Maiki makes a comeback ...

When Maiki was a tiny puppy, I enjoyed teaching her tricks and recording fun little videos.  But it’s been more than a year since Maiki’s last trick video.  After she fractured her knee last spring, we were left with other priorities - like strengthening the injured leg and dealing with some behaviour issues arising from the long months of being forbidden to run and play like puppies need to do.  Next she was diagnosed with a heart defect and then it was time for surgery as I’d chosen to have her spayed. Now, having overcome all this challenges, and a full year after the trick video I made with both Maiki and Teddi last April, I decided this month that it was time to learn some tricks again. Maiki’s back, and here she is with 50 border collie tricks. You can see the new video by clicking here on the photo above. We enjoyed making it and we hope you enjoy watching it!

 

Palm Sunday on the Mount of Olives...

It's Palm Sunday and a lovely sunny day in contrast to the recent rainstorms. Our Sunday afternoon walk was on the hillside that forms the backdrop to our town. I call it the "Mount of Olives" because the summit is scattered with wild or abandoned olive groves.

I hate olives, to be honest - something that is rather incomprehensible to my Spanish friends. We live, after all, in the greatest olive producing region of the world.

Maiki, on the other hand, is a Spaniard to the core, and pigged out on a small quantity of wild olives before we stopped to take a breather and admire the views from the mountain top.

Don't discount the small steps...

 Have you ever felt a bit discouraged because you didn’t seem to be making much progress towards some goal you’d set yourself? It could be a challenge like learning a foreign language, playing a musical instrument or losing weight… It could be something about your relationship with God - such as spending more time in prayer or reading the Bible from cover to cover. It’s easy to look at where we want to be, and feel that we’re not really making much progress. But something happened this week that reminded me of the value of noticing and celebrating the small victories and not only the big ones. 

Here in Spain, the dogs and I count our kilometres and donate them to a charity that raises funds for research into multiple sclerosis. Our goal is always to walk at least the same number of kilometres as the year: 2022 km this year. 

Over the past few years, I’ve only counted our “real walks” of minimum three or four kilometres and not even bothered to set the app on my phone if I was only walking down the road to the supermarket. But after last year, when both Maiki and I myself had injuries that prevented us from walking for several weeks, I began this year to set the app for all of our walks, even the shorter ones.

And on Thursday, I really noticed the difference this has made. When I calculated our running total for the end of March, I discovered that we’d already clocked up 968km - which puts us almost half way to our annual target. In previous years, we had only reached around 600 km by the end of March.

Sometimes we don’t bother to count, or even notice our small successes, because we think they’re not big enough to make a difference. Sometimes we don't even bother to try, because we believe we're not able to do something big enough. This week, I found proof that lots and lots of small efforts really do add up to a big difference.

What aspect of your life has got you feeling discouraged at the moment? Instead of thinking about all the big things you can't do to bring a change, just step out and do some of the small things that will make at least some kind of difference. 

The picture is of my gang (Nelson, Hugo, Maiki and Buba) posing proudly for this month’s milestone photo. Getting two to hold their “sit” and the other two to hold their “down” wasn’t the hard part; getting all four of them to look at the camera at the same time took five attempts!!

Well on our way...

It's the end of February and, despite the fact that we had a few post-surgery days when Maiki wasn't able to walk at all, we've still managed to clock up a pretty respectable running total for the first two months of the year. 650 km is just over 30% of the way towards this year's target of walking 2022 km.

I've been aware of a fair bit of arthritis pain this winter and have sometimes got frustrated at the stiffness in my back or the lack of strength in my fingers and thumbs. So it was encouraging to see that I and the dogs are still managing to keep mobile and accumulate kilometres that we can donate to medical research (to a charity that raises money to fund research into a cure for multiple sclerosis.)

No longer corazoncito...

Maiki is 13 months old, and I made arrangements to have her spayed last week. I thought it would be a straightforward matter, but the pre-surgical tests turned up something rather unexpected. An electrocardiogram (EKG) revealed that she has bradycardia - a much slower than normal heartbeat - and the chest x-rays showed a heart that was double the normal size. These two things may have been caused by the rabies vaccination she had at seven months (I've been a bit suspicious of that since noticing breathing and heartbeat changes last August) but there's no way of proving it. The vet didn't want to risk putting her under anaesthetic (and slowing the heart down even more) until the cardiologist had checked her over first.

So yesterday we had a (slightly traumatic) series of tests with the cardiologist, including an echocardiogram (ultrasound). Maiki was heroic, despite being flipped from side to side, having electrodes pinned to her legs and cold alcohol and gel put on her chest. Some heart measurements still need to be done before the final report is made but the bottom line is that she has a double heart murmur - with slight defects in two different heart valves.

"You're not going to tell me she has mitral valve prolapse, are you?" I asked the cardiologist.

"Well, yes, she has," he said. "The problems are with the mitral valve and the tricuspid valve, but they're fairly mild. But how do you know about MVP ?"

The reason I knew is that I have exactly the same heart murmur. Back in 2002, I was diagnosed with mitral valve prolapse - which we think was caused by a bout of rheumatic fever some thirteen years previously. There's a strange irony in the fact that my dog and I have the same heart condition!

Anyway, the good news is that the cardiologist doesn't think that any of the issues - the bradycardia, the enlarged heart or the valve problems - need to have a major impact on normal life for this little dog. The main implication is just that I'll need to watch she doesn't do too much exercise in the hot summer weather and put undue strain on her heart. (Border collies would run and play non stop if given half a chance.) 

So, if everything else is okay when the report comes back next week, her surgery is rescheduled for next Thursday, and there will be no need for any short term or long term medication.

A big thank you to all my dog-loving friends who prayed for her and asked me to let you know how things went.

My neighbour Matilde commented, "I'll no longer be able to call her Corazoncito!" When she greets Maiki in the mornings, she always pets her and says, "Hola, corazoncito" which means, "Hallo, darling," but corazoncito literally means "little heart."

Now we know that her heart is far from little; it's twice the size of a normal heart in a dog. Somehow, I think that Matilde will still keep making a fuss of her and saying, "Hola, corazoncito."

A good start to the year...

As in previous years, I'm counting my kilometres this year and donating them to a charity that funds research into multiple sclerosis. Our year got off to a really good start. Not too many rainy days, and we managed to walk 350 km during January. That's already about 17% of our annual target, which is to walk 2022 km in 2022.

 

Happy New Year

It's the first day of February, but it's also my first blog post of this year. For a variety of reasons, there were no posts during January Even though it's late, Maiki, Teddi and I wish you happy new year and many blessings in 2022.