Happy 12th Birthday Addie!!

I love this picture of Addie. It was taken right after she ate her daily cottage cheese. She always wears it on her chin :-)



When Addie was first diagnosed one year ago this past July, we hoped she would make it to her 11th birthday. All the 'doctors' said she wouldn't but she did. Now, this week she turns 12!

She has her ups and downs but we attribute that mostly to her old age - not the cancer. Given her breed and weight (she weighs in right around 70lbs) she is considered to be in her "geriatric" years. She is stiff when she gets up, her eyes are cloudy, and she likes to sleep in as much as possible, but that's what the retirement years are all about. Still, she has her moments like taking on Finigan the puppy in a wrestling match now and then and she still loves to play with her tennis balls and squeaky toys.

Happy 12th Birthday Baby Girl!!

Small World

I met Christine online via Addie's blog several months ago when Christine was starting the terrible journey with her sweet girl Dina. We had emailed back and forth and found out that we only live about 30 miles apart AND use the same holistic vet - Dr. Friedly. It is such a small world.

Unfortunately, Dina lost her battle with hemangiosarcoma not long after her diagnosis. There seems to be no perfect formula for helping our puppies thru this. I wish there were.

Addie had an appointment at Dr. Friedly's yesterday to have her teeth cleaned. It is a great procedure whereas they do not use anesthesia. Given Addie's age and health, it is a great alternative to the standard teeth cleaning method. While there, I ran into Christine while she too was having her other dogs' teeth cleaned! It was wonderful meeting someone in person who had been thru what we are going through. Not knowing if you will have another day, are you doing everything you can for them, is the cancer metastasizing, etc. She was also kind enough to share her unused portion of neoplasene. Although it wasn't able to help Dina, we hope for Addie many more happy and healthy years.

Is Neoplasene a pipe dream?

The fact that Neoplasene did not work for Shep may make it seem that using it is a 'pipe dream' and that Addie is simply an anomaly and would have made it just as long without Neoplasene. However, there are things that must be kept in perspective. By the time we found Shep's cancer it had spread from his lungs and into his lymph system. As Dr. Fox told us at the onset (when we spoke to him about Addie): "even Neoplasene won't work if you have termites in the attic". This means that the disease had spread so far and so fast that there really was no way to save him. Had we caught his cancer months earlier, when it was just starting to form, things would probably have been different. However, the first indication we got was when the cancer had started to spread into another body system - the termites had found the attic...

The reason for this short post is to give anyone with doubts about the effectiveness of Neoplasene some understanding of the differences in the two cases.

This poor quality photo (taken with my cell phone a couple of years ago) is one of my favorite of Shep. It was taken at a place called Sentinel Rock and is just below Shep's memorial site. It captures all the things that I like to remember about Shep-o: his lop ears, goofy smile, and love of hiking and exploring new places.

Miss you buddy...