Forest King Vizslas

01/09/2025

Our dog family lost a member last night. Forest King Polar Vortex JH, Amber, left for the bridge last night. 💔. She was a sweetheart that will be sorely missed by her family and all who knew her.

Fly high sweet Amber, say hi to your momma for us ❤️

01/04/2025

We appear to have a true miracle dog here.

Six plus months after her liver disease began, followed by a horrible resistant bacterial infection, both which should have killed her, Ravioli appears to have beaten all of the odds.

Her liver values are almost normal! Yes, they are still a bit elevated, but truly almost normal. 🤯🤯

Her appetite is decent, she is a happy, wiggly girl who wants to be involved in all the things. Her back is still a problem, but it’s been better the last two weeks. She has a rehab consult in a few weeks (pending approval from her medical team) to see what our next steps are for that.

We are waiting for the official word from her team on what our next steps are; there are still a lot of questions and unknowns. Her case isn’t something you can just look up in a book and know what the right answers are. We don’t know if she can ever be vaccinated again, have other pain medication, have flea and tick medication, or can undergo anesthesia safely.

I am just floored by how well she is doing, when she faced certain death.

Tufts veterinarians and technicians are miracle workers, and Ravioli has more will to live than any dog I have ever known. Truly miracle workers.

Looking forward to hearing more info about her future plan!

01/02/2025

These two help keep me smiling, while also driving me insane. Gosh, I just adore them. Junes and Kansas.

12/28/2024

She will likely be sore later, but we haven’t seen her play like this really since she got sick. ❤️

12/25/2024

Merry Christmas and Happy holidays to all! We have so much to be thankful for this holiday season, most especially, our Christmas miracle, Ravioli.

While we have another week until her recheck, she continues to do very well! Her appetite continues to improve, some days she begs for food. I have to watch her weight now, and can’t just give her treats a million times a day as she has some padding on her ribs.

Her back pain is up and down. Some days she is a silly wiggly girl and some days she sleeps a lot. She still struggles to get up most days, but once she’s up, she usually does ok.

After all she has been through, it truly is a miracle she is still here and seemingly continue to recover 🤞.

She is a testament to her will to live and the support of the amazing doctors, techs and staff at Tufts.

‘Til next week!

12/24/2024

We got this lovely photo of Summit in the ring from his last show in Boxboro. Gorgeous and just look at his muscling! Thank you, Dawn! ❤️

12/23/2024

Junes Macadamia (L) has upgraded to a leather collar (it’s a tiny bit big, but her little sister needs the one she was wearing). Kansas Potato (R) hiding under the cat tree to avoid the big dogs taking her bone.

12/20/2024

Kansas found the warmest seat in the house. Thankfully her and Junes are best buds 🤣

12/16/2024

This amazing package arrived in the mail a few days ago and I wasn’t sure where it came from. Today I found out! Thank you to Amanda and Christian for this wonderful surprise. Our entire doggie household loves Saint Rocco’s!

12/16/2024

The puppies had a great weekend relaxing and bothering their aunties (and uncle). Junes adores Cava and thankfully Cava is very forgiving of her antics.

Kansas is a cuddly little sweet potato (she is still rather potato-like) but is growing like a w**d. She had her first puppy checkup here and all was well!

We adore these little ladies!

12/12/2024

Ravioli had a recheck with Dr. Ossman last night at Tufts, just as we finished her 6 weeks of Amikacin. In case people aren’t aware, Amikacin is a very strong and potentially dangerous antibiotic, as it can ruin a patients kidneys quickly. We have had to check her urine every two days during this treatment to ensure her kidneys were ok. But in her case, it was our only option, a Hail Mary. A normal course for Amikacin is four weeks, we did six to really ensure we are doing all we could. Thankfully her kidneys seemed to handle it well.

Over the last two weeks, we have noticed a slow, but steady improvement in her appetite, although she is still picky. There are some times she actually seems hungry, and she is eating dog food regularly now, albeit slowly. Her head is no longer bony, her spine barely shows anymore and she is building some muscle in her front end. Six weeks ago she had pitting edema in her feet due to endocarditis, the bacteria was in her heart and they rarely recover from that (80% of dogs die). She was given at most six months to live, in a best case scenario. Last night her heart was NORMAL. Zero signs of disease in her heart.

Tonight we got a phone call with the results of her bloodwork. This dog, who has been so close to death so many times, who we have come within minutes of making the final decision to end her suffering more than once, shows REMARKABLE improvement in her bloodwork! Her highest liver values have again been cut in half, and some of her blood values are actually normal-in just two weeks! 🤯

Now we wait with bated breath for her next recheck right after Christmas. If, and it’s a big if, she continues on the path she is on now, she may be officially “cured” of this insane illness she has been fighting. I’m trying to still take it one day at a time, but it’s hard to not get my hopes up. We still have to make it through a few more weeks off antibiotics to ensure the bacteria doesn’t come back, and make sure her liver continues to heal.

Three weeks from now, if she is still improving, we can start to work on a plan to deal with her back pain more effectively. It may potentially involve surgery down the line, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

As always, I’m forever grateful to her amazing team at Tufts for their knowledge, dedication, and willingness to fight as hard for Ravioli as she did and we did.

12/09/2024

Four dogs in one cave bed. This is one reason the XL is the only way to go 🤣

Snoozer Pet Products

12/08/2024

And she has a name. Meet Southwind Dust in the Wind at Forest King, “Kansas.” She’s a little cutie (and a spitfire) and we love her!

12/05/2024

Tired puppies. Two besties after wrestling all day. Junes was done, she could barely keep her eyes open 🤣. My little Kansas Potato was out soon after.

12/04/2024

Blue Ridge Beef puppy food recall

Blue Ridge Beef is recalling 9,60lb of their 2 lb log Puppy Mix Lot #08/06/N25 & 08/16/N25 UPC 854298001696 due to a contamination of Salmonella. (Lot numbers are stamped in the clips on the end of the chubs/bags)

12/01/2024

We had a good weekend at the Worcester County Kennel Club dog shows this weekend!

Summit took Winners Dog both days for another two points towards his championship! Three points to go. Today was the end of his show season as he leaves for camp in a month and isn’t signed up for any other shows before then. He will hit the ring again likely starting in April (pending his field trial schedule).

We also brought Junes for her first time in the ring (4-6 month puppy), and she did great! Saturday she took Best of Breed and a group 3. Sunday she took BOB again and a group 2! The show was small, but it was a good experience for everyone!

11/27/2024

Ravioli has had a good week. She is happy and her appetite is actually a bit better. She is wiggling and wanting to adventure. Her back is still sore and she’s a bit weak in the hind end, but the meds help a lot. She had her recheck last night with Dr. Ossman for some bloodwork as she hasn’t had any since we started the Amikacin. When we got home, for the first time in MONTHS, she ate dinner almost like a real dog, with the other dogs. She ate about 1 1/2 cups of dry food with some canned. 🤯 We have been giving her Purina Fortiflora (probiotics) daily and she loves it-maybe it has an appetite stimulating effect? 🤷‍♀️

Then, this morning, I got an email from Dr. Ossman. “Her bloodwork is remarkably improved. This is the best her values have ever been.” 😭😭😭 So, her liver values are still very high, but hugely improved (one went from >14k to 1800). She’s still a bit jaundiced, but much better. Her skin is healed and she seems to actually be growing hair on some of her former wounds. There are days when her gums are pink-and they haven’t been pink since June. It does vary hour by hour, but overall a lot better. Her kidneys are holding up well to the month of Amikacin so far.

So, we have two more weeks on injectable Amikacin and then we recheck and revisit the plan moving forward. We still don’t know what tomorrow brings and just put one foot in front of the other, but overall the best news is that Ravioli is happy and enjoying life. We can’t ask for more than that at this point ❤️.

Video from a week ago, showing her wiggly butt. She has gained some weight around her spine since then, which is wonderful.

11/25/2024

So, we have had a surprise in the works for a long time. I knew a year ago that we would likely need to bring in some new blood for us to be able to continue not only being competitive in the field, but also moving forward with our breeding program. Kyler was the last dog we purchased, back in January of 2003; every other dog we have owned, campaigned and bred, has been born here. I researched and spoke with friends and fellow breeders. Nothing quite fit the bill, but we weren’t in a rush, so we just kept our ears open. Then Ravioli got sick and our timeline sped up. Our puppy wait list went from a year or two, to three to four. So I really started looking hard to find our next field dog. I had very strict wants and needs, and wasn’t willing to settle for anything other than exactly what I was looking for in temperament, pedigree and field ability.

In a weird twist of fate, a litter that fit EXACTLY what I was looking for fell into my lap, and now we’re here.

Friday, Nele (our German exchange student here for the year) and I flew to Denver to meet up with Jody and Chet of Southwind Vizslas, who kindly drove up from Kansas to meet us. Saturday morning we got to meet the litter and evaluate which of the three girls would be our next family member. It was a really tough choice, they were very similar and all very sweet and bold. In the end, as is typical with me, I chose the crazy bold puppy.

Her name is TBD at the moment, but we’ve been calling her Kansas for now.

We also helped a friend get their new puppy home from Southwind as well, an adorable male puppy (I’ll let his family introduce themselves if they choose).

While in Colorado, we opted to see a few sites, as neither of us had ever been to Colorado before. We visited Garden of the Gods, and Red Rocks amphitheater, which was really just so cool! Puppies came with us, but for their safety, they stayed wrapped in our coats and only touched the ground to go to the bathroom. Popular tourist areas could be a dangerous spot for puppies with only one vaccine so we wanted to be very cautious.

We flew back early this morning (landed at 1am), and the puppies were stellar travel mates. I had never flown with a puppy before and was worried how it would go, but everyone at Southwest Airlines in Denver made it a really pleasant experience, they were all so kind!

Junes already thinks her new playmate is fabulous, so Summit gets a break from wrestling duty-he’s happy for some down time.

So, here are a few pix of our very short trip! Welcome little “Kansas!” Thanks Chet and Jody!