THE AD READ: For adoption: Nettie, F, senior, Lhasa Apso X. She only has a few teeth, is deaf and blind. This sweet dog needs a kind person to allow her to live out the rest of life. She was found in the snow, face down. Nettie is in a MD shelter. Can be transported to the right home. Mention muffins 311.

I learned about this dog on one of the rescue lists I'm active with. Below are excerpts from messages about Daisy.

I picked up Nettie...now known as Daisy...from the shelter Friday morning. I took her to my vet right away and for her age, she is between 13 and 15 years old, she's doing OK. She is blind from untreated dry eye in both eyes, she has a raging ear infection in both ears, her mouth is a rotting mess, she has a heart murmur and she has a chronic skin condition. She weighs 19 pounds and is very skinny. She has such a beautiful disposition though and is starting to perk up quite a bit. Her blood work was again good for her age so we started antibiotics and she is scheduled to have her mouth worked on this Thursday. She does have some hearing and gets around very well once she has checked out her environment. She has no clue what this "going for a walk" business is all about and I doubt she's had a collar, leash or harness on for years. Until we know for sure that her skin condition isn't contagious, she's living in our rec room downstairs and my other 2 stay upstairs. We may never be a well blended family but she's loved and comfortable and when she wagged her tail for the first time yesterday when I came downstairs, I felt like one of the luckiest people ever!


Day 13 Daisy update: In a nutshell, she's doing so well I hardly believe it's the same dog! She had her dental work on Thursday and 6 teeth were removed and some gum work done to clean up the infection. She tolerated it VERY well and was home that evening.

When she went to the groomers on Monday, she was a perfect angel and didn't balk at all at being put in a crate unlike the fit she pitched when I tried to put her in a crate at home, hence the potting room compromise. While she was gone, I cleaned out the potting room so she has a large eating station, a carpeted bedroom area and about 2 feet square as a potty area. I covered all the insulation and moved and put away anything that could be climbed on. Of course, the story doesn't end there. She jumped down "funny" Monday night and pulled the ligaments in her knee. We went to the Vet first thing the next morning and she is doing a little better. She did OK in the potting room yesterday with me closing the door instead of trying to gate her in. She only cried and scratched and scoped out any possible means of escape for about 15 minutes before she climbed in her bed and let out a DEEP sigh! Only....it was too cold for her in there last night. The floor is cement and there is no heat duct in there and she just got shaved and even I was shivering in there, and I'm well insulated! You got it, she slept on the love seat in the carpeted, heated rec room.

Did I mention that she's doing VERY well?! Her eyes look so much better and she can blink now. Her ear infection is completely gone in one ear and almost gone in the other. She eats great and doesn't seem to be itching much but that could be because I didn't walk her yesterday due to her knee injury. (Grass allergy?) I'm giving us both a couple days to rest before I resume the potty training contest. I'm downstairs using my husband's computer so I can keep an eye on Daisy, AKA: The Destructress! She has once again made it perfectly clear that she will NOT be confined.

She amazes us daily with her ability and her spirit! She would take over the house if I let her but she is not house-trained, which is the challenge we're working on now, along with trying to get her skin cleared up. She had a check up today and she weighs 20 pounds now and ears and mouth are in good shape and skin is slowly improving!

Daisy is a TRIP! This has been quite a week. I've been bringing her upstairs more and more and she and the other 2 are getting along OK. Since the weather has improved here, I've been going out in the yard with her a lot and she's going potty outside now. I guess the leash and walking bit was alien to her. To try to speed up the potty training, I shampooed the carpet downstairs real good. Since the floor was so damp, I've let her sleep in my office upstairs, which is opposite our bedroom. She's done real well in there....except for last night. We went out to dinner and I wanted to keep her separated from the other 2 dogs so dinners wouldn't incite trouble and because she is not 100% with using her puppy pads upstairs. I put up a baby gate to keep her in the office. You guessed it, when we came home about an hour and a half later, there were 3 dogs in the family room; She climbed over the baby gate! And now that she is no longer starving, she won't eat the canned food that I've been putting her benadryl in!

This is NOT the elderly, sickly dog we thought we were getting....and we couldn't be happier. Although I wouldn't want to give Dusty and Woody a vote on that! I told my daughter the other day that I was concerned that neither Dusty nor Daisy would back down in a confrontation and I didn't want either to get hurt. She asked, while laughing like a fool, which I was more concerned about: the blind dog with maybe 7 teeth left or the arthritic dog with asthma-like allergy symptoms!? We've had Daisy for 6 months now and she is just a wonder! We are fortunate to have a wonderful yet reasonably-priced ophthalmologist nearby and since Daisy has been seeing her, the results have been dramatic. I did not know there was any hope if they went untreated for so long but one eye is producing tears and she now perceives light and can see shapes sometimes.

She is now doing so well that I took her to the vet dermatologist this month to see what can be done about her chronic skin condition. The vet said if he were a betting man, he'd bet she'll live to be 20 years old! We hope so; we love her very much! Frankly, she probably should have been named "Princess"! She just tickles us more and more every day. She had been very much a Mama's girl but I had to go to Australia a few weeks ago and she bonded with my husband while I was gone. Now she follows him around and runs to the door to greet him when he comes home from work. She has developed a sense of humor too. At first, she would occasionally close her eyes when I'd tell her it was time for drops. Now, she'll run for the living room so I have to chase her. She even waits for me to get there! She just loves her walks and has started running the past couple days! She hasn't had an accident for weeks and I'm almost ready to declare her completely housetrained. The true test will come if she's ever left alone all day. She knows the doggie door and goes through it right after meals and getting pills and when reminded.

Daisy - July 2004		November 2004-begging with Woody and Dusty

Daisy has had for the most part, a very good year. She is not a snuggly little girl and she really doesn't know how to play with toys but she does make us laugh with her "crazy Daisy" display daily. She had an excellent check up with the ophthalmologist. Both eyes are producing some tears now, so she can close her eyes to sleep and is in general much more comfortable. Her heart murmur is still at "just" a grade 3 so she's not on medication for that yet. With all her progress, it was very distressing to realize she has "doggie Alzheimers" or Canine Cognitive Disorder. She has days that she's very confused and anxious and she forgets things that she had learned last year. We're trying medications that help with the symptoms so that the good days outnumber the bad for as long as possible.

As suddenly as she came into our lives, she was gone. She had her teeth cleaned June 28th and I asked them to x-ray her front shoulder to wrist because she'd been limping and it just didn't seem like arthritis. The x-rays indicated cancer, so we arranged for more x- rays to be sure. Well, different views showed conclusively that it was cancer in the humorus and that it had spread throughout her lungs. The best guess was that she'd have about 2 months. She stopped eating a week later and within another week I couldn't even get her to take her pain meds. I finally realized she was telling me it was time to let her go, so we had her released from her pain on July 23rd. I adopted her so that she would die in dignity and comfort and with love, and that is exactly what happened...a little over 2 years after she came to us. Which was nowhere near long enough.

Christine Hutchinson/Crofton, MD
Forever mom to Woody, rescued ShihTzu/Doxie, age 12
Dusty, rescued Lhasa Apso with Cushings, age 11.5 and
Daisy, rescued blind Lhasa mix, age 15.5.

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