Better photos will come in time. Right now just getting all three pups in the same frame is a major operation.
Anyway, here’s the latest. Lulu, the black & tan, tested positive for valley fever. She’s nowhere near as sick as Mr. B was when he got it. The couple who adopted Lulu & Fritzi out to us noticed Lulu wasn’t eating much and had a cough, so they had her tested before the handover. The results came in today.
We had agreed to treat Lulu for whatever was wrong with her, suspecting it was valley fever; now we know it is and know what to do. She’ll start taking an antifungal medication called fluconazole, the same thing Mr. B takes, tonight. We’ve already set up her prescription with Chewy.com.
With the B, the results of going on fluconazole were almost immediate: the cough & fever went away, the appetite returned, the spring came back to his step. The fungal infection still shows up in titer tests and he’s still on the medication, but if you didn’t know that you’d never suspect there’s anything wrong with him.
So yeah: we knew Lulu might have valley fever when we adopted her, and knew what we were getting into. Mr. B was sick with valley fever for a couple of months before he was properly diagnosed and put on the right meds; Lulu just got it and is going on the meds right away. With any luck she’ll respond faster than Mr. B and get over it sooner. Fingers crossed. Lulu, like her sister-from-another-mother Fritzi, is a sweetheart, and we’ll take good care of her, whatever it takes.
Oh, I managed to find another photo of all three pups, this one with Donna and Giorgianna, our great-goddaughter from San Jose. Left to right on their laps, that’s Mr. B, Lulu, and Fritzi.
Giorgianna’s hat has a secondary role: it’s actually a bowl holder for microwave ovens. You put the bowl of whatever it is you’re heating in the padded holder so you don’t burn your fingers when you take it out of the microwave. Giorgi cut the fabric and stitched everything together on a sewing machine under Donna’s tutelage. It’s the first thing she’s sewn from scratch, and it’s perfect. She decided it’d make a good hat, and who are we to disagree? Oh, and she loves the dogs, and the dogs love her.