Off Trail Updates
Enjoying a night in a swanky cabin. - Leavenworth, WA
After securing Pedals4Paws.com, I set about the tasks related to making a website. The first of which was figuring out how to make a website. I’d had my own homepage back in the 90’s when Geocities was all the rage, but other than that, I’ve had no experience with creating a website in over 25 years. From basically November through February, I spent all of my free time and hundreds of hours getting Pedals4Paws off the ground. This included writing blog posts, coding the website, creating products, getting the banners remade with the non-porn website address, and also, a little treat I had made for the dogs. I decided to personalize the trailer for them so that people would know who they were, so I had their pictures and names put onto their own banners that were then sewn onto their respective sides of the trailer that they ride in (Captain rides on the right and Zilla rides on the left). I took them out for a couple of test rides to show off their new trailer and the second ride took a dark turn….
(click photos to enlarge and see descriptions)
There were also a number of medical updates for the dogs. Dogzilla officially graduated from chemotherapy after 8 months of treatments! He still needs a few more ultrasounds over the coming months just to make sure that the cancer hasn’t returned, but he is officially done with the treatment phase of his cancer journey. Zilla’s only current ongoing medical issue is his Cushing’s Disease diagnosis and his last visit showed that he was doing so good with his treatments that we were able to scale back the frequency of his visits which is great since the testing requires him to be at the vet the entire day and he really hates going to the vet.
Captain’s medical updates were a bit of a mixed bag. For starters, she celebrated her 2 year Canceriversary! Considering she was given less than 3 months to live, this was a phenomenal achievement and we made sure to celebrate the day in style! On the downside, she had been battling a really persistent nasal discharge that required her to have her face wiped several times a day and when she’d wake up, there was always a puddle of boogery yuck by her nose. We tried a few antibiotics but got nowhere. The vet then assumed it was related to her nasal cancer and said that we would need to do an MRI to diagnose her properly, but because Captain had fallen into a coma the last time she’d had anesthesia, it was recommended that we not do the MRI and just let her manage with the nasal discharge. As time passed, the discharge stayed constant, though depending on the day, it could be a multitude of colors including: clear/watery, yellow, green, brown, red, black, and occasionally it came out with the consistency of peanut butter and was the most foul smelling thing on the planet.
Things finally came to a head in February when she had a massive cluster of seizures. Her normal pattern had been that roughly every 3 weeks, at night, she would have 2-3 seizures over a 2 day period and then nothing until the pattern repeated. This time however, she had 9 seizures over a 2 day period and all throughout the day. I took her to the emergency vet where she was admitted and had several more seizures. They got the seizures under control but said that we needed an MRI to figure out what was causing them and that this time, the benefits outweighed the risks of putting her under.
It was a very nerve racking day while she got her MRI, but thankfully, she had no complications and the results were worth the risks; Captain’s MRI results showed that she was cancer free! However, that came at a cost… When Captain had been treated with radiation to try and save her from the fatal nasal carcinoma, there was a risk that the radiation might impact her vision and/or her brain, and unfortunately, there was conclusive evidence that she was suffering from radionecrosis. In short, the treatment had killed part of her brain and the process may not be done impacting more of her brain. This would explain why she started having seizures in the first place and it would explain the slight behavioral changes she was having (no more vocalizations, decreased problem solving abilities, no longer wagging her tail at appropriate times, etc). It also showed that the nasal discharge was the result from a possible bacterial and/or fungal infection in both nostrils and her sinus. If the infection were fungal, there was a chance it would be fatal. But to find out, she’d have to go under anesthesia again for a rhinoplasty.
So after another day of worries about whether or not she’d pull through the anesthesia, Captain again woke up with no issues. The results of her tests showed that she’d had a foreign body of some kind in her nose that was since deteriorated to the point that it had broken down into tiny particles which ultimately caused her to get not 1, not 2, not 3, but 4 different bacterial infections. This was actually good news though as it wasn’t the potentially deadly fungal infection that would have required a surgery where they would drill a hole in her face to try and manually remove the fungus, and even then, it would only have a 60-70% chance of working. So 4 bacterial infections was a major win, even though they would require 2 extremely powerful antibiotics to treat.
As for the dark turn to our test ride… In July of 2020, we were riding in our neighborhood, 1 street from my house, when we saw a man standing in the middle of the road who appeared to be waiting for something. As we got closer the man started yelling at me, telling me to get out of his neighborhood and go back to my own neighborhood. I told him I was in my own neighborhood which enraged the man to the point that saliva started flying out of his mouth as he began screaming and swearing at me and telling me we weren’t welcome in “his” neighborhood. We rode away and I filed a police report as the man had seemed unhinged and if anything happened in the future, I wanted this on record. Well, in February, that “anything in the future” did happen….
In February 2022, we were riding on that same street and I heard something hit against a chain link fence. I looked over in time to see a large rock slide out into the roadway. It took me a moment to process, but as I looked up from the rock, I saw that same man standing behind the chain link fence and he yelled at me to “Get out of here”. The man had thrown a rock at us! This wasn’t a tiny pebble, it was approximately 4” x 2” x 1”. This could definitely hurt me, knock me off my bike, or if it hit Captain in the head, it could have easily killed her considering her brain injury. To keep this blog family friendly, I’ll paraphrase my response, I told the man that if he threw another rock, I would have him charged with assault. He then promptly threw a second rock but what he didn’t know was that I was recording our ride and my video camera was rolling!
I got to as protected of a spot as I could find just as a third rock was thrown, this time hitting the dog trailer, but luckily not one of the dogs. I grabbed the camera and ran up towards the fence to try and get the man in the act on camera. As I approached the fence, the man twice threatened to shoot me before he realized I had a camera in my hand and was recording. His demeanor instantly changed, he stopped swearing at me, no longer threw any rocks or made any more threats, but continued to insist I not ride in this neighborhood. He then went into his house and I left and called the police. I shared the video with the police and they went to arrest our assailant, but he refused to come out of the house.
Several weeks passed and I’d heard no updates, so I called the Prosecutor’s Office and was told that they would not be filing charges as there wasn’t any evidence that our assailant had actually meant to hit us with any of the rocks, despite the fact that one of the rocks did hit us! Therefore, they refused to charge him with assault or even disorderly conduct. Justice would not be served.
On a side note, I did get a day in court where I was awarded a 1 year restraining order against the man. During the proceeding, the man admitted that it was wrong to throw rocks at us and that he was sorry. A 100% clear admission of guilt. I brought this to the Prosecutor’s Office and they said there still wasn’t enough evidence to press criminal charges!!! It’s a pretty messed up system when a victim has to spend over $600 to get protected from their assailant because some hotshot attorney doesn’t want to prosecute a misdemeanor assault case. Our legal system is a joke.
