Miles Needs One of These

In addition to calming him down, I'll bet he could significantly lower our power bill if it was hooked up to a generator. You can see a video in action on their website.

Doggy Obedience Graduation

Tobi and Miles are obedient dogs! I can prove it!

Yeah right...

Happy Birthday Tobi

A couple days late on this, but Tobi is 5 now.

Medication for Everyone!

Miles got neutered last week, and they gave him some anti-inflammatory pain pills, so now everyone's on a medication regimen! For a little while, at least. Nina's cell count went down again, so her dosage went up, I have a feeling she's just going to be a roller coaster. Tobi's ears and skin have been especially gross recently and so we got some high powered ear cleaner and Jessica's been flushing her ears daily for a week or so, and they've been getting better. And for her skin, the vet recommended some new shampoo, and it actually seems to be working pretty well:

Tobi Enjoying the Bay of Plenty

Poor Miles (not really)

Miles sure gets knocked around at the dog park. But he sure likes it.

Dog Park Ballet from Morgan Loomis on Vimeo.

New Friend

Meet Miles:

Poor Nina (and Tobi)

So we know now that Nina has an immune system disorder that makes her anemic, and she's been on regular medication for a couple months. Since her immune system is repressed by the medicine, she recently caught a cold and an eye infection.

Because of the treatment for that on top of her current medication, she has left Tobi in the dust in terms of daily medical treatment, which is something I daresay we never expected. Here's the line-up of the medicine that our pets need on a daily basis:

If you click on the picture it will take you to a breakdown of what everything is. But to sum it up, when we get up in the morning we rub a paste on Nina's gums, force a pill down her throat, squirt a liquid in her mouth, and squeeze an eye-drop into her eye. Then Tobi gets her regular eyedrops, and an antibiotic pill because her skin has been acting up again.

So that's the medical report. The good news is that Nina's eye and Tobi's skin have been getting better. Nina has been seeing a cat specialist whom we like. The medicine is more expensive, but the vet visits are actually cheaper than in the states, so it evens out. Despite it all, we feel like Nina is doing well. She is very active, and loves the yard. She caught her first mouse ever about two weeks ago, and we just discovered the corpse of her second. And we can only interpret that as good news.

Some New Friends

We went and got some more animals the other day. The flock now includes two chickens and a duckling. Tobi got pecked in the face by the chickens:

but Ferdinand seems to think she's ok:

She's Home!

Yay! Tobi got out of quarantine on schedule and is making our house feel like home again.

Unfortunately Nina couldn't be released yet. The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry decided to run more tests to make sure her anemia isn't masking any infectious diseases. We're sure it's not, but we have to wait until the tests come back before she can be released. It shouldn't take too long. The good news is that her blood cell count is going up, so the treatment appears to be working!

Living it up in Quarantine

Tobi and Nina have made it halfway through the quarantine process, two weeks left! They're doing great! They're both healthy and playing, and Tobi at least was very happy to see us.

There was a little confusion with the MAF regarding some test results that they haven't seen, but we've been flinging emails around to everyone to get it resolved. Here's some pictures of us visiting them in their sweet digs: