Corgwn are addicting. It was great fun to now have 3 Corgis playing "chase me chase you" 'round and 'round through our house, out in the yard, or at the ULowell West Campus field. As a large male, Stuart naturally grew to be bigger than Ms. Rissa, but to our surprise, so did "littlest pup" Kiva. In particular, her back was longer than her mother's, though her shoulders and brisket were narrower, and she had a slightly bigger butt. (Lying down straight with her head up, she made an excellent portrait of Anubis, or a Sphinx. Of course, this is when she wasn't resting with her hind legs stuck out behind her in that adorable Corgi fashion.)

Pre-school for my daughter, and obedience school for the pups, of course. I think Rissa took pride in demonstrating to her young'uns "how it was done".

Kiva, to my delight, was more of a "snuggler" than her mom. She would actively solicit hugging, and while Rissa thought a human bed was too hot and crowded for her to sleep on, Kiva would hop up at the first pat of the mattress, and didn't even mind being covered in blankets. (Polite Kiva would do so only by invitation, however - otherwise a nice piece of rug under the edge of the bed, or a floor pillow, was plenty good for the night.)

With our Massachusetts doggy connections, we still hoped to find the time to get the Corgis involved in Conformation showing (more likely Rissa), or Obedience, Herding, Agility or Tracking (both girls), when our lives got a bit less hectic. But, fickle fate intervened...

By the end of 1993, the economy was in recession, the Massachusetts tech industry and environs were hurting in particular. My husband got an unexpected job offer in California, which was an opportunity to leave the slowly sinking ship of Digital Equipment Corp. Up we packed, and eventually taking a large loss on the sale of our house (ouch), we moved the entire household west (except for Bun-Boy, to our great grief - but that's a story for the Bunny Tail pages.) Fortunately we found a single-family rental house in the Silicon Valley where the landlord accepted pets. (Disposing of family members to the "convenience" of a quick housing situation is NEVER an acceptable option.)

We looked, but there was no Cardigan Breed Club to join in the San Francisco Bay Area or even Northern California.

About nine months after the move, a second female "human puppy" was born into our household. Due to the huge stresses of moving, pregnancy, living in a new area far from all our friends and family and so forth, I went through a bout of Postpartum Depression. Our sympathetic little Ms. Rissa, now an experienced mother, sensed a Need. She insisted on helping me "mother" our second daughter, curling around her protectively whenever I set the baby down. (In fact, Rissa experienced a false pregnancy due to the affair, and even began lactating.) As Rissa was now approaching 6 years old, I was not going to consider putting her through more stress or another pregnancy again - we had her spayed.

Ultra-busy with life and two small children, dog activities were on hold again. Then we also started a small software business, in the hopes of eventually becoming independently employed.

Meanwhile, Kiva had seemed to become somewhat clumsy, often tripping over things in the house, turning in exactly the wrong direction to keep from tripping up a human walking in her path, etc. She also seemed to be developing cataracts, which seemed to me unusual for her young age, especially since her mom's eyesight was fine. Our current vet tested her eyesight by walking her over obstacles, but the results were inconclusive, since Kiva somehow picked up cues as to the objects' presences when being walked on a leash. Finally, I took her to a Veterinary Ophthalmologist, where I learned the dreaded news: Kiva had been born with the genetic condition of PRA (progressive retinal atrophy.)

A bitter pun, yes. PRA. My sweet Kiva-girl was going inexorably, incurably, blind. I was devastated. Tests did not exist yet for this condition, but it was obvious immediately that Rissa and Linus were carriers, and Kiva was the pup who had "hit the 25% chance jackpot". After crying into her fur for the rest of the evening, I informed Nancy Cunliffe (Linus's owner), to give her the bad news, as well as my mother (Stuart's owner) and Scooter's owner, since the one dog was definitely a carrier and the other two had a 50% chance of being so.

There was no point in thinking of attempting to show Kiva anymore, and we had her spayed as well. With blindness, she could never try for Obedience or Agility or other doggy disciplines, either. No matter; she was one of our beloved Corgis, and a member of our family for life.

Even with her diminishing eyesight, Kiva would still "mouth" at us to "talk" to us. Rissa and Stuart had picked up the habit of making noises to "talk" to their humans, but apparently while still sighted, Kiva had fixated on the movement of human mouths rather than the sounds produced, though she could hear just fine. Funny girl!

Kiva still loved to go the park and play "chase you" with Rissa. Now, however, Kiva would hang onto Rissa's tail with her mouth while they ran, with Rissa serving as a "seeing eye dog" for her daughter.

Life continued to be busy. Kiva learned to rely on her keen ears and nose and ability to build mental maps, and we finally bought a house of our own to which she readily adapted, though she could see only light and shadow at this point. (Our house has white floors and ceilings and redwood-paneled walls - we joke that we bought the house to match the dogs.) Our "moonlighting" business became our day home-business, and the kids made our lives even busier, but the constant presence of humans in the house was beneficial to kids and dogs alike.

In the year 2000, not long after Kiva turned 7, disaster struck again. We have no idea as to the cause of her problem; perhaps it happened when she was trying to wedge herself under the futon couch again, though we normally tried to keep it blocked off. Kiva started indicating (or rather, trying to hide, in typical stoic Corgi fashion), that she was having pain. She could not manage her beloved daily walk (though she tried!), and seemed to have pain when getting up to a stand. Our vet prescribed pain medication, and we planned to get X-rays on her back done if the situation did not rapidly improve. However, a few days later (while my husband was out of town for a conference), I woke up one morning to discover that Kiva could not stand or move her back legs at all.

Straight to the vet, emergency X-rays, and immediate emergency surgery for 3 ruptured discs. She spent a week in ICU, where she made great friends with the staff (they let her out of her pen to "hang out" with them most of the time, and one tech was actually surprised when I told her Kiva was blind, since she gave a darned good impression of a sighted dog.)

When Kiva came home with us, she still had no function in her hind legs. However, she had at least had bladder and bowel control, so we made regular trips outside with her to the "dog bathroom", with her hind end in a makeshift sling (she would walk with her front paws.)

Several people asked us if now that Kiva was crippled, were we planning to have her "put down". "Not on your life - or hers!" we replied. Kiva had plenty of quality-of-life. She still loved to "answer phones", practically pushing herself up on her useless back legs to get there, and the blind crippled "chow-hound" could invariably make it to the food bowls faster than the sighted healthy one when she heard the bag being poured. We purchased a wonderful custom-sized wheelie-cart for her from Doggon' Wheels http://www.doggon.com/products.html, so that she could once again enjoy her walks.

Happy-go-lucky Kiva had not let blindness stop her, even insisting on taking the lead during walks (she trusted leash guidance to keep her from bumping into things.) Now, she ignored the skeptical vet, who had pronounced it likely that she would never walk again. (Perhaps he didn't want us to get our hopes too high?) For Kiva, however, the thought process seemed to be thus: "I'm a dog, dogs walk, therefore I shall walk."

We took her to canine swim therapy, where her back leg muscles began twitching while she paddled in the water. We performed hours of physical therapy on her, massaging her legs and stimulating the nerves between her toe pads, to make her kick by reflex. Running in the wheelie-cart also stimulated her back legs to kick in rhythm with the running motion. We would put her in a "stand" with the sling so she could try to hold it. And most of all, Kiva herself never gave up. She never focused on how long she had been crippled; instead, every morning she woke up and tried again to stand and walk.

This was a battle that the determined and indomitable little Kiva won. She learned to stand. She learned to walk. She learned to RUN. She even learned how to hop-scramble back up onto her beloved couch. Years later, at age 10, she decided one day to take me on a 10-block-straight run (her idea!) She will never be quite 100%, and still wobbles a bit from time to time when getting up, but Kiva. Can. Walk.