Holly continues to hang out with us and have a good time this summer. She loves to go for walks and is a great walkerâ¦unless we stop to talk to people along the way! She isnât naughty by any means, just excited, and it gets a bit chaotic with 3 dogs and a stroller! She loves to play fetch and will play for as long as her humans' arms can throw! The only ânaughtyâ thing Holly does is countersurf on occasion. She doesnât do it if Iâm in the room, or even on the same floor as that matter. If I forget and leave food on the counter and go upstairs though I can count on it being gone when I get back downstairs! One day I left a pack of graham crackers on the counter. Later in the day, I noticed that Holly had this brown crust on the top of her nose, just beyond the reach of her tongue. I had no idea what it was until I discovered the graham crackers missing!!! Gee, I wonder who could have possibly eaten them?!?!
Holly made a visit to Petco in Rochester when RAGOM was there a couple of weeks ago and was perfect! Everyone that visited with her just loved her, especially her size. We ended up driving home through a pretty nasty thunderstorm and Holly did very well. Her previous owners reported that she had some mild storm anxiety. Now that weâve had a few storms, weâve seen it a bit, but it is very mild. She just walks around with a worried look on her face and just wants to be close to us. It has also stormed when weâve been gone and she has not been destructive at all.
Holly did not like the fireworks one bit either, but again, wasnât destructive. We live one mile away from campus, where the fireworks display was and needless to say, it was very loud. We turned the stereo on fairly loud and closed all the windows and doors to drown as much of the noise out as we could. The only thing Holly did was stand by the door and barkâ¦.until the fireworks were over. And then of course the neighbors had to start in with their own supplies of fireworks. Grrrrâ¦â¦ Our poor Jackson is terrified of the fireworks and about ripped our carpet up trying to get under our bed. Once he got under there, Holly followed him! Holly is a petite little thing and only weighs 55 pounds, while Jackson is a big dude, weighing in at 85 pounds! Jackson ended up getting stuck under the bed and we had to lift it up so he could get out.
Holly was doing so well with her seizures and was nearing the 2 week mark between seizures when she had a bad night last week. She didnât have an actual seizure, instead she had about 8 âepisodesâ over about a two hour period where she would collapse on the floor and start trembling in her face, like she does in the beginning of her seizures. These episodes never turned into anything more and lasted maybe 5 seconds, then she would be right back up ready to play. So, we headed to the vet for some blood work. They checked her liver enzymes to see if she was possibly having a toxic reaction to the increased Phenobarb. dose, but that came back normal. They also did a full thyroid panel and checked her Phenobarb. level again. Her thyroid was normal but her Phenobarb. level was still very low. Weâve increased her dose again and switched her to a food with fewer ingredients (Eagle Pack Holistic Lamb & Rice). She ended up having seizures 3 nights in a row, I imagine from the stress of the Petco event and the stress of being poked and prodded at the vet. As of today, sheâs been seizure free for one week. Letâs hope we can keep counting the days between seizures for this poor girl. It would be wonderful to completely eliminate them for Holly, but realistically, weâre hoping to get control and limit the seizures to one or two a month. Not bad considering she was having two a day when she came into RAGOM!
