Petalmobile Mk1

While Petal appears to have been responding to treatment for leishmania, unfortunately she has other problems to contend with that are related. Her left eyeball has swollen from increased internal pressure and the treatment for that over the last couple of weeks hasn't been successful, with the cornea now probably damaged beyond repair. Even more problematic has been problems in her spine that are typical in older dogs, but have been exacerbated by her condition. This has led to the loss of use of her back legs, though she still has sensation in the toes and tail.

Hence the photo of the Heath Robinson contraption above - the Petalmobile Mk1. Using tips from some sites online, this is built from uPVC piping, various bits of padding and duct tape. The tape is a temporary thing while we test the design to check it works ok.

So far, so good. Petal has proven to be mobile in it and able to move about. She even navigated her way down a step, though that wasn't planned. When we're happy with the design, we'll remove the tape and glue it together, however, it's possible we'll reduce the height so that her feet are on the ground in the hope if may force her to exercise her legs a bit.

She has to see the vet tomorrow morning and so we're now deciding whether to take the Petalmobile with us then. We probably will as they may be able to offer advice, though I can just imagine the faces!

Petal Update

Well, there isn't anything to update really, which in itself must be good news. We think she is much more lively and perkier. She seemed to go downhill quickly after we went to the vet the first time, but perhaps that was her body adjusting to the medicine. And since then she has picked up dramatically, but that was from a very low point. She is eating well too - for Petal, although we are feeding her three times a day, as she seems to eat the same amount per meal whether she has one or three meals a day. But what we don't know is what is going on inside her and if her kidneys are failing. But only time can tell us that.

...and we're still waiting for rain! The forecast rain didn't appear on Sunday and there were about half a dozen spots yesterday - not enough for one rain drop per patio tile, and what did fall was laden with dust.

I don't have classes now till October which is great! It's so nice not to be tied so rigidly. But come October I start six days a week again, which I'd rather not do, but then neither do I want to work past nine at night so that's the only way I can fit it in. Most of the private tutors I know offer classes until 11 at night, which I know now is why people used to double check the times I gave them for morning classes in the summer!!

Introducing modme

Here's our latest project. It's quite exciting as it's something I've been thinking about for ages and it looks like we're really in a position to make it happen. It's a range of 'things' that can be modified with knitting, crochet etc to make jewellery and decorations. We have given them the name 'modme'.

These are a pair of modmes which have been modified with crochet (ignore the website address, we couldn't register modme.com as someone already has that address). Our plan is to sell the base modme shapes which people can then modify themselves.

It's taken a few steps to get this far. This was the first modme prototype and I had it 3d printed. The quality was great for prototyping but not for the finished product. You can see the ridges, which was part of the 3d printing process.

I designed the modmes in 3d and this is an example of the 3d model and the photo below is of the finished modme made into earrings. The finished products will also be 3d printed, however they are made using a process called SLS which is selective laser sintering. Nylon powder is lasered to melt into shape. The end result is matte, slightly rough and amazingly strong. We tried to break a modme and were unable to do so using normal strength. The modmes come in white so I am dying them to make them coloured. I used normal wool dye for these, however I have spoken with the dye company who have recommended a special type of dye for dying nylon and I am getting some of these to try.



These earrings were also modded with crochet. I have designed some square sided modmes which will work with knitting (although I do have designed a couple of patterns knitting around a round modme).

This is a flower modme. Here it is made into a snowflake - perhaps it could be used for Christmas decorations? However modded in a different way it could look completely different. I didn't dye this modme, one material option is something called alumnide, which is nylon and aluminum powder combined.

This project would have been impossible - well not feasible - without 3d modeling and 3d printing. 3d printing offers us the opportunity to manufacture modmes but in really tiny numbers. It is low cost as you only pay for what you produce - there's no moulds or dyes to be made or minimum production runs. So for once, I've been able to take one of my pie in the sky ideas and turn it into something tangible!

One of the problems with caring for a non-greedy poorly dog...

is ensuring they eat enough. Because Petal's kidney's aren't working properly, the vet wants to avoid giving her any unnecessary pills to help her anemia, relying instead on food. However, because Petal isn't a greedy dog it's quite difficult to ensure she eats enough. She self regulates her food and eats when she is hungry, and because she is feeling poorly, she's not feeling very hungry. Also, I think that crunchy food, or food she has to chew, is painful for her because of the inflammation around her eyes, however she doesn't seem to like liver, either raw or cooked, even when it was chopped up like particularly gruesome baby food. She does seem to like frankfurter sausages, which she seems to swallow lumps of without chewing, and chicken. We bought her some non-cheap tinned dog food (it's actually quite difficult to find good quality dog food outside of the big supermarkets) which she also ate, but I had to chop it up for her.

So we're having to entice her to eat. She's actually eating very well, particularly by Petal standards. I wish she'd have eaten the liver as this has more iron (certainly more iron than the frankfurters which are, I believe, mainly sawdust). However we're hoping that any food will give her energy and the more energy she has the more appetite she may also have.

Petal's not quite as bad as Henry, who was completely non-plussed about food. Whereas we could have trained Bob to do handstands if he thought there was a mere crumb of a dog biscuit at the end of it, Henry was very unimpressed. He would come and sniff the food, lick it half heartedly and if he wasn't hungry, he'd just walk away.

I think I would describe Bob as being optimistic about food. He could spend days looking at the fridge if he thought that a cat biscuit had fallen behind it, and as we know, he also once climbed onto the fridge looking  for the cat food. Although he had never been fed in the morning, it didn't stop him faithfully following the big dogs to the garage gate every morning in case we suddenly remembered that he was supposed to have breakfast after all. He would stare intently at the food on the table, willing it to fall on the floor. This was exacerbated by the fact that once a gust of wind blue a bag of crisps off the table when he was giving them his Bob-stare, and from then on he was convinced of his super powers.

Petal seems brighter, her eye isn't closed now, which it was. She had seemed quite sad when  she was on the patio earlier this week, however I wonder if that was where the bright sunlight was hard on her swollen eyes. But only time will tell...

Rain is forecast for tomorrow and for the start of next week - and this is the first rain we've had in months. I don't think it's rained since we've had Bobbins, perhaps no rain since June? I had a quick look to see if I could see anything about it being a dry summer, but I just saw on a weather site that it said that it was a dryer than normal summer in the Badajoz region, but didn't qualify this by saying what normal was. Still, wonder how long it will be before we're moaning about the rain!

Hopeful News About Petal

We've just come back from the vet. The swelling around Petals eye had got noticeably worse over the last 24 hours, so I assumed it was a tumor and that it was an indication that she was deteriorating rapidly. We also have to give her fluid drips and Ian was unable to make it work this morning so she needed a new thing put in.

The vet said that the swelling around Petal's eye was an inflammation and not a tumor. The vet said the inflammation was painful, so that could explain why Petal was a little subdued yesterday.

However what was really significant is that she has leishmania and NOT lymphoma. If we didn't think that she had lymphoma then we'd have been pretty devastated by the diagnoses of leishmania as it can be a killer disease, however dogs can get better from this whereas lymphoma is fatal. The symptons are apparently identical, so they said they were testing for lymphoma and I think that we must have assumed that, later when we went back to get Petal and they gave us the treatment, that what they were treating was the lymphoma they'd said they'd tested for. And from then on we were hearing 'lymphoma' instead of leishmania. So while it is bad, it is not as bad as we had thought.

Anyway, the lumps are swellings and not tumors. She has anemia and her kidneys are struggling - however if she was a young dog she would have a very good chance of recovering, but in an older dog the chances are reduced, however she does have a chance. I guess when they were describing the symptoms of kidney failure it was so we knew what to look for, not saying that it was 100% going to happen.

I am so glad that the swelling around her eyes is an inflammation and not a tumor. She's eating well (very well for Petal who has never been a bit eater) which is a good sign. And we're giving her chicken liver to help her anemia.

Living with so many odd dogs...

...means that life is seldom boring - or relaxing. Queenie is probably at the top of the odd league. She could well be slightly odd anyway, however her deafness and partial site means that she is often a tad strange. One of her favourite things (and this could be because she is a sheep dog), is to round up logs. She carries them round in her mouth and then drops them on the floor with a resounding bang. She then repeats this with the other three logs and then starts the whole process again. It means that there are forever these very loud bangs. Unfortunately, she tries to attract Sam by dropping the logs next to him, and given that crunching dog biscuits makes him jump, this is not his favourite thing.

I think it is lucky for her that she lives in a safe environment. Because her vision is so poor, she does get surprised, for example she got spooked when Ian was carrying Bobbins as he was a different shape. She also doesn't see things from certain angles or in certain light conditions. I think this could be very unsettling for her and I think that life would be impossible for her in an open environment.

Millie is odd in her own little way, not least how she runs around the table. She gets such a speed up, it's amazing to watch her. The trouble is, we have to catch her mid run and picking her up is like picking up a little squirmey thing!

Bobbins is also quite high up on the oddness table. She gets lost at night and barks to be rescued. Of course, Wilbur and Queenie have also gone through this so it's not really a surprise, particularly given that she's a lot smaller. We stopped putting her away at night when she had diarrhea and for some reason she was then unable to go through the night, so she takes herself out and then forgets how to get back in. Her physique means that she's never going to be good at jumping or climbing. She sometimes tries to get on the bed, but that entails her just running at the bed. She is looking very pretty at the moment (but remember, beauty is in the eye of the beholder), the eye lid on her big eye didn't form properly (or didn't open properly) and she has both the top and bottom eyelashes along the bottom of her eye. This is giving her a rather splendid look with long lashes sweeping out from under her eye, however I think the vet will be removing this as it could be uncomfortable for her. Bobbins also runs round in circles, but only at tea time. I think that when they run round in circles they are only doing normal doggy behaviour, but instead of being able to run around freely, they run in circles because once they've done the first circle they know there's nothing in the way.

And I can't write about odd animals without including Larry. He often falls off his perch - do they do this in the wild? We here a flutter and then a squark as he drops to the floor of his cage. His breed is described as being the 'clown of the parrot world' which from our experience seems very apt. I wonder if the cliffs of Patagonia are full of  Patagonian Conures tumbling to the ground and then looking round with a 'I meant to do that' expression.

Petal is still perky, but I think she is deteriorating quite quickly. She's eating very well and still walks around with her tail wagging, but I've also seen her standing still with her tail down looking dejected. She has a lump growing around her eye which I think will start to bother her soon and I think at that might be what we need to watch. She stopped eating dry food and I think that the pressure of crunching on the biscuits was uncomfortable for her. But she's tucking into canned dog food so she still has her appetite. We were thinking in terms of weeks, however I think that we should probably now be thinking in terms of days. It's so sad, but we'll know when the time is right to say good bye.

Petal is Very Poorly

Poor Petal is very poorly. Last week when I picked her up I could feel a lump under her front leg, and on closer investigation I found some more on her neck and on a similar spot on her other side. I had hoped that it was just fatty lumps, as they were quite widely spread and not localized like I thought cancer tumours would be, however she went to the vet yesterday who diagnosed lymphona and her kidneys are failing so there's nothing that can be done. You wouldn't actually know that she was poorly to look at her and her behaviour is no different. She can't jump like she did, but she hasn't for a while. We noticed a while ago that she was thin - but she's never been a big eater so we changed her food so she was eating two smaller portions a day, and that has been working well.

At the moment, though, she is completely the same as she has been, it's only us that knows that she's very poorly, so I guess that's a good thing.