Saturday, December 23, 2006

Happy Holidays From Nikita and Family!

Nikita was adopted on October 21, 2006 to the Tinker family.




She had chronic nasal congestion and cough, which she had a LOT of vet visits and treatments for. Thankfully she is doing better. Her new mom sent this nice letter to her former foster mom:

Gloria,

I hope you are doing well. I just wanted to send you an update about Nikita (or Tricky Nikki as we've taken to calling her). She is doing great! She is such a lovable bunny bear, we are so thrilled to have her. She and Skippy are still trying to figure each other out but it is very slowly getting better. She is trying to engage him in play more and more these days but he still can't get over the fact that they had a few rumbles in the early days of her coming here. He pretty much just
stays out of her way. I guess he'll do that until he figures her out more. However, I have seen the two of them go after a small animal in the yard together and they definitely looked like they were working together. It will take time, so I'm not worried about it.


Nikki is down to taking only 5mg of Prednisone every other day. In 10 days, she is going to be switched over to a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory for her runny nose. Her nose isn't even all that bad these days, so I'm hoping she won't have to be on the new meds for very long. We took her to a respiratory specialist in the beginning of November but decided to hold off on the bronchoscopy because she was already starting to show signs of improvement. She has gotten very much better since then. She is still coughing a little bit, but not nearly as often and not as deeply as before. Sometimes she goes a whole day or two without a cough at all.


As she has been feeling better, and her Prednisone dose decreased, she has been much more energetic and playful. She is such a different dog now, bright-eyed and happy. She won't go to bed unless we are all in bed, and she'll follow us all around the house. She is very keyed into my husband, he is definitely her favorite. She'll listen to him when she won't listen to me and she is especially playful with him when he gets home from work.


Of course, with her new found energy comes a new-found knack for getting into trouble. She is such a chow hound and she has to be watched constantly. Last week I was baking cupcakes for the kids at school and I had them all lined up on the counter. I turned my back on her for only a minute and when I turned around, she had stolen 7 cupcakes off of the counter and eaten them wrapper and all! She didn't even make a single noise when she did it. Thankfully they didn't have icing on them yet. I learned that I have to be super vigilant when it comes to her and food. She was quite proud of herself and she had a smile on her face that entire night.


She's such a drama queen. When we are eating and she wants whatever we have, she'll sigh and moan. When that doesn't work, she does this pretend "passing out" act. It is hysterical. It still doesn't get her what she wants but it must have worked for her in the past. Shedefinitely loves her walks and she loves being taken out for a ride. Since she's such a good walker and so well behaved, she gets taken out a lot. She also has a lot to say constantly. She is woo-wooing all the time now. Sometimes she just woo-woo's when my husband and I are talking. It's like she wants to be part of the conversation too!


I just wanted to let you know how well she is doing and how happy we are to have her. I'm so glad that you were able to take such good care of her until she found her forever home.


Anna


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