I don't have experience with avascular necrosis, but I was experiencing some decrease in blood flow to the femoral head with an arthritic/birth defect hip joint while trying to postpone surgery. About the best I could suggest would be doing things that are non-weight bearing until you've seen the therapist. Isometric, swimming.... Going from active to non-active while you wait could cause you mental stress, I understand that - but don't try to work through pain and risk injury to a compromised joint please. Good Luck!

First I would go back to your vet about the scaly patches if you have not already. These could be something else and could be serious so please have them checked by your vet! I don't want to scare you but my 12-year-old dog had a patch of scaly skin and hair loss and it turned out she had a bacterial and fungal infection and skin cancer. The best thing would be to have allergy testing done to find out the source of the allergic reactions. Barring that I would recommend using a limited ingredient grain free diet. A limited ingredient diet is one with a shorter ingredient list which usually uses only one type of meat as the protein source. This way if your dog continues to have a reaction to the food you can narrow down the possibilities of what is causing the reaction because there is a small ingredient list. Keep in mind that it can take several weeks before you see a difference when trying a new food. Some examples of good diets of this type: Natural Balance Potato and Venison Natural Balance Sweet Potato and Fish BLUE Fish and Sweet Potato California Natural Herring and Sweet Potato Canine Caviar Venison and Pea Pinnacle Trout and Sweet Potato Honest Kitchen Force For the psoriasis type spots I would ask your vet if they carry a line of products called Douxo Calm. This line includes a shampoo, spray and spot treatment for allergic dermatitis. I have used their other product, Douxo Seborrhea, on two dogs for different skin issues and it worked REALLY well. If your vet doesn't carry it, see if they can look it up for you and if they think it is ok to use, then you can order it online.

Rocky had his x-rays yesterday and I'm very happy to report that the x-rays showed there is nothing wrong with his hips, knees or hocks. The vet said his hip/leg are seated (?) beautifully .. might be the beginning of some arthritis in the right ... but otherwise he looks like a normal young healthy dog. Her office is having a radiation clinic today, as part of their continuing education, so she's going to have them look at Rocky's films just to make sure she didn't miss anything ... she said she's not that comfortable looking at hock x-rays because they have too many parts (?). She did say that even when she manipulated his legs while he was sedated, that the right rear leg did not move as freely as the left one did. She says that's a puzzle ... I asked her if it could be a muscular injury left over from when he was young ... shortly after I got him, I asked the previous owner why Rocky didn't like riding in cars. He told me that Rocky had been in the front seat of his truck when he got hit head-on by a drunk driver. He also said that Rocky was thrown around quite a bit when they got hit. This guy never took Rocky to a vet ... he'd never had any shots or been neutered ... he didn't take him to a vet after the accident either. My vet agrees it could be something left over from that. So seems I have another male dog that is a puzzle ... my previous male dog had skin/eating issues that were a challenge for me and my vet. But we're very happy that we're not facing surgery at his young age!

Katieebs: A good design solves ALL design constraints so there's no having to choose between, for example, the plan and the exterior design as you are doing. Both would be accommodated. In lieu of copy and pasting the thing let me just point you here: http://ths.gardenweb.com/discussions/3178541/question-for-architectrunnerguy-or-others?n=24 Look at my post 11 posts down, not the one at the top with the colored drawing. Read the part about internet plans (spoiler: Very helpful) and the part about bags of $100 bills on the table. Sometimes I think I take the owners hard earned money more seriously than they do! I only point you there because since posting it, I've gotten some private notes, none of which I'll be doing the designing because they aren't local but all of which are looking to spend some six figure number of their hard earned money the best way possible in an endeavor in which there are no "do overs". Especially when that huge amount is weighed against the fee for a morning of conceptual design work by a creative thinker. So there has to be some interest there and may be you might too in getting someone creative that's local to look at improving the design. But good luck! EDIT: My crude red box was meant to illustrate a diagramitic concept (moving house FORWARD of garage), not moving those exact spaces IN the box forward while leaving the kitchen where it is. Sorry, that's me thinking conceptually!! No, the kitchen would relate to ALL other spaces the owner wishes. That's what separates great design from average design, both of which cost the same.