Decisions, Decisions

I've gone from puzzling over how to deal with Lola's rehab to having a couple of good options to choose from. A fellow agility friend suggested Alameda East (the vet hospital featured on Animal Planet's old Emergency Vets show) down in Denver. It turns out they have a state of the art canine sports rehab facility and a PT with lots of experience in rehabbing canine athletes. Then there's another agility friend who has started a career in canine sports rehab and works at another rehab facility that also has fancy equipment. Not sure if it's as fancy as Alameda East's though. So I have to decide and it feels a lot better having to choose between 2 really good options than having no idea what to do or where to go. Do I go with the friend who doesn't have a huge bank of experience but who knows Lola, competes in agility so knows exactly what stresses are involved with each obstacle, and is a very bright, competent woman? She's gone through some kind of training program and been certified, she's simply lacking the hands on experience that the other person has. On the other hand, Alameda East sounds pretty cool and their PT has tons of experience healing injuries like the one Lola has. Their Biomechanics Lab seems way more high tech. than anything I've ever seen at Boulder Center for Sports Medicine for crying out loud. I like the idea that they could pinpoint her ailment in a more scientific way than the vet did. On the other hand, I feel bad not going to my friend and in the end I'm sure she'd do a great job. It's a huge plus that she knows Lola and I completely trust her in handling Lola. What will I decide? The suspense is killing me.

Lola seems much better finally. She had a terrible reaction to the sedatives, both the ACE and something else (Butorphonol? I'm going to find out for sure). She finally seems her old self, now the challenge is keeping her quiet for a few more days. She was limping yesterday, way worse than before the stupid shot but she seems better today. The vet said that would be normal but still.

I took Cody all on his lonesome to Biscuit Eaters this morning for course run throughs and I felt terrible leaving Miss Lo behind. Then when I got there one of my former teachers and a really great person who's helped me tremendously through the years broke down into tears over her Border Collie. He has epillepsy that's been under control for several years but now the drugs aren't working anymore so he has to start on more severe drugs that are going to leave him doped up all the time. On top of that he has an enlarged heart and is on medication for that so she's in constant fear that he's going to drop dead from a heart attack. Needless to say she's had to retire him from agility but what she was really broken up about was that the drugs are going to alter his bright, alert personality. It's heartbreaking, esp. since he's such a wonderful, happy dog always full of energy and life. He adores agility and it's so hard for her to retire him. And on top of that she's such a nice person that she feels bad for feeling bad about this in light of some of the other terrible things some of her friends are going through and the horrible things going on in the world at large. A couple of us tried to comfort her and assure her that she surely is entitled to her pain and we totally understand, but there really aren't words and I know because if it was me I'd be inconsolable. No it's not tragedy on the scale of Darfur or Iraq but it's still very painful and she's certainly entitled to feel however bad she wants to feel as we all are about the various crappy things life throws at us.