Small investments for big returns...

As Maiki has begun her return to a more normal active life, it's allowed me to begin walking with the other dogs again. I had hardly seen some of them during the long weeks of Maiki's injury and enforced rest. We're still not going for walks with the whole pack, as Maiki shouldn't get too excited or run too much just yet. So we've settled into a routine of going out with just one dog at a time. At the crack of dawn, we head out to a nearby country area with Nelson and take our morning walk while the sun is rising. In the afternoon, we escape the scorching summer heat by taking a short walk in the forest with Buba. And in the evening, we wander over to the nearby park, where she can play with a few other puppies. Poor Hugo (the German Shepherd) is still missing out, as we're only able to see him now and then.... but that will change as autumn approaches.

You'd imagine that taking only short walks would have a negative impact on our kilometre count and our goal of walking 2021 km in 2021. In fact, when I checked our end-of-July total today, I was encouraged to see that we were well on target. With fewer than 200 km to go, we'll probably reach our goal by the end of September, same as we did last year. What's kept us on track this year, is that I've recorded and included all of our walks, even if they were very short ones of less than a kilometre. All of those short distances have added up to make a very encouraging total - a reminder of how even small investments, if carried out faithfully, can actually contribute to something very worthwhile.

Another thing that has drawn my attention to the value of "small investments" is some trick training that I've done with Nelson this year. I taught Nelson all the important stuff (sit, stay, come, don't pull on the lead...) when he was just a puppy, but his owners told me that he'd become a bit lazy recently, over the months of not going out with the pack. It was time to retrain some of those behaviours and I decided to stretch his brain a little bit by teaching him a couple of new tricks too. Of course, I didn't have much time available, so I was able to make an investment of only 3 minutes per day. In ten days or so, I discovered that you can teach an old dog new tricks and that even such small daily commitments can add up to make a difference. (You can see Nelson's little YouTube video by clicking here or on his photo at the top of this blog post.) 

It's got me thinking about the other areas of our lives where we might want to see change and growth, but feel that we can't really commit enough time to make a difference. Perhaps you'd like to memorise scripture, spend more time in prayer or read the Bible from cover to cover. Perhaps you've been wanting to exercise to help your physical fitness or you're studying a language and wanting to increase your vocabulary. Perhaps you've been meaning to tidy out that garage or that wardrobe but just haven't got round to making a start....  I wonder if that "big" task could actually be achieved by making a small but regular investment - maybe just three or five minutes a day. It's given me food for thought.

A new season begins at last...

Today I begin life with my new rescue dog. She’s seven and a half months old and she has some psychological and behavioural issues carried over from her previous life (where she was locked up and prevented from running or playing for many weeks on end.) In many ways, she’s a lot like the puppy I lost three months ago… except that she doesn’t have the happy, carefree personality that that puppy had; nor does she have the impressive focus and enthusiastic obedience that made the puppy so trainable and accomplished. But I’m convinced she’s going to be an amazing dog when we’ve had time to work through all of the baggage and leave this nightmare behind us.

Yes, after three months of "rest and rehabilitation," we've finally come to the point where Maiki's knee bone fracture has healed. Her mobility buggy has been a real blessing over these past weeks, but I won't be sorry to dismantle it and pack it away in a box. I'm getting kind of tired of pushing it around in this hot weather, and Maiki's getting pretty tired of being stuck in there instead of being allowed to walk on her own four legs. But we're finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Starting this weekend, we can begin getting back to "almost normal" life.

Not completely normal, because the injury was in her growth lines, and, as the growth plates don't close until a dog is a year old, the vet says it means we'll still need to be "careful" over the coming five months, until that growth line has completely closed and the bone is solid. So, we can begin going for walks again, she can start playing with other puppies again...... but no wild running and playing with bigger dogs that could hurt her, no longish walks on mountain terrain, not too much going up and down stairs.... There's also to be no walking on sand/beach for at least another couple of weeks, so we'll be well into the summer before Maiki has her first experience of seeing the sea and perhaps learning to swim.

And after the next five months of "almost normal" life, she'll be a fully grown dog and we'll finally be able to enter the season of normal life at last.

Although I was convinced that adoption was the right way to go and that this year was the right timing, I opted not to adopt a “rescue dog” in the traditional sense of the word. I didn’t feel I had the time available to dedicate to a pup that was already six or eight months old and came with the emotional baggage and behaviour issues caused by neglect or abuse. I wanted this “last puppy of my lifetime” to come to me at two months old, so that I could raise her from the beginning into a happy, healthy, well-adjusted dog.

So it's sadly ironic that Maiki’s mysterious knee injury put an end to all that, robbing both her and me of that smooth and joyful experience. While I’m thankful that she’s been slowly recovering, I realise that I now have a “rescue dog” to rehabilitate - a puppy that has been “inappropriately treated” for almost half of its lifetime, in the sense that she’s been locked up and restricted, constantly corrected; not allowed to run or play or do all the things that puppies need to do at 4-6 months old to grow physically strong and emotionally/socially well-balanced. So now she has some of the dysfunctional behaviours that typically result from that kind of mistreatment: barking, pulling on the lead, trying to chase birds (and Teddi, the cat), digging up the lawn in the park…

So, that's why I say that today I begin life with my "rescue puppy" - as we start to undo all the negative consequences of these difficult three months. It'll take some patience and perseverance, but I know she'll turn out great.

Watching and waiting

It seems like I’ve had to do a lot of waiting this year - waiting for my residency and health cards, waiting for my puppy to heal from a serious injury….. Several of my missionary friends here are also in a waiting season at the moment. 

It reminded me of a previous waiting season, when I did a word study of all the verses in the Bible that speak about waiting, and I checked what the original Hebrew and Greek words actually meant. I wrote about it here on this blog in 2007. One verse that stood out at the time was Micah 7:7 - “And so I will watch for the Lord; I will wait confidently for the God of my salvation.”

The two words used here (watching and waiting) are the Hebrew verbs tsâphâh and yâchal. Both of them express the idea of trusting God completely and waiting patiently and expectantly for Him to speak or act. But it was interesting to note that the Hebrew dictionary also defined tsâphâh as, to lean forward, to peer into the distance, to look up or to keep watch.

These twin ideas of looking up and also peering into the distance suggested to me that really trusting God sometimes also includes waiting for things that can’t yet be seen - things you're hoping and praying for, but you have no guarantee of when they'll happen. All we can do is keep on looking up to the Lord during that waiting time. We may not have a promise that specifies a time frame, but we do know that God is good and will be with us in our challenging times of waiting.

A mixed and muddled month...

So, another whole month has gone by - several more weeks of "life on hold" for this little puppy who's not allowed to be a pup any more because of the broken bone in her knee. 

It's been kind of a chaotic month. As well as taking Maiki to Malaga three times a week for her laser therapy (see photo below), I was teaching for two weeks in a youth ministry school (in Switzerland, but by Zoom) and I had builders and painters working noisily in my house for several of those weeks. I also got bronchitis twice, which meant having two covid tests - both negative, of course. I had to put the cat (Tobi) to sleep because she had a tumour and was starting to get like a skeleton. And, just in case life got boring, I had a flood in the house that left all the bedrooms under three or four inches of water!

All of this was the slightly crazy backdrop to Maiki's second month of being an invalid. She turned six months old during those weeks, but of course she hasn't been allowed to run or play like a real puppy since that fateful morning in early May when she woke up with a mysterious limp. So it's been lockdown and restrictions for this unfortunate little border collie. If you click on either of the photos in this post, you can see a video of what the past few weeks have been like. 

Nothing much happens in the video, just as nothing much has been allowed to happen in her life recently. But you'll see how she gets her laser treatment at the hospital and how we later managed to get out and about in the town again, thanks to the "mobility buggy" that was made possible by some generous donations. That was a blessing for Maiki as it allowed her to see something more than the four walls of my bedroom, and a blessing for me, as it allowed me to go walking and get some exercise again.

So, after two months that have seemed very long (it was, in fact, a whole third of her short lifetime) we're coming to the moment of truth and tomorrow she has another evaluation at the hospital. It will be our time to find out whether her bone has healed well and whether this little pup, and her owner, can begin to go back to normal life again.

Living with loss...

I can't believe it's been almost a month since Maiki woke up one morning with a mysterious limp. Visits to the vet confirmed that it was some kind of knee injury - quite possibly a cruciate ligament tear that could only be fixed by invasive and expensive surgery. In the meantime, my formerly happy and healthy puppy had to be forced to "rest" and prevented from doing all the normal things that puppies are supposed to do in order to grow strong and well-adjusted: things like running around, jumping and playing with other dogs.

My heart has been saddened by these weeks of having to restrict her, and watching the joyful spark go out of her. There's been a strange sense of grief and loss. In a very real sense, I lost my puppy overnight, and am having to manage the care of a seriously injured and fragile dog. No more walks, no more games, no more learning tricks to make fun videos for YouTube...

Last week I had the opportunity to take her to a veterinary hospital in Malaga to be evaluated by a specialist in canine injuries. The doctor confirmed that the injury was in the knee, but was able to diagnose that it was actually an avulsion of the tibial crest and not a cruciate ligament tear as we'd suspected. An avulsion injury (where the bone splits in two along the still open growth plates) is more common in puppies, but has basically the same symptoms and the same need for rest as a ligament injury.

Usually the avulsion needs to be repaired by surgery - to put a pin in the knee to hold the bone together again. Occasionally, laser treatment can help the bone to regenerate on its own. We decided to do a few sessions of laser treatment before making a decision about whether surgery is needed. My neighbour wanted to pay for the first three sessions, which are happening this week.

I so long and pray for a miracle.... for the laser treatment to be even more effective than it would normally be. It's hard to keep being "horrible" to this little dog and correcting her for trying to be a normal energetic puppy.

Meanwhile, I've also had my own health challenges over the past week. A cardiovascular specialist has prescribed a heavy compression stocking for a huge varicose vein that has suddenly appeared on my left leg.... and said that I should have my lungs x-rayed because the vein's sudden appearance could also be a symptom of deteriorating lung capacity. As if to underline the weakness in my lungs, two days later I had to go to the emergency department of our local clinic, where they (after doing a covid test) diagnosed a bad bout of bronchitis and prescribed antibiotics. 

I don't actually have a health card at the moment (thanks to Brexit) so it was a relief that I was able to see the doctors on those two occasions. But it was a disappointment to come down with bronchitis again, after having had a stretch of about sixteen months with no lung infections.

So I'm kind of on bed rest this week (though still doing computer work) and trying to keep a 5 month old puppy resting at the same time. My hopes and my prayers are for healing for both of us.

When the dream turns to nightmare...

If you've read my earlier posts this year, you'll know that a very long-held dream came true and I was able to get a border collie puppy. Little Maiki has been an absolute joy and I've so enjoyed having a dog again.

So it was a real concern over the past week when Maiki woke up lame on Saturday morning, hobbling along on three legs. There was no explanation for it; she had been perfectly fine the previous day. After three days of limping, we went to the vet, where the x-rays looked fine and so they prescribed anti-inflammatories and "rest" for a possible strained or sprained muscle.

Rest? It's extremely hard to stop an active and energetic border collie puppy from trying to run and play. The poor pup's frustration level rose throughout the week from lack of exercise, but there didn't seem to be a lot of improvement in the limping. On Friday morning I phoned the vet to ask what I could allow the puppy to do and what I needed to prevent her from doing, for her own recovery. 

And that's when my happy little world came tumbling down. The vet said that if she was still limping after a whole week, we needed to consider that it could be a cruciate ligament tear - a serious knee injury that usually only recovers with surgery and can sometimes leave dogs with early onset arthritis.  More medication over the weekend, and then I had to take Maiki in yesterday for further examination.

Well, our vet's appointment yesterday confirmed the bad news: Maiki has a cruciate ligament tear - a fairly serious knee injury. I'd been feeling hopeful because over the weekend she had stopped walking on three legs and was putting weight on four feet again. But the minute the vet saw her, she said, "Oh, she's really lame, isn't she?" (I guess I didn't know what to look for.)

It's sad news for this little border collie puppy. It could mean that I need to wave goodbye to any dreams I may have held of having an amazing agility dog or frisbee dog in the future (typical border collie sports.) What I can hold onto is that perhaps there is just a tiny chance that we can come through this without needing to put her through invasive and expensive surgery.

The next few days will tell. There's to be no jumping, no playing with other puppies, definitely no turning of any sort (which could damage the knee permanently) - so no playing fetch or any other activity which would involve going in one direction and then turning around to go in the other direction.

On Friday we have another vet's appointment to evaluate whether she has continued to improve or whether surgery is the only way of saving her from a painful and arthritic future.

So, in the meanwhile, I keep praying and hoping for some glimmer of improvement that might mean surgery isn't necessary. This isn't what I would have hoped for when getting my dream puppy, but she's my responsibility now and I need to do the best I can for her.

Some people might feel a little shocked that I would dare to pray for a miracle for an animal. Does God really care what happens with our pets? Doesn't He have better things to do than spend a miracle on healing an animal?

Read on below for why I'm at least going to pray and see what happens.

Does God care about our animals?

This week has been kind of hard emotionally as I've juggled the challenges of caring for a dying cat (Tobi) and a mysteriously but seriously injured puppy (Maiki.) Not particularly "spiritual" challenges, you might think; not about winning the lost or making a big impact for the Kingdom of God. So does God even care about our animals? Are there not much more important things in the world vying for His attention?

Whenever that question arises,  I am reminded very clearly of something that happened back in the beginning of 2006, when I still lived in Cape Town. I received an email from a man I hadn’t yet met at the time (the husband of a friend) saying that he had received money for Christmas and, when he prayed, he felt that God told him to send the money for my dog. Well, this was rather mysterious, as there seemed to be no obvious reason why either of our two dogs would need such a large sum of money.

Just over a week later, we were out of town for a few days and a young friend was looking after our house and dogs. When we got home again, we discovered that one of the dogs had had an accident and that part of her beautiful collie tail had been broken off. She needed to have the infected part of the tail amputated so that the skin could be stitched over it again. And yes, you’ve guessed it: the cost of Zola’s operation was exactly the amount of money that my Scottish friend had sent “for my dog.” 

Later that day, I was reading my Bible and I had to smile when I came across Psalm 36 vs 6: “You take care of both people and animals, oh Lord.” This rather unusual incident spoke to me very clearly that I have a heavenly Father who is interested in every single detail of my life - and even in providing enough money for me to take care of my animals. 

Provision is one way that God shows His care for us and our pets (or our children, for that matter.) Another way He sometimes intervenes is by doing an unexpected miracle of healing. Back in 2016, a full decade after the Zola experience in Cape Town, my cat here in Spain, Teddi, was diagnosed with a thyroid condition, which meant that he probably had less than a year left to live.  

I was going to Africa for two months of ministry that summer, and a variety of house-sitters were holidaying in Spain and looking after my two cats. I think no one wanted to be the person on duty when the big cat died, so various house sitters told me they were laying hands on him and praying for his health and healing.

When I came home from Africa, I found a very poorly cat. He had eaten little while I was gone and had lost a lot of weight.  (Whole story here: http://backineurope.blogspot.com/2016/09/medical-misadventures-medical-mystery.html) Yet, when the vet did a blood test to see if thyroid deterioration was behind his rapid decline, the test showed that his thyroid was completely normal. Follow up tests six months later showed that it was still normal. 

Five years later, Teddi is still with me, as large as life. When doing a recent health check on Tobi (his sister) we did the thyroid test on both of them and both came back normal. The vet is completely baffled about Teddi's recovery. She keeps saying that hyperthyroidism isn't a disease you can recover from, and that Teddi's amazing healing is "like a miracle."

So now, it's Tobi's turn to be ill. Her thyroid may be normal, but she's going into kidney failure and she has a tumour in her liver and pancreas. She probably doesn't have long left to live; maybe only a few weeks. I'm not expecting or even praying for a miracle for Tobi. She's twelve years old, she's had a good life, and animals don't live forever. It's obvious that it's her time and at some point soon it will be kinder to let her go, if she doesn't just die on her own. For now, she's not in pain and she's not suffering in any way.

But for my little Maiki, just turned five months old, it seems unthinkable that a mystery injury could rob her of her puppyhood and of possible future mobility and musculoskeletal health. And so I'm praying. I'm praying for an outcome that would be good for her and good for me.

I don't have a specific word from God. I don't know if He would want to do a miracle of healing (with no surgery needed) or a miracle of provision (if surgery is the only way to give this little pup a long and healthy life.) But I know that God cares about me and therefore about every aspect of my life.... and so I'm going to pray anyway and see what happens. The Zola miracle and the Teddi miracle were unexpected. Perhaps God will do something unexpected this time too.