Laycee has had many many bad days in her life... and thanks to RAGOM, her sponsors Sharon S and Connie J, all the vets that helped her while in RAGOM's care, the fosters that helped watch her while we had to go out of town... she has learned what good days are all about.  But...  none of those good days could even compare to today - the day she got to go home to her fur-ever home with the most wonderful family in the world!  Over the last year, Laycee's life - not to mention her body (!) has changed quite a lot. We, as her fosters, felt so fortunate to be able to watch her go from the condition she was in (which was much much worse than the pictures even showed!) to one of the most beautiful goldens the world has ever seen!
 
This golden girl never again has to worry about what kind of day she will have... or what she has to eat today... or if anyone will give her some attention today. She will be spoiled rotten! Her new Mom works from home and Laycee will be able to drink as much water as she needs throughout the day which will help keep her kidneys happy for many years. Laycee will get to enjoy a smorgasbord full of toys and tennis balls (her favorite!). She will get to go on regular walks with both Mom and Dad and not to mention ride in the boat and tag along in Mom's convertible. The best part of all, is her new Mom and Dad understand the rough life she came from and every day will be spent making it up to her!
 
Congrats Laycee!  We will miss you dearly but our sadness is nothing compared to the joy we have for you finding the W family!

Hello again everyone. I got a picture of Laycee girl this morning on my phone (sorry, the quality really isn't that great.. I had to get the picture quick with whatever was available!). She is so cute. On a lot of mornings she will just go into her crate and lay down. We crate her during the day - and she is so good about going in. You either just have to point at the crate and she goes right in, or you'll already find her in it, waiting.  She looked so pretty this morning with her paws almost crossed, so I had to try and get a picture. About a second later she popped up and out of the crate to say hi since I was looking at her :-)
 
I haven't said it the last few updates - but I want to make sure to send a special thanks to Laycee's sponsors. Laycee girl is so lucky to be under RAGOM's wing. And even more special to have people that have cared so much to sponsor her! How much more lucky could she get???  Only one more thing would complete her wonderful luck - getting adopted!  Laycee girl has hope that it will happen soon too :-)

Laycee surprises us more and more each day lately.  She really is becoming more and more a "normal" golden, both more in looks (see the picture below from Petco last weekend!) and in behavior.

First things first - we got great results from her ATCH test.  Her levels are still normal, so the meds are right where they need to be.  We can see the effects from the meds daily.  She's gained so much more muscle...  her stomach is more normal (not cushings like with a big pot belly)...  she is growing all this new beautiful golden hair (you know the kind - that is on the back of her legs and the feathers near her rear and tail) - in fact she's even getting some golden color finally!  I think she'll be a light golden color by the time she fills in fully.

As I mentioned earlier in updates - Laycee likes to rule the pups of the house and every now and then she tells residents Gracie and Eddie if they are doing something she doesn't like. This isn't often anymore and is nothing more than a lip curl and a quiet growl now that they are used to each other and usually surfaces more in the form of her rushing over to them while they are playing essentially to tell them to "knock it off", etc.  She never has really seemed to understand play with other dogs. She has never initiated it and seemed confused when other dogs initiated it. This is certainly understandable for a dog with her background.  However, yesterday, she sure shocked us!  Residents Gracie and Eddie were playing again, as they often do and Laycee decided she wanted to play with Eddie!  She started play grabbing for him in the same way that Gracie and Eddie do to each other.  Apparently she's been watching and learning!  This made me a little nervous at first but I soon realized that Miss Laycee sure was enjoying herself!  And Eddie too, though he was a little surprised it seemed.  Resident Gracie was either nervous or jealous apparently because she kept barking at them!  She apparently wanted to play too maybe? :-)

Thanks to a fellow RAGOM volunteer who snapped this great picture of Laycee at the Woodbury Petco event last weekend.  It is so hard to get a good picture of this girl!  We've been working on "stay" along with some other commands but with her excitement around the camera she forgets what stay means :-)

Laycee says thank you to the wonderful girls who gave her squeaky toys and tennis balls at the Woodbury Petco event!  I'm still trying to get some pictures of her with her toys :-) And of course another big thank you to her sponsors!

Laycee girl wanted to say Happy Holidays to everyone! She sat still for a nano-second for foster mom to take this picture!  It was amazing!!!  Even more amazing is that I got the santa hat and beard off before either her or resident boy Eddie destroyed it! I guess... what should I have expected... it's furry...  to them, that means it MUST be a toy!  I got this one good picture and about 15 that were nothing but blur or closeups of teeth grabbing the santa hat! Hahah...    Happy Holidays!!!!

Hello everyone! Again, I apologize for the delay in my update on Miss Laycee. I was waiting to see how a few things turned out and now we know.

Laycee's 2nd set of meds for her bladder infection were done on Thursday so I brought her urine sample in again on Friday after work. Some good news and not so good news. The good news is that her infection and white blood cells went way down thankfully - so the majority of her infection is gone. However.. the bad news - she still shows a few of the bacteria that can cause an infection so they wanted to put her on some more medication to make sure we take care of all of that too. So, she will be on two weeks more medication. Now that the infection is pretty much gone - we can now determine that she does still have some kidney function loss. The Dr. said this is the earliest stage that anyone would ever catch it, as it doesn't show up on her blood test at all, etc. So that is great news we caught it at this early stage as we can make sure she has proper diet and maximize the kidney function she does have. So, with this news, it means a few things.

1. Laycee will always drink a little more water than other dogs which means she will also need to go potty a little more often than most dogs. However, I have to tell you - her water consumption is WAY down. Many days I'd say she drinks a normal amount actually. There are some days that she would like to drink a half gallon of water at one time, then she's good for the rest of the day it seems. So, we have found that most of the reason she probably drank the water was due to her bladder infection.
    
2. She will always need to be on special prescription food. You can get the food from your vet and it costs about $70 for 40 lbs. She's been eating about 2 cups a day (1 in the morning and one in the evening)... this seems to be a good amount to keep her weight at what it needs to be. So, 40 lbs lasts quite a while :-) The vet stated this food will help Laycee tons and will help keep her kidneys as healthy as they can be.
3. Laycee will always be susceptible to getting bladder infections easier than other dogs. Because of the kidney function loss she will be prone to getting bladder infections easier. None of them should be like the one she has just been getting over though! From what the vet said this was ONE HECK OF AN INFECTION!!! I'm sure poor Laycee had this infection for a LONG time. The signs of an infection are that she would be drinking more water than normal. The test to determine is there is an infection I think is about $35? So it's not that bad.

Laycee has had the honor of meeting some new people recently. I guess she's gotten a little attached to me (as I have gotten to her - we've spent a lot of time together!). She LOVED it when they through the ball for her. They agreed with my thoughts on her age after seeing this! Laycee has lots of energy and she LOVES tennis balls. She will dive to get that tennis ball! I do think she has a very high pain tolerance, and I'm now guessing that she must have injured herself to cause those nose bleeds we saw a while back. I'm sure she dived especially hard somehow that day to get the tennis ball and that must have been what caused those nose bleeds. For the record, we haven't seen even one more nose bleed since then. I've seen her dive pretty fast and hard against something to catch that tennis ball and she hasn't injured herself thankfully but it does further the thought I wrote about in an earlier post that she does have a high pain tolerance. Some of those dives must hurt, but she doesn't flinch! I cannot stress enough though - she LOVES those tennis balls!

If you are interested in Laycee and are an approved applicant please contact placement!

Once again, thank you to Laycee's sponsor, Sharon S!

PS. Enjoy the picture! I'm so sorry I never have more... she is hard to get a picture of... she's always moving around so fast or she wants to come say hi and is then too close to the camera to actually take a picture :-) She is such a cutie though - each time we are at the vet she gets some compliments about what a cute girl she is! Her face is absolutely adorable - the pictures don't do her justice! This is the face I get all the time. She has the most beautiful eyes and she is so people attentive. She looks at me like this ALL the time. She is so into her humans and wants to just be around you all the time! OH!!! and she is finally starting to get some color!!! She is developing a little more of a yellow-golden tint to her fur now, it's very cute!

Hello everyone! Laycee is pretty excited that she gets to meet those of you going to the picnic this weekend! Only one day left!!!

She wanted to give you a bit of a "sneak peek" so you can see how good she is looking these days. I finally got a battery charger for the camera today and got a few pictures of Laycee girl.

A short update - she is coming to the end of her antibiotics and we'll hopefully get an answer by mid next week on if her kidneys have any damage or if it's all just the bladder infection... I'm really hopeful that it's just the bladder infection! We've seen some improvement in her drinking less water... woo hoo! Keep your fingers crossed!!!

Laycee says "See you soon!"

As promised, here are some new pictures of Laycee! I keep looking at her, and I really think that she is starting to look better already. The weight she has gained has helped - but I do think the proper nutrition she's gotten has helped too. Her coat sure has a long way to go (that's for sure) and she has a good amount of muscle to gain as well... but she's getting there. These pictures show you how far she has come... but... If I were to be honest she looks better in the pictures than she does "in real life" unfortunately. But I think that was probably true of her old pictures too... I remember the first day I saw her I was shocked at seeing this poor girl! She looked awful! Worse than what I was expecting from the pictures on her page. I guess that old saying about the camera adding weight? Weight she needs? Who knows...

Laycee's surgery has been scheduled, yipee! And, it's scheduled for tomorrow!!! Monday the 11th! I can't thank Dr. Ralph enough for doing the ultrasound. And also thank you to Dr. Megan and Dr. Pete as well for helping to figure out what's going on with this girl. Dr. Pete feels things should start to return to normal for this girl in 2-3 weeks... That's amazing to me! Just like that! We'll watch carefully to make sure she seems to be making the progress we anticipate... but, thus far, all signs lead to the tumors causing her problems by putting too much estrogen into her system...

Some good news (I think?) - the tooth she needed pulled when we were at the vet on 7/22 - we couldn't find it when we saw the vet last Wednesday... we finally figured out why.. there is a gap where that tooth was. My husband said when he was looking at it he noticed in addition to how rotten it was that it was very loose. We have come to the conclusion that it fell out on its own! Not really good news on some level - cause she needs all the teeth she has... but, good because the doctors won't have to remove it? I guess it tells us how bad off the tooth was... that it just fell out!

Wish her luck for surgery tomorrow. Hopefully none of that "c" stuff is found, etc... We will be keeping our fingers crossed!