Sometimes...

Sometimes the world is just shit. A little shout out to a fine film by the name of Pay It Forward (go watch it if you haven’t) but also a pretty good summation of my reaction after getting off the phone to Ken Wyatt (Raven’s Oncologist) Thursday afternoon. As my gut instinct told me, Raven’s lymphoma was confirmed as having returned March 13th 2008. Stupid cancer. Seriously if I had three wishes only, one of those wishes would be to get rid of all forms of cancer forever. It’s a hideous, insidious disease that doesn’t discriminate in any way, shape or form. She will beat it back again. Of that I have no doubt. Now it is just a matter of selecting our treatment option. If we go the exact same route that we took last time no doubt she will go into remission again however our chances of cure have gone from 15% to 0%. So now we will be considering other options. I won’t know what till we see Ken Monday and discuss everything in detail. The good thing now is that since Raven’s diagnosis in May of 07 Murdoch has performed at least 12 bone marrow transplants in that time frame. If we choose this she will no longer be a guinea pig for the treatment and that’s reassuring for me however irrational my previous fears were regarding her being the first patient to undergo it at Murdoch. We shall see though. In the meantime apart from her slightly abnormal lymph nodes Raven is just fine, her behaviour, her attitude and her general health is absolutely normal, she was running round like some mad young dog last night at a fun agility event and unless I told you – this dog has cancer you would be none the wiser. Just like she is. I plan on keeping her that way. So that’s my rather sobering Raven update for now.

On a brighter note she had a wicked time last night – enjoying her two runs to the max (clear in jumping and a whole bunch of DQs in Agility because I didn’t go back and fix a missed weaver but boy they were fast DQs LOL!) and having fun in a tunnelling event and the 36 weave competition. Cypher also enjoyed himself with a clear in jumping, one almighty missed a frame contact in agility complete with enthusiastic ‘Woof!’ and he had a go at the tunnelling and weaving event as well. Spryte, I think had the most fun, she was flying on the jumping course and handler had a ‘bad handler’ moment telling her to ‘get out’ when she didn’t need to, so she did and I nearly caused a refusal but she saved my butt and tried so hard to clear the bar with an upright in her face, the bar was always gonna come down, however I was so pleased with her effort. She’s really starting to step up and do obstacles without as much support from me which is just what I wanted. In Agility she nailed the weaves with a badly lit entry and an incredibly appealing dog walk off to the side I was absolutely proud of her for that. We had a hiccup with a refusal at a tunnel entry but other than that she was clear….and having so much fun she jumped into my arms at the end delivering a face full of kisses. Sometimes the cuteness is just overwhelming. Who could resist a face like that? *Points below* I have also posted some pics we took yesterday to commemorate the rare occurrence of all three dogs being bathed, trimmed and groomed on the same day – Spryte is 19 months old, Raven is 8 years old and Cypher is 3 years old.

Spryte

Raven

Cypher

The Motley Crew