Dogs and Cats...

Yes, one of our kids is prone to sickness more than the other one.
That has been determined by the cancer Gods.
Jerks.
I do have my fingers eternally crossed that the non-sick one stays that way.
But with a house full of pets, we also have a dog and a cat who are more prone to disease than the others as well.

First off there's Lola.
We bought her from an Australian Cattle Dog rescue group in southern Illinois when she was 4 months old.

We went twice to see her and were assured that she had been vet checked.
Also had that in writing.
Upon getting her home we took her to our veterinarian where we were told she had a grade 5 murmur of her heart (5 is the worse).
WHAT?!
Upon calling the rescue group and arguing with them and reminding them that they were supposed to have had this dog checked with their vet before adopting her out and yadda, yadda, yadda we were given our money back (but not before them suggesting we could bring this puppy back to them that our then 3 year old daughter had picked out and named and get a different puppy!)
So after a referral to the University of Illinois Veterinary School, we were told our puppy had a heart condition called ventricular septal defect and that was causing the other side of her heart to become enlarged and there was nothing surgically to do for her.
We would have to wait and watch for signs of congestive heart failure and there was no way to determine how long she would live.
Luckily Lola hasn't had any issues.
Yet.

And then there's our cat Popcorn.
He's one of our barn cats we got as an 8 week old kitten on July 4th of 2011.
We have him and his two brothers, the twins we call them, and his sister.
Popcorn is just over a year old and all of the "kittens" spend a lot of time in the house as well as being outside in the barn killing mice and other things.
He was near death a while back.
I am certain that he ate something poisonous.
I had to fight to get him into the vet that day for some reason.
He was given some antibiotics, but he's never been the same ever since.
Not the same talkative, outgoing, energetic cat he used to be.

He recently had an abscess on his tail that busted open on my lap (JOY!) and another abscess (probably stemming from the same bacteria that had been in his blood that was from his tail) on his left front leg.
We had to take him to the veterinarian on Halloween because we noticed his leg was swollen and hard to touch.
Poor guy had a 105 fever and had to stay overnight with the doctor to get sedated so they could open up the abscess and clean it out.
He's our poor little sick guy and I think he would fare much better as being an indoor cat.

So, not only do we have a child with cancer who has ongoing issues, we also are dealing with a perpetually sick kitten and a dog who could be running across the yard and collapse at any time.
Oh, and the horse was running like a fool in the pasture last week and fell right over in the mud.
She just layed there for a bit, stunned.
She did some haphazard rolls to get her 1,000 pound self upright again.
I then yelled to her "we don't need a horse with a broken leg so cut the crap horse!"
Sigh...kids and animals.
Certain to keep us on our toes and to keep our wallets bone dry.