July 2012

What a month!  I knew I had basically all of this month with Buddy because he was underage and we wanted his scar to heal, get a few shots etc.  Each day honestly felt like a gift with this little boy!  He makes me laugh constantlly with  his all his pupy antics, and watching his bloosom from a timid baby to a bouncing puppy is such an amazing experience!  From time to time I would think to myself, this is temporary, he's not yours try to not get attached but let's be honest.  With a face like this how can you not!

It was about 10 days into having this little gem, and there had been a lot of progress on Buddy's health.  He was eating well, his balance was starting to come along, he was potty trained and the last bit of scab had fallen off his scar.  Phew!...but I started to notice these little spots developing around his scar.  It was like his fur was falling off in patches.  Upon seeing this for the first time, I thought maybe he had just itched it off, then the next day it had almost multiplied.  So I took a few photo's and sent them to Phil, he said we should make an appointment at the vet's and go from there. 

*The first photo is the picture I took the first time I noticed the spots and sent to Phil.  The second photo is after 1 week of medication, and medicated bath's. 

Going to the vet had it's up sides and down sides.  First, we would get this skin condition taken care of, and get him weighed.  Both of these were total UP's..as I was anxious to hear how much weight he had gained with his new and improved diet.  The downs being we were one step closer to having to say goodbye to our little Buddy. 

The good news was Buddy was 10 pounds at the vet's, in more good news he didn't have any skin conditions like mange or dermodex but he was battling an infection and he was allergic to grass.  So armed with a few med's and a special medicated shampoo we headed home. 

As the week went by his fur continued to fall off in patches, he got his pills every morning like clock work and his bath with his special shampoo.  None of it bothered him because water has never really bothered Buddy and I wrapped his pills in peanut butter as that is truly one of his favorite things in the world!  So as a panicing foster, I thought maybe there is something more wrong with him.  So we made another vet's appointment.  Sure enough Buddy had gained another 2 pounds and the vet assured me to stay the course and let the medication do it's job. 

Buddy was going on his second week of medication when I finally started to see the difference.  It was now close to the end of July and he had 2 solid set's of Puppy shot's under his belt along with anti-biotics and the medicated shampoo left his fur silky smooth.  In fact when I first got Buddy he had little brown stripes in his coat and now those were gone completely.  He was plumping up learning quickly and as happy as this all made me I knew it meant his time with me was numbered.  Look at that face and the difference paitence made with his medication.  Not only did the spot's disappear, his fur grew in nicely and all the brown patches went away to reveal a beautiful grey!