[Dailydrool] answers to your questions, Virginia

[Valerie via Dailydrool]

hi Virginia, Val here.
  Our Harley has lymphoma, a blood cancer unfortunately too common in dogs, and terminal. we first noticed swollen lymph nodes in January of this year. At that point our vet thought it was due to dental issues so Harley had a teeth cleaning and a course of antibiotics, and the lymph nodes did go down. But then they swelled up again. So a month later, February, our vet did a biopsy--he saw nothing unusual but did send slides to the mainland, which returned a diagnosis yet another month later of stage 3 to 4 B cell lymphoma. our vet said that with chemo we might buy Harley six months, some of it less than optimal. without chemo, we were looking at one to two months (April/May). harley is twelve. We opted to go with an experimental protocol being used by some vet practices and some human cancer treatment centers of infusions intravenously of high concentrations of Vitamin C (ascorbic acid). Dawn Smith of Daphneyland led us to this treatment. Also some food supplements (Haelan 951, Spirulina, Carrot juice plus high protein boiled chicken breasts and kibble). also Prednisone. We are in mid May and Harley is amazingly chipper with a big appetite and the only side effect is peeing gallons. (when inside, he is wearing doggie diaper jumpsuits as the late Commander Bo did). We will not have harley forever, but at the moment he is doing well.
  On the "foster" front, dear Mila is not a foster in the traditional canine sense, more like in the human sense in that she has a mom who wants her vut can't care for her right now.  More a houseguest. Mila's mom is active navy and deployed out to sea. she needed someone to "foster" Mila while she was deployed, with every intention of reclaiming Mila once she was off active duty. We are not sure when that will be. we would love to keep Mila forever, but that is not really our call.
 finally, yes we live in Hawaii on the Big Island (the one with the active volcano). there are very few bassets here--fewer and fewer as the years go by--in fact they are quite rare. So when my husband said, let's get another (after Bo passed) we reached out to Dawn Smith at Daphneyland to see if she would let us adopt a California hound. Quarantine restrictions mean a long, complicated, pretty ridiculous wait, so our one-day hound, Mariah has been cooling her heels happily at Daphneyland while the wheels of bureaucracy turn before she can join us. 
 So that is our scoop. Aloha, Val vlbzwick at yahoo.com