Casey

 Born 1/21/2021

Casey came from a litter in a home in Pennsylvania. She had many brothers and sisters (who were much larger than she was), and her leggy, beautiful, oddly well behaved mom Willow. Her dad came from some pretty nice lines.

We visited the litter to make our choice, and although hubby was looking for an all white female, only all white males were left. Puppies were very healthy, and playful, but this little red caught our eye. We were told that she was calm, cuddly and snuggly, and she certainly seemed that way as we held her in our arms.

Yep, she's the one.

Fast forward a while later once they had their first shots and deworming, and were old enough to be separated from their mother and we went to pick her up in March. We gave the owner a stuffy toy to rub all over mom before we left, put her in the teeny tiny harness and hooked up the leash and took her to the car and put her in the back seat.

This is where the snuggly, cuddly puppy turned into a clawing shrieking banshee as she was not having ANY of this sit in the backseat crap. Brought her up to sit with me in the passenger seat and NOPE she wanted to drive.

Made a pitstop at a very nice park for some water and food, little leg stretch and poo, and I got in the back seat with her. It's her first car trip (except for the vet) and she was newly separated from her litter, so... we'll spoil her.

Those tiny, needle sharp teeth and claws... it's been a LONG time since we had a puppy, and we're old now, my skin can't take much, so I looked like I had put my hands in a blender by the time we got home. Thankfully she settled after the poo break and snuggled with the stuffy that smelled like mom.

When we got her home, we found out that she was not calm, cuddly, nor snuggly. She was a whirling dervish of claws and teeth who did NOT like to be told what to do.

This chew toy is tasty

For the next... oh... 2 years (where we are now) she has been infuriating, willfull, spiteful, and generally one of the best puppers we've had, and we've had some good puppers.

When you have dogs, and lose dogs, get a new dog, you see some of the same personality traits as the old dogs. She's no exception. She's got her own quirks and strangeness, but also most of things we found so adorable in our old dogs, she has those too.

As a working breed, she's very good at assisting with laundry duties.

She enjoys pancake Sunday with Hubby and watching tv.

She has grown into a majastic, derpy husky with absolutely no situational awareness (constantly runs into things, falls going up the stairs, etc.) and loves going on sniffy walks and trying to kill me.

©David Anderson Photography

Shortly after Casey turned 2 years old, she had a seizure. A month later, she had another seizure. Each of these seizures occurred within a few days after receiving her monthly heartworm pill.

We switched pills, same thing. We stopped giving her a pill (mosquitoes were still not out yet), and no seizure. Despite her vet's insistence it wasn't the heartworm, and despite the fine print on ALL heartworm medications about neurological issues and seizure being a side effect, and despite testing negative for the MDR-1 gene that Collies and some other breeds have), the ONLY definitive link was the heartworm medication. Casey's neurologists have all been "yeah, it's quite possible based on your experience".

Due to all heartworm medications now packing in multiple neurotoxin dewormers into their products, we were unable to obtain one that ONLY had heartworm meds, so we were blessed that Chewy.com pharmacy compounds Ivermectin, (which in the olden days, was THE ONLY ingredient in heartworm pills, but pharma gotta get its money) and now give her oral Ivermectin once a month and heartworm test her every three months, and so far (knocking on wood) she is seizure and heartworm free, living her best life.