. You should probably pay a little attention to the rising blood pressure.

I cannot believe the lottery numbers didn’t fall my way on my birthday. I had big plans for that $252,000,000 (yes, Christie, some of it was going toward shoes). Guess we will have to continue with our plans for next month’s Darcy FunDay.

Five of us met Monday night to decide on games, speakers, prizes and refreshments and get our act together on insurance coverage and park reservations. I have a great team of go-getters from our Cavalier park group who are helping to set this year’s event in motion. Petra and Rima met last week and came up with an amazing list of ideas for themes and games; Tamela is our communications person; I’m working on pet-related prize donations and speaker arrangements; Petra is doing the park reservation; she and Rima are organizing the food and decorations; and Wendy and Suzie will help make phone calls to expand our prize offerings beyond the pet world. Jerry and the other husbands are the muscle and go-fers.

In my book, a successful meeting is always followed by margaritas, so we went across the street to dinner, accompanied by Petra’s ruby Cavalier, Henry. We all first met Henry a little more than a year ago when as a puppy he was left on the doorstep–not kidding!–at our veterinarian’s office. Tamela stepped up to foster him, but she needed a place to leave him for the day, so he came to our house. Harper wasn’t much older than he was–maybe 8 months to his 4 months–and she was thrilled to have a playmate so close to her own age. They spent the day tearing around the house like little maniacs. He soon went to live with Petra, and it’s fun to see him now as a lanky adolescent.

It was clearly the dog dining hour at El Ranchito. Every time we turned around, someone with a dog was walking in or out of the patio area. I do love living in a dog-friendly area. At a recent stop for a late-night dessert in Laguna Beach, the hostess quickly waved us onto the patio with Harper instead of making us tie her up just outside it, which is the usual policy at this place. Harper justified her kindness by curling up on the wall out of sight and going to sleep. She may yet be calming down enough in public to earn therapy dog certification. One can hope.

Thank goodness for enzymatic cleansers and hardwood floors. There’s more than one reason I was reluctant to see Bella start taking a diuretic. Not only did it mean her heart condition was progressing, it also meant she’d be peeing more–a lot more.

Until pretty recently, Bella was the dog with the cast-iron bladder. So I think it has probably been an adjustment for both of us. I knew what to expect and have been pretty good about taking her out every three or four hours, but I had a memory lapse last night. She should have gone out before they ate or, since that didn’t happen, immediately afterward, but I got busy cleaning up the kitchen. I turned around to put the dog food up and stepped into a puddle in front of the refrigerator. Good thing I was wearing my Keen’s, which can be hosed off or run through the wash. I’m even happier that I wasn’t barefoot.

Luckily, she doesn’t have any problem sleeping through the night. But there won’t be any more sleepy 6:30 a.m. directives: “Not yet, girls, just a few more minutes.” Once Bella starts stirring, we’re all gonna be outta there.

Experience is a brutal teacher, but she’s damned effective.

I’ve been watching and worrying about Bella for the past few weeks. She seemed to be coughing a little more–one of the signs that mitral valve disease is progressing. I checked her respiratory rate Tuesday morning and it was at about 45 breaths per minute. It’s not good for it to be above 35 bpm. She was already scheduled to see her cardiologist on Thursday, but I called to ask if I should bring her in sooner. I didn’t want a repeat of the situation with Darcy, who went into congestive heart failure unexpectedly because I didn’t recognize the signs soon enough. She suggested instead giving Bella a little furosemide (lasix) to see if that helped. It did.

When we went in for the exam, x-rays showed that Bella’s heart was a little bit bigger than it was in May (and that she had a rock in her stomach, but that’s the least of my worries). She was just on the cusp of having fluid in her lungs. Adding lasix, a diuretic, to her other two medications should help stave that off for a while. “You caught it really early,” Dr. Barrett said. “I’m not worried about her, and there’s still a lot we can do for her.”

You’d never know she was sick by looking at her. Old, yes, with her gray eyebrows and muzzle. But she’s first out the door when there’s a chance to go out, plays with Harper until she starts coughing, then tries to play some more, and has the appetite of a truck driver. After I loaded her in the car to go home, she made a break for the front seat and dived into the bag holding my Zankou’s chicken. She’s crazy. I don’t share that with anybody.

The typical Cavalier lifespan is 10 to 12 years. I keep reminding myself that she’s already a year and a half beyond that. So right now we’re aiming for 14 and then I’m resetting the goal to 15.

Go Bella, go!