Radar O'Reilly the Smiley Stumper

13/10/2024

Where has the time gone.
This year has been filled with ups & downs, & all kinds of turmoil & some big changes. We have had a lot of changes in our lives the past three years, & life has definitely been a bit of an uphill battle of the heart & mind to say the least, but we still have each other & for that we are forever grateful for.

As you can see one of the biggest changes was adding a Walkin Wheels wheelchair for me this spring. I was super sad in February, I was sort of still walking on my own, but not well & just depressed. I barely played & moved, Mom was worried it was coming up on my time as I just wasn't myself. But she made one last plea & got me in with a PT specialist in another state, & they gave us a second opinion of a cart & different therapies, & against my old vet's wishes we got the cart. It took a bit of getting used to, probably would have helped if mom put the leg holes in right🤣, as they were 90° off which made walking a bit funny. But after Walking Wheels customer service pointed that out to us I was back to running & playing like I was back go my old self. I perked right back up, & I've been my sassy self ever since🧡. I just needed to feel that freedom of running again & feel that wind on my face, but I just need to remember not to jump or I turn into a turtle, stuck on my back😅.

We had a few adventures since. We rented a cabin near north Theodore Roosevelt National Park, but on private lands, so I could be included. That was when that big solar storm hit in May, & we watched the Northern Lights dance above us as the coyotes called in the distance.
In the summer Mom took me to my favorite doggy sitters while they celebrated a friend's birthday party. It was their first time getting to watch a pup in a wheelchair, & so I got lots of story time & cuddles, & we got to show everyone how easy it is to set pups up with mobility devices, & show people how to find cheaper ones for those who cannot afford new prices.

Then my 12th birthday rolled around on July 4th, Mom & Corgdad said we are all so blessed to have each other for another year, especially after my old vet said I probably wouldn't make it to last Christmas with a DM diagnosis, but here we are still fighting it. We celebrated it by having having day time adventures to boat ramps & the scientific center of North America, then had hamburgers for supper, I got a new King Hedgie (my favorite toy), then finished the night by hiding in the basement from the exploding sky bombs while watching movies. I may have clawed mom up after one of the super big booms, but she said it was ok, because it startled her as well😅.

We haven't gone anywhere after that....
Corgdad hit a deer with his old car. The insurance people said it needed to go away, couldn't be fixed, & gave him some money for a new one, which was nice.
We finally got the furniture we ordered in May delivered in September just in time for company to arrive🤣. Literally the day before they showed up, so mom & I were scrambling a bit to get everything set up, but it was nice to have people over to herd once again.

Last week was the anniversary of the loss of my cousin Brutus & my uncle. It is always a bit of a tough time for the family, especially grandpa, so we just try to help out as much as possible. The last picture I included is from the first time I met my cousin in 2016. He was the only other dog I truly played well with, & though he could be a bit annoying at times when he was a pup & liked to grab my "chicken nugget shaped nub tail"😅, he was a very good boy.

Which brings up my reminder that it is never too late to reach out to someone, anyone if you are struggling with mental health issues. My uncle & Brutus were always together, & I mean always. Brutus was his heart dog, his brofur, his BFF. Losing my Uncle was just too much for Brutus's heart to take, & he just didn't understand. Losing both of them just a few days apart was an extremely devastating loss to our family. Please if you're struggling please call or text the mental health hotlines, call or text a friend or anyone. Please just reach out.

That pretty much brings us up to date with everything. Mom has been baking cheesecakes on the side to bring in extra money which can help cover the costs of PT & it gets mom back into one of her favorite hobbies of baking, since she doesn't do much night photography anymore. (Night photography doesn't bring in any extra income like baking can🤷‍♀️, so she figured she might as well do a hobby that can be useful at the moment especially in this economy.)

I know we always say we will try to be better about posting, & we mean it, just seems like life is getting crazier every day. We just kind of run out of energy & time for everything it seems like, & end up cutting out the extra stuff & just focusing everything on Radar & family. We love all if you that have been with us through the years, & thank you for always checking on the page. I logged in to see all the notifications that say people have been checking in on the page, & I appreciate those of you who come back here even though we haven't posted in ages, & I'm sorry I'm not more punctual about it. With winter coming up, we are looking at getting some skis added on to Radar's cart to allowed her to continue to have adventures.

15/02/2024

Not sure what happened with our Christmas post, but it's not here🤔. Not sure if anyone saw it or where it went, but we will just add a new update with our Christmas picture & a new picture.

Life has been very good. I've been getting a lot of travel time in with car rides to water treadmill/swimming therapy, cold laser therapy, & now going to the only DM rehabilitation therapy specialist in the state. Christmas was wonderful, I even wore my sweater from Creations by AnnieB. I was spoiled with dried fish skins, crumbled dried cod topper for my food, my favorite joint supplements, a new raccoon squeaky toy, & dog cookies. I absolutely loved it, & really liked having my dog bed next to Grandma & Grandpa's real tree. It always smells so good.

I had started Librela for my joints back in October, & i had done well for the first 3 months, but we aren't on that anymore as it can cause back end weakness in dogs as a side effect, & that isn't pairing well with my DM. So we are back to the drawing board for my arthritis treatments.
I'm still incredibly happy & still very independent, have my good days & bad days. On my good days it's hard to tell there is anything wrong except for a bit of a sway in my back end & my right paw that drags. On my bad days I scoot around a bit on my butt before my legs pop me up, & then I have sort of a sideways gait that day. Unfortunately I'm a bit too hard headed to accept the fact that I need help on those days, & I am definitely extra vocal about being able to do things on my own🤣. I grumble at everyone when they try to help me, like I'm saying "I could have done it on my own.". Mom has always joked about me being so full of p**s & vinegar, & that all I have to do is fire up my "short person rage" to show I can do anything I want to if someone says my body can't do it anymore. (If anyone has ever played Dungeons & Dragons, mom has always said I am a lil Dwarven barbarian that chooses to rage😆). Mom is looking at possibly getting me a cart soon to get me used to it before I need it, as we have heard from a lot of other DM dog families that doing that will make me much happier & have an easier transition to the cart when I need it full time. We did join some DM support groups to help us get more information, as well as support, & to help us navigate my journey forward.
Not much else has been happening. We just take each day as it comes, & know how blessed we are to have had so many years together, so we will continue to be grateful for every day we get. We are going to go camping & try out a new night photography spot in May. If it goes well, & we like the spot, we might even go there again for my 12th birthday.

24/11/2023

Well it has been a few months since our last update, & I do apologize for that.

Life has been going fairly well since our last post, it seems to be flying by.
We switched vets, & started working with the animal hospital that works with the orthopedic specialist that comes to visit occasionally from out of state. Upon getting her vet records from her previous vet, we had discovered they were not always upfront or honest about Radar's health issues since they deemed her a "senior dog". But we are choosing to not dewell on what they did, & we are trying to focus on moving ahead with the new veterinary team & treatments.

Since our old vet delayed treatment so long, we are now pushing to get ahead & keep Radar as mobile as possible with her DM creeping in. We do water therapy twice a week, a mix of walking & swimming to help strengthen & maintain muscles. We also pulled Radar off her twice a day Rimadyl, since it wasn't doing anything for her, & her joint pain was causing her to chew her legs. She has been moved to a once a month arthritis shot with an option for a short term anti-inflammatory pill as needed when the weather fluctuates to help prevent pain due to inflammation & arthritis. This shot showed results in just one week, & we couldn't have been more elated. She was walking easier, she was doing her little prances for meals again, & she was enjoying her short walks again. She is also receiving cold laser therapy one to two times a week, depending on our schedule. We try to keep up on her laser therapy as much as possible, but it is an almost a 120 mile round trip for these appointments, so I'm trying to make it work as much as possible with my swing shift weeks. We have been looking at acupuncture, but the only facility in our state that offers this is almost a 4 hour one way trip to that veterinarian, so we aren't sure if we can work that into our schedule or budget yet.

We got 10 inches of snow for Halloween, but it eventually melted. Now Lefse making day & Thanksgiving have flown by, but Radar was diligent in her supervisor & sampler rolls on both days.

We just want to say we are grateful for all of you. Thank you to all of you who have joined us in our last 10 years of posting. We are grateful to all of the wonderful corgi friends we have met, & some we lost to the rainbow bridge, over the years. It has been an absolute honor & joy to continue sharing my little lady with all of you. We will to try to post more regularly, I have been really terrible about that the last couple years. We just wanted to stop & appreciate all that we have been blessed with the last 10 years thanks to little miss sassy britches wandering into our lives & all of us being introduced to this lovely corgi nation of friends & acquaintances.

We hope you all have a wonderful weekend & bark at you later.
Miss Radar O'Reilly & Corgmom.🧡

(First photo is of Miss Radar from her water therapy team. She really loves them & get so excited when asked if she is ready to go to water class.

Second photo is of Radar showing off her pastel colors on her chest floof & her new Thanksgiving bow I bought her from a local craft artist.)

03/09/2023

Well a few months have passed & we figured everyone was due for an update.

Thing have been going fairly well, been traveling a bit more this year. So far we have been able to go for a sail with my grandparents, go out to visit friends across the state, go for some short trips to state parks, & even go travel to see the Crazy Horse monument for our first time ever. (Highly recommend Crazy Horse, it was beautiful & informative. Pets are welcome as long as they can fit in a stroller, backpack, or be carried.)

Unfortunately, I started to have some issues with my back leg earlier this year. My vet said it was arthritis, so we listened to them. A few months passed & my back leg was getting worse, & our vet refused to even do xrays, so we went to a different location. Different vet also argued about xrays, & then tried to tell us that a shadow from my hip bone was arthritis, then got upset when mom asked them where it was in the second xray from a different angle. It is kind of hard to find good vets in extremely rural areas. So we talked to some folks who recommend we get a test from the Orthopedic Foundation for Animals, Inc out of Missouri. Sadly the test showed that Radar is almost certainly experiencing the onset of degenerative myelopathy, aka doggy ALS. She has both genomes & her symptoms match perfectly with onset symptoms. We were able to reach out & speak to an orthopedic specialist in my state that recommended we immediately start more water PT than we have been doing & possibly add acupuncture or cold laser therapy to try to help. They said if they are able to visit my area or we are able to get into their clinic, they can give us an updated evaluation.

It took Mom a bit to come to terms with the diagnosis, because she thought for sure I was going to be one of those salty, sassy dogs that makes it to 16 or 18. But we are living each day as it comes.

I'm starting to add swimming to my water therapy regiment, & we have started taking more short, brisk walks instead of long straining walks, to make it easier on my hips. Mom set up rugs all over the house so I don't slip as much.

We wanted to thank all of you who have followed us so far on our adventures. And while we still have many more to look forward to, we wanted to make sure my friends knew what was coming & that eventually I will be showing up in mobility devices. We didn't want to surprise anyone, or shock anyone.

Hope you're all having a fun & safe summer!
Bark at you later

09/07/2023

Well it has been a while. I'm still doing water treadmill therapy, just only once per week since I love going & getting to see everyone. I'm slowing down a little more every year, but I still can kick it into high gear & chase critters out of the yard & garden. Life has been pretty good, but quiet, trying to get used to the new normal. We finally got to go on our first vacation in almost 2 years, 2021 kind of ended like a train wreck, & things have been rough since. We made a quick trip to the Crazy Horse monument over a weekend since I could be carried in my backpack there, then came home. But it was nice to be able to get away again & travel with everyone, even though it was such a short trip.

I turned 11 on the 4th of July, & so my groomer colored my chest floof a little, & I just ate up all the extra attention that got me. We celebrated by letting me shred a whole bag full of toilet paper & paper towel rolls. Kind of like those videos where people unleash a bunch of tennis balls, only I'm not a big fan of tennis balls, & I have always loved toilet paper rolls🤣. It was the best day ever, except for all the noisy explosions.

Hope everyone has been having a good year!

24/11/2022

Let potato rest for 5 minutes before re-entering the kitchen & disturbing her power nap. Watching the food cook is very hard work.

We hope everyone has a very wonderful holiday.

20/11/2022

Where has the time gone!

Well I started water treadmill therapy a few months ago. They are really new to our area, but we are super excited to have this option finally available to us. It has really helped with my old partial cruciate tear & I'm favoring my back leg a lot less.
Mom has been busy with work, & other things in life that have popped up. No vacation this year, mom & dad are still recouping their vacation time after dad's quad tendon surgery last Thanksgiving.

This weekend was lefse weekend, & per usual, the corgi blessing was requested. After some offerings of blueberries & some of the lefse mix, every single lefse turned out. Not a single one fell apart while being transferred to the grill, & nothing stuck to the rolling pins or boards.
We were all really shocked. ...Well I wasn't. I was mostly shocked that no one fell for my tactics of trying to trip someone on their way to the grill to get a full lefse to myself.

But in the end, there was a request for my services & asked to clean the potato bowl, so it wasn't so bad. After I took a nap while the grills & lefse cooled, & then were packed.
Tomorrow is the end of deer season, & mom isn't sure she will get a deer again this year, but we can try & hope. It sure would help fill the freezer a bit, but some times that is just the way it goes.

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday & has someone to spend it with, whether it is friends, coworkers, family, or pets. 🧡

03/07/2022

Well we took a break for a few months to get stuff sorted & get caught up with life, the house, & the yard. We had to get some new appliances, & we've been trying to spend more time out & about. Mom has been trying to get out & take more pictures. She almost missed some aurora the other night, but woke up & made it out just in time to catch S.T.E.V.E & some green lights just before dawn.

Tomorrow will be my 10th birthday, I'm excited & a bit nervous.
Nervous, because it is the 8th day & final day to shoot off those crazy loud boom boom mortars. I wish it was only for a couple of days instead of 8 full days of the big loud booms.
And I'm excited, because I'm going to get some presents tomorrow evening, & a nice supper.

Hope everyone has a safe & fun 4th of July!
Bark at you later💜

Pictures are of Radar walking in the wet morning grass after the rain last night, & STEVE that mom caught with her cellphone (that is why the car door is in the left hand side of the picture 😅).

***Fun fact for those who don't know about S.T.E.V.E***
S.T.E.V.E. means Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement. It was discovered/named in 2016, but has been around before that. In the Northern Hemisphere, the phenomenon is visible from areas farther south than a typical aurora, and it looks like a ribbon of pink or mauve light. Sometimes, STEVE even has a "picket fence" appearance, with green columns of light passing through the ribbon making it hard to tell the difference between the events. They believe it is caused in the ionosphere, where particles are being met by solar & cosmic radiation. The areas where the particles come in contact the most, appear to be super heated & causing a pink glow. There are still studies being done on STEVE, & the scientists use photographs by everyday people to track the phenomenon & be able to study what was happening at that point in time & how far south it goes.😊

13/04/2022

Well we are still riding out the snow storm & blizzard. Mom braced the fence gates with concrete blocks hoping it will stop the snow & wind from possibly causing the gates to warp & allowing me to become an escape artist.
Mom got lucky that today was her "floating" day off, but poor Corgdad had to go to work. He got a bag all ready just in case, & it was a good thing he did. He has to stay at the hospital he works at over night to make sure they had enough staff for tomorrow to operate in emergency conditions. It took mom 2 hours to clean the small 2 car drive way with the snowblower since it was such wet & heavy snow. We had just down sized our snowblower, & mom is regretting it just a little bit. I keep begging to go outside just to stand in the beautiful snow & eat it😆. Mom just grabbed me a container of snow, so could eat it in the kitchen as I feel like it. While Easter storms have always been the norm for many years, Mom is still less than thrilled, wishing it would have been a few days of rain spread out over a week, instead of this mess, but at least it is much needed moisture. Mom had to rescue me at my last potty break, as the snow drifts were too deep for me to get through to go potty, so she made a small path with the shovel.

Hope everyone is staying have & having a wonderful evening. Bark at you later💛

*In regards to our last post. We are still working on a way to watermark our old posts to stop people from stealing images & reusing them. One solution mom is thinking of is to post not as nice of pictures as we normally would😕. But we will be watermarking close up images of me, & any images of me posing, as those seem to be the most targeted images. We will not be sharing any of Mom's aurora or nature images here until we feel we have everything secured again. We thank all of you for being patient with us while we try to fix this & keep Radar's page up. We also appreciate all of the suggestions we got to try & help us find a solution. We've been here 9 years, & I would hate to have it ruined because of a few jerks.

06/04/2022

******Update: It was mentioned to try to go through all the old posts & pictures to watermark them. We will give this a shot. If this works, we will have a small temporary shutdown to go through & watermark images.******

I know we having posted in a while, but we have a sad announcement to make.

We will be taking down Radar's page. Nothing has happened to her, but we are finding some corgi pages are sharing our pictures without our consent or permission. I allowed one person to use a photo, with my written consent that would be used only by that page, & people unrelated to that page took that as a free pass. My personal IG that I share with Radar will also be locked down, & everything made private.

For the moment, post sharing has been turned off. I know this means pages can still steal Radar's images by saving pictures. So in the next 24 hours her page will no longer be here for the public. I really hate to do this after so many years, but I won't have my pictures taken to be used by other people & pages who don't have the decency to ask permission.

We are sorry it has come to this. We will miss all of you, especially those of you who have been here since the beginning, but there isn't much I can do.

Thank you for letting us share our adventures with you.
Corgmom & Radar O'Reilly

(Picture was taken 3 days ago, after a good defluffing.)

06/04/2022

26/12/2021

Hope everyone had a wonderful corgmas & happy howlidays! We had a pretty quiet weekend, but I got a few inches of fresh snow & some new treats!❤🎄

11/11/2021

Sorry for not posting for a while. Mom & Dad went on vacation at the end of September, & then right after they got home we lost two members in our family, one of which was my favorite cousin, Brutus.
Brutus was one of the few dogs I liked. He was so sweet & playful, he put up with me when I didn't understand how to play with other dogs yet. He would let me herd him & yip at him until we couldn't play or herd anymore. He also knew I didn't like to play fetch, I just liked to chase the ball & chase after him since he had the ball, & all he wanted to do was get the ball & return it. It has been a very tough month. On a positive note, we had some of the most beautiful pheasant hunting weather & one of the most beautiful aurora shows Mom has ever seen. Mom knew in her heart that he was up hunting in the fields of heaven, after all hunting season & fall were always his favorite times of the year.

We hope you are all staying safe & healthy, Mom will try to post more often, but it is hard to find good things to post about at the moment.

11/09/2021

Made a trip to the first Corgi Butts & Food Trucks in our area. Missed the corgi races, but it was pretty nice to meet some of the other corgi parents from around the state. We definitely will be making more trips to the east side of the state for more meet ups. I rode safely in my K9 sport pack to stop me from being rude to any of the other corgi guests😆.

05/07/2021

I think someone had a fantastic 9th birthday today!
I got to see Grandpa, Grandma, my aunts & uncles. I also got to hang out with my fur cousin & meet my new human cousin. She didn't get to pet me, because I don't like kids, but she got to look at me & throw me treats. And all the fireworks are banned this year, Im so happy! It's been so nice being able to go outside to play or hang out without stressing out over stuff falling into our yard or starting fires.

30/05/2021

Wow! Where has the time gone!
Mom has been super busy & just kind of got lost in it all. We took our break from social media, & news stations, & sort of forgot to update my page.🤦‍♀️

Anyways, I celebrated my 8th gotcha day in April with my mom & corgdad. Mom was a bit sad when we ran into my groomer & she commented on how white my face has gotten, which reminded Mom that I turn 9 on July 4th this year. Mom swears I was just 4 years old yesterday.

Mom took me out for a really amazing aurora show on the morning of the spring equinox, Mom said it was one of the best shows she had seen in a long time.

Well as for our lovely garden & flower pictures, we had a pretty bad drought at the beginning of spring, so everything was a bit delayed in growing. And we had some snow this past week, so we are just getting our plants in the ground this weekend. Instead of a vegetable garden, we decided to do a perennial butterfly & pollinator garden. We picked up a bunch of favorites for monarchs & other migrating pollinators. We are really hoping this takes off. We have some super stinky salvia, some beebalm, more lilies, and some smaller flowers so we will have something for everyone from late spring to late fall.

And that brings us up to today, we went to get some more compost & garden soil & stopped at my favorite walking spot hoping to see some crocus. The crocus look like they need a few more days, but we walked none the less. I climbed up on the rock that marks the true geographical center of the North America (not the fake one in Rugby), then Mom picked the ticks that were climbing on us, returned them to the grass, & we headed home. Was a rather nice day, even though it was pretty windy.

Hope you all have been well! We will try to post a bit more regularly. Mom just has to get back into the habit 🤣

25/12/2020

Merry Corgmas & Happy Howlidays to all of our friends. Sorry we havent posted much lately, but hopefully everyone is staying safe & healthy!