Poor Daphne.

She isn't feeling good. Again. This little ghetto Rottweiler has got the most messed up immune system. All the good diet and immune supplements (they are not working, apparently) and doing my best to give her a healthy, active stress free life just don't work. Or perhaps they do, and she'd be a really horrid mess otherwise. It's been over three weeks since she dislocated her knee, and she really seems to be walking much better. She's even initiated play with Cooper a couple of times lately.
Well, we had the staph flare-up a month ago - the first one in almost a year, so that's good. Cephalexin for that. It's cleared up for now, she's still on it though. She's been taking Proin for incontinence. It works wonderfully as long as I give it to her once a day (recommended dose is 2x daily.) I went through a large, expensive bottle of herbal kidney supplement stuff which was a total waste of money. When she was so depressed about hurting her leg, I was worried and left her at my vet for a whole day with permission to do anything they could to rule out anything bad. And boy, did they. Full blood panel (the more expensive one), urine tested, xrays, feeling her from head to toes, looking down her throat, checking every tooth, loooking in ears, etc. Every single thing came back normal, and both vets checked her out. So. Aspirin wasn't cutting it, so I got ten Rimadyls. I'm not sure they helped, but it's a pretty effective painkiller so they must have.
Then 2 weeks ago there was the golf ball sized swelling on her jaw. I dosed her with Benadryl bigtime and it was gone in the morning. Idiopathic, which is a fancy word for "we haven't a clue what it is."
Today, she's all depressed and mopey again. Check teeth, ears...uh oh. Yeasty red nasty ear. Again. Since I have a small Daphne crate of potions and pills and unguents and three types of hoo-hah cream, I dig around and found some otomax for ear infections. I cleaned out both ears with oticlens and dosed her bad ear.
Since she hasn't been able to exercise, she is getting more anxious than usual and licking...herself, the carpet, the dog bed. She's also shredded part of the sheepskin. :( Despite having a knuckle bone AND a huge bully stick to work on. A month ago she utterly destroyed a really nice wool rug. I haven't a clue why.
I've taken her for a couple of car rides because she likes those. I have to harness her to the head rest, otherwise she runs from window to window, back and forth. So, she sticks her nose out, pants constantly, and drools all over the windows. I tried Clomicalm for three months, I think it made her more submissive. Agility and obedience classes make her anxious, plus she wants to kill the smaller dogs. I think she enjoys bike rides, but it's hard to tell. It also seems to make her anxious. She enjoys walks and running, but a friendly young dog ran up to us in the park 6 weeks ago, she lunged and bit him pretty good in the hindquarters. She was onleash, he wasn't, and his humans took responsibility and told me not to worry.
I dunno. How happy is this dog, really?
The picture of her is right after I did her ears tonight. Daphne is sad. I hate that she is sad.