Christy’s Ramblings

Lois Lane decided to take all the blankets when I got up off the couch - guess she was chilly, too!  Sorry for another dog shot, but I’m not feeling up to par tonight and she was just looking too cute.

If a dog’s prayers were answered, bones would rain from the sky.

Buddy’s favorite activity…loafing on the couch.

Guess I should have done Dog Project 365, eh? Ah well, it’s been a busy week. Busy weeks = lots of pup photos.  And I’ve made it through January with the project thus far so one month down, 11 to go! If you can handle a lot more future dog photos I just may be able to get through this. Once spring and summer arrive I’ll have a lot more interesting subjects such as bugs, flowers and landscapes.  Hang in there with me!  ;)

Lois Lane was my test model on the new SF-3000 slave flash that finally arrived in the mail today.  I only had about 10 minutes to mess with it, but for the $15 it cost me, I think it’s gonna come in really handy, especially photographing fast, little, black dogs!  (Told you Lois Lane was next!)

Poor B. Dog. He messed up his back again and is on vet ordered cage rest for 10 days. He is none too happy about this outcome. But it sure beats the 6 weeks of cage rest he required when he ruptured a disk.  We’re not really sure how he did it, but I believe it came about after a good round of rough housing with Buddy the Giant Dawg.  Then the next morning he jumped off the bed, yelped and started walking funny and all hunched over so it was off to the vet for a diagnosis of a severely pulled muscle.  Poor guy.  All in time for our first snow too.  We’re supposed to be getting 3 - 5″ tonight - so much for Blue’s playtime in the snow.  However tomorrow’s photo may be quite festive and seasonably snowy!

Today was Furminator day for Buddy. Giant, hairy dogs, Furminators and winter time static do not go well together, thus I got a smaller pile of hair off of him than usual. Giant Dawg loves to be brushed, but Giant Dawg doesn’t dig static.  (As a heads up, you can expect to see quite a few dog shots during this project.  ;) )

I don’t often write of book reviews, but this one truly captured my heart!  “The Art of Racing in the Rain” by Garth Stein is utterly amazing!  Particularly if you are a dog lover, as I am.  It’s a story from a very intelligent dog’s point of view who’s goal is to be reincarnated as a human.  It deals with love and loss, family trials and tribulations, and most importantly…love and acceptance.  It makes you think twice about your life, about what you have and what could be, as well as the faithfulness of our wonderful canine companions.  I urge you to read this book!  And if you have or if you do, please comment and share your theories.  I don’t want to say much more for fear of ruining the book….but I highly, highly recommend it!  This one will definitely be on my re-read list.

We finally got to bring Lois Lane home from the 24 hour vet today!  She has her feeding tube in still to make sure she’s going to be able to eat and keep food down now that she’s home.  If all goes well she goes back Wednesday to have the tube removed.  She was very, very excited to get home!  We’ve been home with her for a couple hours now and she’s finally calming down.  So far, so good with no vomiting or regurgitation, but then she hasn’t eaten yet, so we can only hope that things continue down a positive path.  Blue is also happy to have his chew toy….errr dog…back in the house.  Buddy is too since Lois is the only of our dogs that will really play with him.  (Hardy is just too old and Blue doesn’t know how to play with such a big beast yet).  Unfortunately for Buddy it will be a few days before Lois can rough house with him.  Rough housing + Feeding Tube = Bad idea.

Lois is on anti-nausea meds and we have to clean out her feeding tube 3 times a day.  She’s on a very strict specialized diet and we have to be extremely careful that she doesn’t get into the other dogs’ food or get any people food or it could cause a relapse.  We’ll have to think of a new feeding schedule to accommodate everyone, but we’ll get it worked out.  I don’t care what it takes - my Lois Pain is home! 

Lois Lane is Home!

Lois Lane continues to improve!  She is still in the doggie hospital and probably will be for several more days.  After our last visit to her she got a little overly excited causing her to regurgitate more than she should, further irritating her esophagus.  The next day when her vet called to give us an update he said that she would be faster healing if she didn’t get so excited.  So yes, that means we can’t visit her until it’s time to pick her up.  She doesn’t flip out with anyone else, just when she sees any of her human family (because she wants to go home so bad I’m sure!).  So we haven’t seen her since Monday evening, but we get updates every day.  She’s actually “turned the corner” the vet was looking for, which is a great improvement.  She has only regurgitated once since we saw her on Monday. Tomorrow morning they will give her some water by mouth, rather than IV, to see if she can drink it and keep it down.  If she can they will progress to small amounts of food the next day.  Once she can eat and drink and keep everything down she gets to come home!!! The vet actually thinks her pancreatitis is over, but that we’re now dealing with esophagitis due to all of her regurgitating and puking eroding her poor esophagus.

Jason and I were talking the other night about how different our house is without Lois Pain here causing trouble.  The house is so quiet!  No little black nose bumping us in the back of the knee, no whining and running in counter-clockwise circles around the patio table, no freaking out when the cat is fed.  It’s amazing the little things that are annoying in everyday life that we miss so much when they are gone.  I’d give anything to have my little annoyance back!  Hopefully really, really soon…

Due to the expense that we have with Lois Lane being in the 24 hour care facility for so long (almost 2 weeks) we’ve had to cancel our California trip in August.  I’m still going Monday through Friday since it was a business trip for me for work to begin with.  Jason was going to go with me and we were going to stay through Sunday to have some site-seeing time and quality alone time, but that’s just not going to work out, unfortunately.  We do hope to be able to reschedule it, maybe by mid next year for our 10th wedding anniversary.  I know our good friend Merle that we were to tour around with was very disappointed to hear that we weren’t making it.  We’ll make it up to you Merle - I promise!