boooo worms

well i must say that in the few weeks we've had nana she's been a joy. she's a little bit hyper and has a few personality quirks but nothing major. everyone who's met her tells me how cute she (mostly dudes unfortunately) and she absolutely loves everyone. they had her evaluated at a behaviorist before we got here and this is the list of "issues" they found:

x ignores commands	_ separation anxiety	x barks
x jumps on furniture	x has bitten someone	x jumping on people
x nips at hands	_ climbs or jumps fence	x chewing on furniture
x growls	_ not house trained	x bolts out doors
x pushy	x digging holes	x mouthy
x pulls on leash	_ shy / timid	x steals food / objects
_ car sickness	_ guards food / objects	x begs for food
_ afraid of thunderstorms	x aggressive to people	_ aggressive to other dogs
x will not return when called

i think most of you will agree that the majority of these things could but lumped into a single item titled "being a dog" and those of you that have met her would probably be amazed to find out that she was at one point scheduled to be euthanized due to aggression.

anyway, we knew all this when we got her. what we didn't know was that we were getting a 30,000 for 1 special. we took her to the vet the other day and it turns out that nana came with heartworms, which is potentially pretty serious. even more serious than the kind of worms elway had, which made his poop scurry across my back patio (an image that will forever be burned into my memory and makes me shiver every time i think about it). i'm a bit miffed because the shelter group we got her from says she tested negative about a year ago and has been on a heartworm interceptor since then.

she's on antibiotics now. the estimate i got from the vet for treatment was just over $1500 and sounds like it takes 4-6 weeks for the treatment. and even that is no guarantee. they can kill the worms, but until the are reabsorbed by the body, they can still cause problems and even death. the fun part is going to be trying to keep her from running around and dislodging dead worm pieces into her bloodstream. i contacted the shelter we got her from to see if they have a vet that volunteers for them and they are going to get back to me.