ATHENS

The past two weeks have been hectic for us. As many of you know we have been in the process of moving to Athens. Well, I was finally able to close on our house August 29th. My wife and I moved from Dublin to Athens August 30th after a horrible experience with UHaul (I will never use them again). To make a long story short, if you reserve a 17′ truck at 8AM in your town, you should expect to get a 14′ truck at 10AM in a town an hour away. We expected to have everything loaded up and be in Athens in the afternoon. Instead, I found myself unloading our truck at 11PM to get our mattress out so we could sleep that night. By the way, I’ve never had this issue with Penske or Budget. But, we’re moved in, we still have tons of boxes to unpack, furniture to move around, and all sorts of things to get situated.

WOODY

Last Tuesday we took Woody to the Vet Hospital for an overnight. He had to have an MRI Wednesday morning. The good news is that the MRI came back positive. His brain is fine, his spine is fine. The bad news is that Woody is still broken and no one knows why. The doctor said that it is probably a genetic condition – pretty much uncurable. They took a urine sample and discovered a high keytone level (which is usually found in diabetics). But he doesn’t have diabetes. So they are sending the sample to California to find out if there are any oddities. We started to change his diet a little to up his protein and we’ll have to probably put him on a multi-vitamin. But basically, unless California finds anything, Woody will remain the same. Of course God could always do something miraculous. I know you’ll all probably laugh at me, but the night I closed I went home and put some oil on Woody and prayed over him. It hasn’t really changed anything with Woody, but I felt like I should at least do it, since we are told to have Elders come and anoint us with oil and pray over us if we are sick (James 5:14). We’ve also been looking into getting Woody some booties so he can grip the wood floors in our house better.

I think that’s all for updates.

Your prayers are always welcome.

Well, Kati brought Woody to the Vet this morning. He did another x-ray and found that the object had moved and was almost passed. He was able to get it out and found that it was not a piece of metal at all. It was a small rock. So that’s kinda good news… but the bad news is that it looks like Woody has a neurological issue.

We’ll have to take him to a neurologist to see what they can do. Luckily for me I work for UGA which has one of the best Vetrinary facilities and their own Pet Hospital section with three Neurologists on staff. Hopefully we can get to the bottom of this soon and get Woody some help.

One of our Beagles, Woody, is a little special. I always thought he was a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Ever since he was a wee one he just acted a little weirder than our other beagle, Gus. He’s always ran kinda weird… kinda like a horse galloping, but add a little “fairy” to it. Lately he’s even been having a hard time just standing up. It seems like he keeps losing his balance with his back legs. So, being the bad parents that we are, we waited until this past Friday to bring him to the vet. They said that there is nothing wrong with this legs or hips, which is good. However, they did an x-ray and found a piece of metal in his stomach. The doctor thought it might be a hunk of lead and that he might be suffering from lead poisoning. We brought him back on Saturday morning for another x-ray, to see if the metal object had moved – it hadn’t. So, tomorrow, Woody is going in for surgery to have the metal removed. We are also waiting for blood test results to see what his lead-levels are (if it is in fact lead poisoning). So they’ll do another x-ray tomorrow and if the metal hasn’t passed then they will proceed with surgery.

In a way, we are hoping that it is lead poisoning, if not, then it is a neurological issue. I’m not sure what we could/would do if it was neurological. He’s going to be 2 years old this December, so he’s still a pretty young dog and otherwise healthy.

Our pets mean alot to us, so if you’d pray, we’d appreciate it.