Vegas Baby!

This weekend I went to Viva Las Vegas! Oh, how I love Vegas. And as  always... had a blast. We went down there because I went to the Esthetics Convention. Amber goes to it every year and it is AWESOME! I cannot wait to go next year! That's all I need to say... What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas :)

Super Adoption

This weekend, I had the opportunity to volunteer with Salt Lake County Animal Services at their annual spring Super Adoption. It was amazing! The first morning (Friday) I showed up really early and helped load up all of the puppies and dogs that were coming. SO sad how many are in that shelter. We loaded up over 120 dogs in an hour. Crazy right. Throughout the day, I helped show the dogs to potential adopters and let them out of cages  and walked them. I do have such a soft heart... I wanted to save them all. I think I'm in the wrong business, it makes me want to go into something to help animals. One day... who knows. I still haven't picked out my career in life. HA. Saturday, the same thing...

Mother Nature is quite the bitch. It's the end of April, supposedly spring and it SNOWED on us the entire time. It was freezing! It broke my heart even more to see all of the dogs try and keep warm. This bin had at least 8 or 9 puppies crammed inside trying to keep warm. I spent all of Saturday putting coats on dogs, and taking them off when they got wet and trying to warm them up with blankets. Heart breaker.

I found a mini Brandy. I loved her!

I was SO determined to find this little girl a home! She was a little punk but she was so sweet!! She almost got adopted out 3 or 4 times but something went wrong everytime and she ended up back in her crate all sad like this.

Ellie was just bugging me one night... she kept eating the fleece I was using to make something so I gave her a taste of her own medicine. She wasn't too happy. Enjoy :)

Failed Foster

Meet Phoenix. Our sweet, sweet boy who we decided to foster from the same shelter we got Ellie. You may notice his poor ears. When he was about 5-6 months old- some cruel, awful people cut his ears off with scissors and then abandoned him. Our guess is they were trying to make him a "fight" dog and he just wasn't cut out for it (Thank goodness!) He was adopted out to a girl in September who just didn't really love him and brought him back to the shelter. I was keeping a close eye on this guy because how can you not love him?! Then around February, he was adopted out again to a family that had another male Pit and kids in the family. The family's male pit kept trying to kill the poor guy so they brought him back again. This is where I hit my breaking point, because he just couldn't catch a break. We went down to the shelter to look at potential "fosters" and to my surprise we came home with Phoenix. I really did go into it looking at him as JUST A FOSTER. I knew Dan wouldn't let me keep him because that was part of the agreement to letting me foster another. However, he stole our hearts within days. He should be the poster dog for pitbulls. Sooo sweet, sooo loving, never makes a peep, and just loves everyone. That surprised me because after the awful things that have happened to him, you would think he'd be aggressive and mean but there isn't a mean bone in this guy's body. After fostering him for only 2 weeks, we decided today that we were going to adopt him :) 

Now for his ears... they have healed completely! The picture above was taken when he first went into the shelter last fall. Here is our handsome boy now.

Much better! Right?

Who needs kids? We have 3 dogs and I LOVE them ALL!!

February 14th

My beautiful cupcake bouquet. Thanks Husband! Thanks Amber! (for making it so pretty and tasty)

The actual Valentine's Day was perfect. Sweet and Simple just how I like it :) Love you babe!

Valentine's Day & More!

Today is February 12! In my book, that is Valentine's Day! Dan and I have always celebrated on the 12th because we hate how busy everywhere is on the 14th. However, since Vday falls on a Monday it this year it was a lose-lose situation. Everywhere was busy on a Saturday night! We started the night off at Charlie Chow's. Have you ever eaten there? It's just this little hole in the wall place in Salt Lake that I would have NEVER thought to go except Dan took me there on our very first date and I have loved it ever since! I highly recommend it to EVERYONE!

I meant to take a picture when the plate was full but I destroyed these with a quickness. Make sure you get the cheese wantons! DELICIOUS

After we ate dinner we went and watched the fights with Dan's brother and his family at his mom's house. Good times, it's always so fun to see everyone. 

ALL FINISHED! Due to overwhelming response on wanting to see house pics, I FINALLY have some for everyone! I took them for my grandma and figured I might as well share so I don't have to keep emailing them out.

The Guest Bedroom

Main Bathroom

Main Bathroom again

Master Bathroom

Master Bathroom again

Master Bedroom Dresser... I have pride in this! We got a steal of a deal on KSL for it and I LOVE my decoration on it!

Master Bedroom

Above the bed

Living room when you walk in the front door

Living room

Living Room

Dining Table

Sitting Area... oh how I LOVE how this turned out!

Family Room

Kitchen.

There we have it! I love our cute little house! 

What else have I missed? A lot of things... but I need to get better at taking pictures. I suck. Last week I went to work in Idaho for a few days... the only thing I have to blog about that is this:

This was taken around 6:45 am, Ellie is actually afraid of cars but that morning she jumped in my car and wouldn't get out, she either thought she was coming or I wasn't going. It was tender.
Ellie....
How's Miss Ellie you ask? Since that is ALL I seem to talk about, let me inform you of how our little mutt is doing. I think you all know she got over her pneumonia and kennel cough. Thank god....never thought I saw a light to that tunnel. She was doing really well until Thursday when I took her in to get spayed...

It was quite the dramatic day for this little one. As usual, the anesthesia they give her (and most dogs) causes her to throw up for hours on end and then drop 10 lbs and go back to her starved, unhealthy looking self. I promise we do feed her. 

Over the past few weeks, she's also started getting bald spots so she's even more attractive to look at as if we abuse her. I figured it was food allergies since it started to appear when we switched her food. Nope... turns out she has the worst case of "mange" the vet has seen. Awesome. So now she gets to eat her food with this medicine we have to 'shoot' in with these weird things. You name it, Ellie's got it or will soon have it. If you ever need a dog medication- our house is the place to be. 

Other than that she is doing really good. She loves to ruin anything her eye catches and ripping things apart is her favorite thing ever.... here are some examples.

She actually felt pretty bad about ruining this one, due to the fact it was her favorite.

We had to take off their bed cover to wash since Ellie got sick on it and this is how she reacted to that...

Brandy's Duck...RIP

Her frog is now a piece of cloth. (I had already picked up the cotton before I decided to take a pic)

She got a hold of the candy bucket and smuggled down some Kit Kats, Ding Dongs, Ghiradellis, and other sweets. For some reason, no she didn't die from all of it.

That's all I have for now. I'm loving life! I'm so happy and hope everything continues to be great!

An Exciting Day!

Today is such an exciting day!! It's been a little over 2 weeks since we adopted little miss Ellie...

We were told that her leg would take a lot of surgeries requiring a lot of pins, needles, plates, a lot of healing time and possibly an  amputation. I'm pleased to announce that today...2 weeks from the day of her surgery- Ellie got her cast off!! And is fully healed! I was so skeptical and thought there was no way that she could be fully healed and walking on it in 2 weeks, but our vet proved us wrong! It's so exciting!

ALL BETTER!

What else has been going on in the lives of the Rack's? We had our Wedding Shower/Open House this past Saturday and it was sooo fun! Thank you EVERYONE that came and for all of our great gifts! We have the best friends. Apologies for how crazy it was all night but it was well worth seeing all of our friends and having a good time! It went from 3:00 pm until 12:15 am! LONG day but SO fun! Thank you, thank you- everyone! I didn't take pictures... I suck. But it was a good time :)

A Stressful Week

As many of you have read... we welcomed little miss Ellie into our family on Monday. Oh my gosh! I LOVE her!!! This poor girl, however, is continuing to go through some rough patches even though she has a home now. What happened??
 On Tuesday, we took her to the vet to get her official surgery to fix up her leg. It went great and our vet is awesome! It was nowhere near what we thought it would cost to get her fixed. We brought her home and she was happy as can be

This picture is poor quality but it's adorable :)

Within a few hours, little miss somehow slipped out of her cast and broke her leg again. I honestly have no idea how it happened because she was sleeping right next to me the entire time. So we splint it up to get through the night and back to the vet she went for another surgery on Wednesday morning. This is where the problems began.

The second surgery took longer than usual and I was so worried about her! Rather than the hour- hour and a half the first one took, it was 3-4 hours before we heard back. Her breathing was really unusual so the vet's kept her longer

This is when we picked her up... she wasn't very happy.

When I got home from work, Ellie was home with Dan and she was coughing and gagging every few minutes and then she would throw up. It was the saddest thing ever! To make matters worse, it hurts her even worse because of her torn stomach muscles.We finally came to the conclusion the she had come down with Kennel Cough. It's pretty common in dogs especially ones that were in shelters around other dogs, which in Ellie's case- she was. 

Rather than normal symptoms of Kennel Cough, where dogs still have a good appetite and are still eating, drinking, playing, and acting normal- Ellie was the absolute opposite. She would not eat, drink, or play with us. The first day she was so crazy and we wanted nothing more than for her to rest and chill out and then we did a 180 and were trying to do everything we could to wake her up and play with us..but she wasn't having it. Finally, I hit my breaking point after seeing her in so much pain. I loaded her up in her basket, threw her in the car and went to the vet. I don't know what came over me but the moment I stepped in I just started crying. The vet thinks I'm a basket case now. Great....

He looked her over and knew she didn't have Kennel Cough. This is what happened to her:

When she went in for surgery, she had already eaten and they are not supposed to eat within 8 hours of being put under but given it was an emergency surgery since they had to get her leg put back together they put her under anyways. During the process of the surgery Ellie aspirated and they had to hurry and flush her system causing everything to swell up including her mouth, throat, and stomach. She has the same symptoms of Kennel Cough but its not. 

This is her "car seat". We put her in it because it hurts her ribs too much to hold her in the car so she sleeps in the basket when we drive.

Brandy was jealous...

She hasn't shown too many signs of progress getting better but I'm happy to report she finally ate some food tonight (which she hasn't in 3 days) and drank a ton of water and pedialite. We got her steam ventilator to help her breath better so she doesn't have as many coughing spells and she loves it. 

This is her sleeping in front of her ventilator.

That's the Rackliff's eventful week. I'm really hoping little miss starts feeling better soon!