Rules for living with a puppy:
#57: If the rug feels wet, it probably is.
#58: The more expensive the rug, the more likelihood that it’s been peed on.
It wouldn’t be so bad if he didn’t roam around whilst he tinkled, leaving an 8 foot long trail of dribble in his wake.
Living with a puppy is a little like living with a low-grade zombie, only instead of wanting to gnaw on your brains, he’s not particular about what body part he chews.
We’ve (mostly) officially decided on a name, continuing in our beverage theme.
Tito does a lot of sleeping and chasing his tail. He’s insanely cuddly. He’s a little too young to do the crate at night, which we discovered after he howled and shook last night. So he slept in the bed with us instead and cuddled close and stayed calm and good until we got up.
He’s got a great pedigree but has a funny little mismark – a bitty black dot on his nose. He and Kona are getting along great.
Cuervo crossed the bridge this morning. He would have been ten years old next month. He was a good dog.
Cuervo’s crashing. He went from a relatively stable 26% to 13% this week. Tonight’s the night to say goodbye. I’m heartbroken. Haven’t told the kids yet because they have a friend over to play.
This is hard.
So what happened to Cuervo was a bad reaction to one of the immunosuppressants he was taking for his anemia condition. His front feet swelled up really badly and basically just sort of blew out. His left foot has almost no black pad on it at all. We’ve been having to tape socks on to protect his wound from getting dirty. He’s got nine separate medications to take – 18 pills in all, daily – to treat both his pure red cell aplasia and the infected foot.
The good news is that, a week after the blood transfusion and the human immunoglobulin treatment, his blood count is up from 19% to 26% today. Normal is around 40%, so you can see he was in pretty bad shape. His foot wound isn’t healing up by itself because of the pressure of walking, so he’s got a bandage, a sock, and a boot to wear. We call him Clunky. Or Thumper. He’s disgusted with the boot and hates walking with it, but he’s got to.
He’s still pretty emaciated – 69 lbs, down from a normal 80 – and has some muscle wasting, so his head looks a little sunken in and you can count his ribs. But he seems to be feeling better than he was, a little more so every day.
I think it’s time to look into pet insurance, though. 😮
Quickie update – Cuervo’s still staying at the vet, but they have been calling us daily with reports. He’s “scarfing down food” and keeping it down. He’s also said to be in good spirits. The only problem is that they had to stop treating the big bad long-term problem in order to treat the big-bad short-term problem, so once his infections are healed, we have to restart the steroids and immuno-suppressants. And Kona is lonesome.
We hope to bring Cuervo home tomorrow.
Other stuff that’s been going on lately:
– Every time the neighbor’s AC goes on, our lights dim.
– I spent the night in NYC last Monday and had a great time. I left my camera in a cab, though. I did manage to grab the pics onto the computer beforehand.
– At least two more weeks of insane busyness ahead. I’ve also got a research paper due this week and a final exam next week. I’ve decided that I will not flip out if I get a B in this class. My GPA would still be a 3.9.
– We tried two new restaurants this week – Ventana (cooking school restaurant; okay prices, shaky service, uneven food) and Drakula (Romanian; good appetizer plate but when one makes polenta, one should use the salt; also, it smelled like someone’s grandmother’s house – a mix of cleaning products and cabbage – and was about the same 85 degree temperature atmosphere a grandmother would like, too).
-Two profs from last semester told me I should submit two different papers for publication.
Back to the grindstone!