Black Dog Saturday

Our vets have been working to figure out R's recurring UTI. Answers haven't been easy to find. In some ways, that's a good thing - they found no signs of new cancers in an abdominal ultrasound. You can see his shaved belly from the ultrasound in the photo below. He wasn't happy about the shaving because it's been cold here!

R seems to be feeling great. He loves his little brother. Often, R is the one starting wild play sessions (which is the opposite of what we ever expected!). One of his tricks for inviting Hachi to play is to lie on his back and let Hachi "attack" him. R loves showing his teeth while playing.

The vets also did a culture of the bacteria that caused R's UTI relapse. It turned out that the remaining bacteria is one from the first infection, and it's not antibiotic-resistant. That's odd because it doesn't explain why it survived the treatment.

At this point, we have no explanation for what has happened. It seems most likely that he'll stay on antibiotics for another couple of months. Hopefully, that will wipe out the bacteria.

In any case, our master plan for timing the arrival of Hachi seems to have worked beautifully. Both R and Shyla seem to love him. And, R is still healthy and crazy enough to help raise Hachi.

R has one of the sweetest and most fun-loving personalities that we've ever run across in a dog. So, we are thrilled that he is eager to help teach Hachi all the stuff that he needs to learn.