MILESTONE: Vaccine Number 3!

Poor Rilley, losing more of his fur to
make way for more injections!

Rilley has now reached another milestone. He received his third vaccine today...he is now half way through the bi-weekly treatments! The nice thing is, given that he doesn't mind going to the vet and obviously trusts Dr. Ewing, he didn't even flinch when he was given the injections. While his fur is growing back nicely on the top of his head, Dr. Ewing noted that the areas on the back of his neck, where the injection sites are, has been slow to regrow. She figures that it may be a result on the vaccine/immune system's effects to the immediate area. Now, to add to his "fur-challengedness", Dr. Ewing had to shave some more of his original fur further down the back of his neck! This was necessary to make room for the injections as we cannot reuse prior injection sites.

Rilley receiving the second of two injections
during his third vaccine treatment.

When we were in Minneapolis, Dr. Pluhar had mentioned to us that the first couple of vaccine treatments should be fairly uneventful, however after this particular injection Rilley may experience some of his pre-surgery symptoms. These could even include seizures. It isn't guaranteed that he will experience this, but it isn't uncommon. As long as any seizure activity remains fairly minor (not lasting for long periods) we shouldn't be too concerned and simply help him through it. Hopefully this isn't something that Rilley will run in to.  One extraordinary thing happened today. Rilley's vaccine shipment made it all the way from Minneapolis in less than 24 hours and without any intervention on this end! It was even delivered directly to Dr. Ewing's office without Sara having to pick it up from the FedEx facility at Pearson International!

All in all, for a "vaccine-day" it went very smoothly. He was all done by 12:30pm leaving us time to do some Christmas shopping! We leave you with a shot of Rilley's latest loss of fur....

Rilley's latest bald spot.