You may or may not know this, but we love animals.  We have several.  They are fun, they make us laugh, and they love us no matter what stupid things we do (we love them too).  We have a lot of pets, 4 big dogs and 3 cats.  In the hierarchy of our ‘animal kingdom’, there is one Alpha….and her name is Macy.

Macy is Kim’s baby, raised from a pup, and coddled like no other.  She is a 9yr. old 75lb Husky/Malamute mix and is more of a cat than a dog.  She is impeccably clean (most of the time), much prefers to hunt her food (our squirrel and lizard population is nearly non-existent), and can do no wrong (in her mother’s eyes).   We love Macy.  She keeps her other ‘subjects’ in line and is clearly the Alpha….just ask her.

About 6 months ago, we noticed that Macy had a little irritation in one of her eyes, and was having trouble opening it all the way.  It is not unusual for the ‘street gang’ to get a bit too rough in the yard and one or more of them comes in injured (think midnight vet emergency room visits).  Nothing new.  SO, when we decided to take her in to our local vet, we didn’t expect anything unusual…maybe just a scratch that got inflamed or something.  Well, this time we weren’t so lucky.

The doctor looked at her eye and his suspicions were aroused very quickly.  He ran some tests, and it was confirmed that Macy had stage 5 Lymphoma. (Dogs apparently have 5 stages, unlike the 4 human stages.)  Lymphoma?  Not 30 days before, we had her in for a tooth extraction and they didn’t see anything.  Well, it was there now.  What does this mean?

We decided to start treatments for her and she is powering through like a champ.  She’s about 4 months into her chemo, and is doing great.   Same attitude, same intense wrestling matches in the yard, same lazy naps on my pillow,  (yes, my pillow) and we love her more than ever.   Here is a bit of eye candy of Miss Macy…