Our lives have definitely changed over the past year. We don't leave him alone for long-the most has been three hours. We now take him to my in-laws' house every day while we work and pick him up each night. They are kind enough to watch him one Saturday a month so we can go have a day together shopping or whatever. He has two playpens that friends have given me so that when we're outside and he wants to be with us, we can put him in one and he just chills out while watching us do whatever we're doing. We also have to coordinate our vacation time with that of my in laws. Since my mother in law is the only other person besides us who knows how to express him, we have to take the same time off as their vacations so we are home to take care of him. We know a lot of people would not have done what we have for Guido, but for us there was no other option. We didn't hesitate at all when we were asked if they should proceed with the surgery. I told them to give me whatever papers they needed signed so they could tend to him. It was worth it all to still have him.
Guido has some very stylish belly bands: Halloween, Christmas, flames, Illini (of course!), bones, paws, orange, black... The bands help in case he leaks urine between expression times for his bladder. We have to make sure we express him at least 3 to 4 times a day.
It is difficult to look at videos and some of the pictures from before his paralysis happened. Guido used to sit up on his back legs and reminded us of a meerkat. Obviously there are many things he can't do anymore. When I was looking at videos to post on here, I started crying because in the video, Guido is wagging his tail-something he can't do anymore and we haven't seen since last April. Though it can be sad and hard, I would not change a thing. He's an awesome dog and really doesn't think anything is wrong with him. It helps that Guido didn't get depressed after the surgery. He was pretty drugged for a while immediately after, but once he started feeling better and had his wheels, he was good to go!
Before we adopted Guido, we had a very precious chihuahua, Bruno whom we adopted from the same rescue. Sadly, we lost Bruno after only having him in our lives for a year. It doesn't seem fair we lost him so suddenly, but that must have been how things were supposed to be since, if we hadn't lost him, we wouldn't have Guido. We are giving Guido the best possible life we can. He's still a cuddle bug, still aggravates the cat, still drags his toys all over, can get around fine without his wheels by just scooting along, and still makes us smile and laugh. What more could we ask for?
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