Vet Visits and Other Stuff

As I type - Charli is barking wildly at the ferrets who are playing in their room - she watches them through the sliding glass door and wants to play so bad.  They are all chasing each other through the dryer tube having a grand time. Winston is 'bitching' at his bedroom door - he wants to be outside but it's rainy. The puppies are outside - they don't care if it rains - in fact, I think they kind of enjoy it.

This week has been crazy so far for the humans.  Phoebe and Oliver had their every six-month vet visit on Monday.  We did all the regular stuff - physical, fecal, blood work, etc.  Both of them look pretty good considering that Ollie will be 16 and Phoebe will be 13 (my zoo is getting old).  We didn't get the bloodwork results back until yesterday. 

Phoebe is perfect - not one number out of whack.  Her thyroid number was perfect - no need to adjust her medications and we got her prescription renewed.  Oliver wasn't quite perfect - but nothing was too whacky.  His white blood cell count was one digit outside of normal.  Last time he was at the top of the range so its basically no change and the vet wasn't all that concerned.  His BUN number was elevated - top of the normal range is 37 - he was 41.  BUN is associated with the kidneys and can indicate the start of kidney disease when elevated - but - his Creatinine was low - 0.9 is the start of the normal range and Ollie was 0.8.  So - since both kidney numbers were not elevated - it's likely not kidney disease.  His calcium number was also slightly elevated - 11.2 was the top of normal and he was 11.5.  There is a second calcium test we can do to get more details.  I will take Oliver along in April when I take Tango and Charli in for their annual stuff and they can do a quick blood draw.  Until then we are going to watch him closely.  Inflated calcium can be a sign of something more serious - but typically the number would be much higher than .3 above normal if we had something icky going on.

In the meantime - we are going to keep Ollie from stealing the ferret's raw diet cat food because it is very high in calcium and just keep an eye on him and make sure he is not showing any signs of illness.  At the moment his is his same ornery, active self.

Here are a few pics from the vet:

That's about it from here - I feel like this week has been 17 days long already...happy hump day!