Thursday, June 21, 2012

Goodbye's are the hardest thing...

At the beginning of this beautiful warm weather we started having, Max and I noticed that Dexter was getting a rash.  Everywhere.  Nothing I did would make it go away or alleviate Dex's itching.  Poor fellow.  It's so hard to see your baby deal with this.  Finally, I made a doctor appointment for him.  I couldn't handle seeing him like that.  We suspected allergies and right away his doctor ordered up an allergy panel along with several medications to help out with his rash. 

Coincidentally, that same night we went over to our friends house and they have a large dog and a small dog and the large one got one big lick right across Dexter's face and he blew up like a balloon.  Hives, swelling, itchy watery eyes (what was showing of his eyes anyway).  It was very bad.  Lucky I had some allergy meds on me so I dosed him up and within an hour the swelling had gone down.  It took a couple days for the redness around his eyes to go away though. 

You know what that means, Dexter is allergic to dogs.  The next day his allergy panel came back negative for everything except positive, and highly so, to dogs.  Well, we figured out that much.  Thankfully, we had gotten a new home for Clyde back around Thanksgiving.  Luca is a yorkie which is considered a "hypoallergenic" breed so perhaps we would be safe there.

So these past couple weeks we have been watching Dex to see how he does around Luca.  It seemed like he was doing fine but I was starting to get suspicious.  After getting done with some of his meds and after Luca had a 5 day stint outside (he had the poops and he had them bad!) Dexter was obviously still having some issues.  Itchy skin, red eyes.  I figured Luca was the cause.  Max was unwilling to believe it but finally last night, he did a little test.  He rubbed Dexter's hand, just his hand, in Luca's fur and not two minutes later it was all red and Dex started itching at it.  Well, that did it for Max.  He finally acknowledged that Luca was the cause.

Sadly, now we need to find a new home for our Luca.  When we re-homed Clyde, it felt different because we made the decision that a new home would be better for him and we were prepared.  This is a forced act.  Obviously not one that we draw out or are angry about.  Our son's comfort is much more important than having Luca around but we love Luca and this will be very hard. 

We have had problems with Luca in the past especially with his peeing in the house, but ever since we crate trained him a year or so ago, he has been so good.  Rarely any problems.  I hope that we can find him a good home that will keep in contact with us like Clyde's new owners do.  It will be so strange to have no Luca.  I will miss the little bugger.

Now the work will come finding him a new home and preferably, for Dexter's sake, as fast as we can. 

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