Hi Everyone!  I've actually been on Tripawds for a few months now, but I guess i didn't really understand how to use it to it's fullest potential.  I started a blog in late February about my girl Roxy, so some of you already know her story.  I just really started looking at the forums this week (strange, right?) and finally figured out where all the other people are.  I see all these names that leave comments on blogs, but can't figure out how to find their stories.  Yeah...it takes me a while. 

For those of you that maybe haven't heard Roxy's story, here it is.

Roxy came to my family in May 2009.  At the time we already had two boxers - a male, Dakota 6 yrs, and a female, Kali 3 yrs.  I was looking out my window one evening and saw a boxer and a bassett trotting through my neighbors back yard.  They had collars, so I grabbed my phone and went out to see if they had a name tag.  When I got to them I realized these dogs had been homeless for a very long time.  This is about Roxy so I won't talk about the bassett, however I will tell you that I found her an incredible home on a 101 acre farm where she is so very happy and well taken care of.  There was no name tag and it was a shock collar.    When I first went up to them Roxy would only come to the end of my reach, and she wouldn't look at me.  She stood hunched over, shaking.  I thought she was a puppy (but later found out she's around 5-6 years old).  I could see every bone in her and she was covered in bugs.  I crated her outdoors over night and took her to the vet the next day.  He said she really just needed food, so we got her shots and tested for heartworms (negative!)  Then we got to working on getting her cleaned up.  We started debugging her in intervals because she was so fragile acting that we didn't want to torture her for too long at once.  I stopped counting the ticks at 70.  My husband later told me he did the same thing, but stopped counting at 50.  Her paws were swollen to three times their normal size (from walking so much the vet said) and she slept for the better part of three days.  I really believe she wouldn't have made it much longer on her own.  For the first couple days she wouldn't get up to eat or drink.  I kept bowls next to her bed and she would just move her head over the bowl to eat/drink while laying down. 

Fast forward a bit and the spot on her left leg had blown up to this huge sore.  After many other treatments, she was diagnosed in January with Grade III Mast Cell.  I felt like there was absolutely no justice in the world.  Maybe a bit melodramatic, but I did.  She had survived God only knows what, finally found a family that would love her and spoil her, and not 8 months later be diagnosed with cancer.  I struggled a lot with the decision to amputate, so much that I scheduled it for Feb 15th, cancelled, ran more tests, then rescheduled for march 2nd.  I went through with it that time.  As usual, the first two weeks were incredibly difficult.  I just knew that I had made a huge mistake.  She seemed depressed, she didn't want anything to do with us, she hurt all the time.  I couldn't believe I had put her through that kind of surgery.  I just knew I had destroyed her spirit.  And I'll tell you why I believed that.

Roxy was a very damaged dog.  I'm not sure what her life was like, but we have clues.  For example, the first vet we took her to estimated her age at 8-10 years old by looking at her teeth.  Our current vet, the one that has treated her throughout the cancer diagnosis, said her teeth were ground down in a fashion that indicated she had been pinned up and had been nawing on something constantly.  It wasn't age wear.  She had the eyes of a 5-6 year old.  It took her a long time to warm up to us.  We loved her, we fed her good stuff, we tried to play with her, we tried to give her space.  Nothing seemed to make her like us.  She kept herself secluded for a while.  Then she would watch from the edges of the room.  Then she would stay in the room with us and while our other dogs played she just watched.  After a bit she would bark at them from the edges of their "arena". It wasn't until we took notice of this place on her leg and started trying to treat it that she really came out of her shell and started acting like she belonged.  It was almost like she finally felt that we cared for her, or she was relieved that she didn't have to fight it alone.  It may sound crazy, but I truly just believe she was waiting for someone to help her fight this.  I worried putting her through something so severe right after her true spirit came out would kill it. 

Luckily, it didn't.  We all made it through recovery.  Roxy has been a tripawd for 4 months and 7 days now.  She gets around fine.  She plays crazy rough with her brother and sister.  She chases the cats.  She jumps on us and loves on us.  She is truly an amazing dog.  We opted not to do chemo.  Instead we contacted Dr. Loops, who I found through this website, and she is on a homeopathic cancer protocol.  Even though she put on weight after we found her you could still always see her bones.  She was a pig, but she just didn't put on weight easily.  Now there are no visible bones.  Her coat looks better since the surgery than it ever did before.  I'm not sure how much time we will be given with her because Grade III Mast Cell just doesn't have a good survival rate.  But we are doing everything we can to give this girl a good life for as long as we can.  And we, like all of you, are incredibly blessed to have our tripawd in our life. 

Thanks for reading!  I hope now that I've found out how to use the forums we'll make more tripawd friends.  By the way, anyone out here live around southern Indiana? 

Leslie

Roxy's mom