Catch-up

It's been absolutely ages since I last posted, and not because there hasn't been anything to write about, I just haven't gotten around to blogging!

Well my friend Taj visited for 10 days, which was lovely. We had a really good time - we went to the Grand Canyon and Sedona, then we did lots of stuff around Phoenix...

• 4 malls (she wanted to do lots of shopping)
• Phoenix Zoo
• Massages (I still had my gift card from my hubby for a 1.5 hour massage)
• Went to sit by the pool at Onel's apartment complex
• Yappy Hour at a really nice hotel/resort (for the Humane Society)

Taj left on May 2nd and on May 3rd my Mum and stepdad arrived, so there wasn't much of a gap between visitors! They stayed in a gorgeous resort, though, so hubby and I had the house back to ourselves. With my Mum and Stepdad we did the following:

• 1 mall
• Phoenix Zoo
• Spent a day at their resort in and by the pools
• Bearizona, a drive-through wildlife park in Williams, AZ
• The Grand Canyon
• Sedona

They also went horseback riding in the desert, which they really enjoyed. As you can see, we had a busy time with all our visitors!

I have to say, once everyone had left, it felt really weird. I think because since I moved here at the beginning of September 2010, I'd known they were coming in May and it was something to look forward to. Once they'd left, I just felt kinda empty. We don't have any other visitors lined up at the moment, although my friend Tamzin and her family are hoping to visit us next Easter when we'll hopefully have our new house. That's not set in stone though, of course.

I was feeling a bit down for a couple of weeks after my Mum left, but I'm back to normal now - whatever normal is, anyway!

We had a big problem with the pugs a few weeks back, their fighting suddenly escalated and it got to the point where we had to do something to sort them out. It was either get a dog trainer involved, or we'd have to consider taking Gracie back to pug rescue. The latter was something that filled us with dread, because we really have bonded with her (we've had her since early February) and we'd hate to have to part with her now. Also I'd feel so guilty because she'd have to go through the whole thing again - she was pretty messed up when she came to us, obviously confused because her original family had surrendered her, and I don't want her to go through that again! Besides, she's not really the 'problem' dog. Anyways, to cut a long story short, pug rescue recommended a dog trainer so we've hired her. So far we've had our initial consultation (which ended up being about 4 hours!) and one of our six training sessions (they're supposed to be 1.5 hours a time, and again she was here for close to 4 hours - just as well it's a fixed fee, and not hourly rates!). We still have issues with them but we're better able to handle them now. Hopefully by the end of the 6 weeks things will be a lot better. If not, well the fee covers any training the dogs might need for the rest of their lives, so we'll just have to have the trainer back again!

We've been told by our realtor that we should be hearing something about the new house in the next couple of weeks hopefully, so fingers crossed we'll get it! It's been over 2 months since we made the offer and because it's a 'short sale' these things take forever to go through - they haven't even accepted our offer yet! I just hope they don't try to raise the price or mess us around some other way...

Our pug Suzie has to go to the vet this afternoon, I think she has a stye on her eye, poor thing! Hopefully it won't need anything too much to treat it. I'm thinking maybe some ointment or drops or something. Also, hopefully it won't be too expensive either - last time she was at the vet (for a UTI) it was $132 (about £80). Actually now that I think about it, considering her 2 weeks of antibiotics and the testing etc, that's not too bad is it?!

I'm on a diet at the moment - I started on Monday May 30th so today is day 11. I finally bought some scales last Tuesday so Tuesday is now "weigh day". I weighed way too much last Tuesday... I don't really want to say here, but I don't think anyone reads this so I might as well! I was 209.4 pounds. I'm 5ft 8" and I have a big frame anyway, but even so, it's very bad! So I weighed myself again this Tuesday and I'd lost 1.5 pounds, I'm now 207.9 pounds. I was kinda disappointed because I was hoping to lose 3 pounds a week, but I think if you want to keep the weight off you're supposed to only lose 1 to 2 pounds a week so if that's the case, I'm right on track.

I've been very good and haven't broken my diet at all, so it's just a case of keeping up with it really. Ideally I'd love to lose 40 pounds but I definitely need to lose at least 30 I think. I'll feel so much better if I do it, and look much better too. If I keep losing 1.5 pounds per week, that'll be 6 pounds in a month, 12 pounds in 2 months, 18 pounds in 3 months... It'll take me 5 months (well 20 weeks, anyway) to lose 30 pounds... Yikes! That all depends on whether something else gets in the way of my diet, though. I can't say too much right now but we may have some rather exciting news in the not-too distant future! :-)

Good news!

Around 3.15 p.m. we got a call from the vet - they'd finally got a urine sample from her (she refused to pee for ages!!) and it was clean - which means that the antibiotics have worked and she no longer has a UTI! Yay!!! Her antibiotics won't be done with until Friday morning, but at least she doesn't need another course of them :-)

Busy again

This morning I made us coffee and breakfast, did the dishes, cleaned the kitchen... I fed the dogs, hubby medicated them... Then I dusted, vacuumed, mopped and cleaned the bathroom. I also did a bunch of laundry too and put away all the clothes I washed yesterday.

After all that I had a shower and then we took Suzie up to the vet, they need to try and get a urine sample and see how her UTI is responding to the antibiotics. I hope they manage to get a sample! The house feels really odd without her here, it's not nice. I miss my baby!

When we got back from dropping Suzie at the vet, I took Gracie for a quick walk so she could do her "business" hehe, and now I'm home and I've done everything that needs doing already... I'd finished cleaning the house by just before 9.15 a.m. so I was pretty productive today.

Tonight we're going to the filming session for Suzie's agility class, I hope she does well this time because they're going to put it on the internet! Hopefully she'll get a little bit of practice time beforehand. I know a few of the other people were going to take their dogs for a half hour practice session yesterday, but we didn't go. It would've been another $10 which isn't bad at all, but we didn't arrange to do it. Oh well, I'm sure it'll go fine.

Well, I'd better make us some lunch. Soup and sandwiches! I'm really hungry, it's almost 5 hours since we ate breakfast (at 6 this morning) so we're ready for lunch even though it's not even 11 a.m. yet!

Suzie is sick :-(

Our gorgeous little pug-pug girl Suzie is sick! Poor little girl. She has a urinary tract infection (UTI) which seemed to start late afternoon yesterday. She kept needing to go potty a lot more than usual, and when she was peeing (or trying to pee) she was squatting for ages, which is unusual for her. She woke me up at 3 a.m. today, wanting to go potty again (this is also unusual for her) - she peed for ages (or tried to) and when she came back in I noticed some blood... :-(

We managed to get her an appointment at the vet this morning at 10, and I tried to get a urine sample from her beforehand but was pretty unsuccessful (I ended up with all of about 3 drops in a tupperware box! Hardly enough for them to test!). They tried to get her to go potty so they could get a sample but she wouldn't; we tried again but she wouldn't pee for us either. So, they examined her and gave her an antibiotic shot and we now have a 15-day supply of antibiotic capsules for her. She'll need one capsule every 12 hours, which shouldn't be a problem as she doesn't mind medication normally - we'll put the capsule in a blob of peanut butter and if past experience is anything to go by, she'll love it. :-)

Hopefully she'll get better very soon. I hate it when she's poorly...

An Update

OK, so we took Gracie to our vet. He doesn't think her patellar luxation is anywhere near bad enough to consider surgery. She walks normally and he said grade 2 luxations aren't that bad. He did say she might get arthritis later on because of it, though. He couldn't say with certainty that she won't progress to grade 3 luxation, but I didn't really expect him to be able to - he doesn't have a crystal ball, after all.

With regards her eye, he likened pigmentary keratitis to how the world looks to us wearing sunglasses. He said it would drive a person crazy but dogs just get on with things. We have some steroid eye drops for her, which we need to give her twice a day every day for the rest of her life. Luckily they were only $17 - although that's obviously going to end up costing a lot over the course of her lifetime! At least they're not like $50 a time though. That's what I thought they might cost. The vet said that the drops should stop her condition getting any worse, and hopefully will prevent her good eye from developing the condition too.

I'm still annoyed that we only just found out what APARN already knew - it doesn't seem very fair, really. I'm not sure how to broach the subject with them, obviously we're keeping Gracie but I think they ought to be aware that they should have told us what they knew. It was quite stressful to see that information last night, out of the blue. At least if they'd told us we would've known, and we could've got more information.

You know, I think Gracie knew something was up this morning because she hardly ate any of her breakfast (I mean, she ate maybe 15% of it - that's 15% of about a third of a cup, so really not much) and on the way to the vet she was whining a lot in the car. She doesn't normally do that. The difference this time was that we left Suzie at home. I wonder if she thought we were going to take her somewhere and leave her there? I mean, like her previous owner did when they surrendered her to APARN. In the vet's office she was shaking like a leaf. I just kept cuddling her and eventually she settled down. Poor little girl, I hate when she's scared like that.

It's such a relief that we can keep her - I really was starting to think that we'd have to give her back, we don't have thousands of dollars lying around for really expensive surgery; we're hoping to buy a house this year! Hopefully Gracie will never need surgery on her knees, if we're lucky they won't get any worse. As long as she has a good quality of life, that's the main thing.