Merry Christmas!!

Hoping everyone has a wonderful Christmas! Below is a picture of Guido in front of the Christmas tree. He posed all by himself; I just had to grab my phone quick enough to snap the picture! :)

Guido & His Buddies at U of I

Guido's wheelchair has not been fitting right so we contacted his therapist, Kim, at U of I since she did his measurements when we first ordered it and is more familiar with how to adjust it than we are. We drove down for an appointment and while he was there, Guido not only got to spend time with Kim for his appointment, but Dr. Harper made sure she got to spend some quality time with him too-and pose for pictures....

Apparently the day before the appointment, Dr. Harper was very excited that Guido was coming the next day. I know we've said it before, but we really can't say it enough-the staff at the U of I Veterinary Teaching Hospital is AWESOME! Kim greets us with a welcoming hug each time we go there and is always willing to help. That personality of Guido's has won the hearts of so many people...he really is very special and we're blessed to have him. 

Some Pictures...

This picture is from shortly after Guido's surgery. Dr. Harper at U of I calls it Guido Chic. She did some of his therapy and decided to put the safety glasses on him. You can also see his incision somewhat in the picture. 

And this is Guido with his buddy Chloe (Rod's parents' dog) who shares her sunning space with Guido. Apparently, Guido decided Chloe made a great pillow! :)

PJStar Article

So, a couple of months ago, Rodney saw a notice in the Peoria Journal Star asking for stories about pets-funniest, cutest, sweetest thing your pet has done. We sent in a few pictures of Guido along with his story and to our surprise we were contacted by a reporter who wanted to do a story about our experience caring for a special needs pet. She came to the house and then a photographer came to Rod's parents house to do pictures and a video. The story has been posted online and will be in a special section of this Sunday's paper. Everything turned out great! We've been sharing the links with everyone we can think of, including Hope Rescues, which is whom we got Guido from. Jackie was thrilled and posted the link on their Facebook page. Guido is such a great little guy and we were more than willing to share his story with everyone. The links are below:

Article: http://www.pjstar.com/article/20150325/LIFESTYLE/150329477

Video: http://www.pjstar.com/section?template=videodetail&vid=4136989577001&vidtitle=Guido

Just some cute pictures of our handsome little guy...

So sleepy...

 In mommy's car he has to ride in his crate...needless to say he is not thrilled.

 In a king sized bed a 9.5 lb dog is in charge!

Unfortunately Guido has started to get some marks from scooting so he now wears socks. 

Winner! Winner!

The Peoria Humane Society had a photo contest for their 2015 calendar. To enter, pictures were submitted along with a donation per photo to help the animals. We entered some photos of Guido and he is one of the 12 first place winners! His photo will be on one of the months. We are super excited!! The winning photo is below.

 

He's so stinking cute! Calendars will be for sale in October and we'll get a complementary one since our handsome guy is one of the winners. A few people who shall remain anonymous (Monica and Heather)-ok you won't remain anonymous-have said Guido should "autograph" the calendars. :) Rod and I are both so excited and proud of him; we just had to share the news! 

New Shirt

Guido's new Harley-Davidson shirt finally arrived. Below are a couple of pictures of him modeling it! :)

Vacations

Gramma and Grampa went on another trip to Tunica the week of June 30th so I was home with Guido all week. I think he was happy to spend time with me, but at the same time he missed Gramma. He looked at me funny when Rodney left for work that first day and didn't take him with him to go to Gramma's. We had a nice relaxing week though. I sent this picture to Gramma with the caption, "Miss you, Gramma."

Then Rodney and I had a little mini vacation to St. Charles, MO July 11th and 12th so Guido spent the night with his Gramma and Grampa. This was the first time we have taken a trip since his paralysis happened so I was a little anxious about it, but he did fine. It was nice to get away, but it was so HOT! I guess that's what you get in the middle of July. We did find this adorable shirt for him at the St. Charles Harley-Davidson shop, but they didn't have his size. Thank goodness for eBay-it's on its way now! :) We couldn't resist; it's just too cute and Rod wears these types of work shirts a lot.

 

New Toy

Dental cleaning

At the end of March we took Guido to the U of I again for a dental cleaning.  He was very happy that he got to see his friends Dr. Harper and Kim. It was a nerve racking day since he had to be put under for them to do the cleaning.  Thankfully Guido came through it great. He was a little out of it on the way home but he didn't lose any teeth or have any problematic issues so that was great. I now brush his teeth every day and luckily he loves his toothpaste! Below is a picture of him on the way home with a bit of a glazed look in his eyes.

As usual the staff at U of I was awesome.  Dr. Somrak and the students were wonderful. It means so much and helps to get through when dealing with such caring and great people. 

Where we go from here...

So, we've decided to start this blog so everyone can see what a great dog Guido is and how lucky we are to have him. I'm not sure how often we'll get things posted, but we'll try to get some pictures and stuff up of him as often as we can.

We want people to see that life for dogs with special needs doesn't have to be negative. Guido is awesome and brings us so much joy. Things are different, but in some ways, better and this entire experience has definitely taught me some things about life along the way.

Things are Different, but Good

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?

When Everything Changed...

In February of 2013, we were gone for the day on a Saturday. My husband's parents are retired and were going to our house each day to let Guido out at lunchtime. They had let him out for us that Saturday as well and said he was fine. But, when we got home, he yiped at us when we picked him up so we knew something wasn't right. We took him to the vet on Monday; they did x-rays and found he had some disc issues already at his young age of almost 3 1/2. The vet gave him medication and said to keep him from jumping, running, etc... We tried our best, but keeping a very active young dog from doing the things he loves can be difficult. He was doing great until the end of April and again on a Saturday morning he was yiping when we would pick him up. The vet said to give him the meds we were keeping on hand so we did, but by that night he was not able to stand up. We rushed him to the vet's office in the middle of the night. He was given an injection and we waited.

By Sunday afternoon, it was obvious we needed to do something else. We took him to the University of Illinois School of Veterinary Medicine. He was given an exam and we were told he required emergency surgery due to disc problems. It turned out Guido had not one, but two discs that had ruptured in his spine. Of course we were given all the information we needed and I will never forget being told that he could end up paralyzed. I started crying immediately. Leaving him there to have surgery was one of the most difficult things we have ever had to do. The staff there is beyond wonderful and the doctor called us at every step to give us an update. He came through the surgery fine and Monday we thought, ok we can get through this. Then on Tuesday morning I got a call from the surgeon telling me Guido was showing signs of a rare and fatal complication. The paralysis was moving upward toward his neck. We rushed down there to be able to talk to the doctors and see him. He was pretty out of it, but still enjoyed being with us as much as we enjoyed being with him. The rest of that week was a living hell. We just kept waiting for the call that would be the student or another staff person telling us we had reached the point of having to put him down because of the complication. I took Thursday and Friday off and rented a hotel room in Champaign so I could be closer. Rodney went to work, but drove down both Thursday and Friday night. Saturday we were told we could take him home and the surgeon told us she was never so happy to be wrong! They think the paralysis moved up a bit due to how severe his disc ruptures were. We got him home on Saturday, but ended up driving right back to U of I that evening. He started panting a lot and wasn't acting right. Guido ended up staying there another week. He seemed to have pain in his neck, which was scary to us and we didn't know if we were right back at that point of possibly losing him. The physical therapist started working with him after a few days of letting him rest and pain medications. Over the next few weeks, it was a week home, a week at therapy, a week home, a week at therapy. We then made the decision that, since he was not making any significant improvements, it was time to just let him be him.

Guido after surgery.

Guido is deep pain negative paraplegic, which means he does not have the use of his back legs and cannot urinate on his own. Thankfully, we were able to learn how to express his bladder (fancy way of saying giving him a squeeze to make the pee come out) and his therapist did all the measurements for us so we could get his wheelchair ordered from a great company in Hawaii called Doggon Wheels. We ordered the wheelchair so that he would have it during one of his weeks of therapy so the therapist could get him acclimated to it. He took right to his wheelchair and gets around great in it. Although he has given his Gramma a few scares when he's gotten going to0 fast and hit something in their house causing it to flip. He doesn't seem to mind; he just gets back up (with some assistance of course!) and gets going again.

The Beginning of our Journey

My favorite picture of Guido. :)

We are two people who absolutely adore our animals and feel they are more members of our family than just pets. We don't have human children so our furkids are very important to us. We've always had dogs (and one very persnickety cat!). In 2009, we decided to adopt another dog, a very sweet rescued chihuahua we named Bruno. We were only blessed to have Bruno for one year when he passed very suddenly, breaking our hearts. About two weeks later, in October 2010, we saw some adoptable dogs on the website of the same rescue (Hope Animal Rescues in Alton, IL) and we ended up bringing home a one year old dachsund-chihuahua mix named Guido.

Guido in the car on the drive home the day we got him.

It took some time for Guido to adjust to some things in his new home and to riding in cars. At first he would literally get down on the floor board and stay there. Eventually, he realized it was pretty cool to look out the window.



The day we brought Guido home.


He and the cat learned to get along in a very love hate relationship. This is still how they are - cuddling together at times and then chasing each other. We also had three other dogs at the time we brought Guido home: a yellow lab named Abbey, a chocolate lab named Sydney, and a teacup chihuahua named Pumkin. Guido didn't care that Abbey and Sydney were so much bigger than him; he thought he was in charge.







About a month after we got Guido, we had to make the very tough decision to put Abbey down. It was rough-she was the first dog we had gotten as a couple and it was hard to watch her struggling so much. Then in February of 2012, we lost Pumkin and the following November, Sydney. Now we have Guido and the cat, Noelle.