Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Mystery Dog


Yesterday was a busy day. I sorted out a persistent problem with our cable television, and I took Ruby to her (and our) first vet appointment in the UK.

We get our TV from Sky, and we've had problems with the picture and sound breaking up -- particularly on certain channels. There's nothing more maddening than looking forward to a show and then trying to watch it, live or recorded, only to have the picture break into a billion pixels and the sound stutter.

At Sky's suggestion, we'd already tried one fix that didn't work. Yesterday I contacted Sky and chatted online with one of their service reps, and we tried a few more solutions, each increasingly drastic. Finally he had me reinstall all the software in the cable box. This erased all our recorded shows (but a lot of them were unwatchable anyway, so I didn't care!) but seems to have solved the problem. We're keeping our fingers crossed.

Yesterday afternoon, Ruby and I walked to the vet, about three blocks away. I was a little worried that even the walk would be too much for her, but she handled it with aplomb. The vet is very puzzled by her condition -- the huge accumulation of abdominal fluid paired with her relatively good overall health and demeanor. She said Ruby doesn't behave like a dog in heart failure, and that her heart sounds good. She wants to see the vet records from New Jersey, which I'm now trying to obtain. (Why didn't I think to bring them when we moved?) She said Ruby is a very interesting, mysterious case, and advanced various treatment possibilities -- even surgery, which sounds like a terrible idea to me.

For now we've got Ruby on diuretics to reduce the fluid and antibiotics for a persistent sore on her hip. We've got a followup appointment on Friday, but I'm going to postpone it unless I can get the records from New Jersey. The vet needs to see those before we do anything else.

(Photo: An alley in the St. James Park area near Pall Mall, Oct. 6.)

3 comments:

Barbara said...

Watching TV used to be so much simpler when we just adjusted the rabbit ears!

I guess that's potentially good news for Ruby. Who knows? It might be a curable condition and she might live to a riper old age. Good idea to get the records. Can they just fax them to you or must you use snail mail?

Reya Mellicker said...

It's wonderful that you're getting a new perspective on Ruby's condition, though I agree, surgery sounds kind of drastic!

Love the alien eyes.

e said...

Ruby doesn't seem to be suffering, which is good and I'm glad you're approaching any surgery with caution. As to television, I tried the coupon from the government which was supposed to convert analog signals to digital and it never worked in this flat no matter what I tried and how many engineers I spoke with about the reception. That was when I got rid of the box and television entirely. I've never looked back. Hopefully, your problems are more easily corrected.