Still worrisome

Unfortunately, R still has a population of damaged red blood cells. We haven't yet decided how to proceed. We can either wait to see if his blood work improves in 3-4 weeks or we can do an echocardiogram to look for hemangiosarcoma on his heart. Thank goodness for our great pet health insurance which makes it possible for us give our dogs good health care, even when it's expensive.

I'm feeling shell-shocked. It seems inconceivable that we could possibly be staring down the barrel of another terminal cancer in such a short time. I just hope, with all my heart, that R is cancer-free.

On the good side, R has decided that Shyla is the most amazing friend he can imagine. He is always looking for her in the house, wanting to play wild chase and wrestling games. And, she is more than happy to oblige. I finally had to separate them so that I could think for long enough to write this post!

You can see in the photo below that R lost some fur when he had his ultrasound, and he lost some weight when he decided to stop eating (he's eating again now). He looks so playful, and so does Shyla!

Shyla and I did our normal trail hike this morning, enjoying the only sunshine of the day. She's so confident on the trails. Look at her tail!

Shyla and I do our morning hikes alone while R is on the trails with the Runner. So, during our morning hikes, Shyla doesn't have R to follow during recalls and other training games. Here she is doing an enthusiastic recall all by herself!

She is confident on the trails and sticks to me like glue. But, as I mentioned yesterday, the rest of the world is scary to Shyla. So, today we did a socialization outing. We visited a pair of friends who are wonderful with under-confident dogs. They've rehabilitated a number of fearful dogs so they were teaching me how to introduce Shyla to new people without her getting scared.

Just after we arrived at their house and when she was first met each of my friends, she was afraid to the point that she used a super low body posture (approaching a "belly crawl") to approach them. But, as my friends worked their magic using non-threatening body language and treats, Shyla relaxed with each of them. Many thanks to my friends at Dream Valley Ranch for helping Shyla and me!

Seeing Shyla today showed me that her fearfulness the other day wasn't a fluke. She is indeed very inexperienced with coping in new situations or with new people. Tomorrow, we will venture to the city to see an amazing trainer. I hope that we can lay out a plan so that I can gradually help Shyla to be as confident in new places as she is on our trails.

I'm beginning to realize that I have a very big job ahead of me to socialize Shyla. But, the love of a dog is worth it.

Please keep R in your thoughts. I feel scared about him.