House hunting!

I've been meaning to blog for a while now but never got around to it. I guess I didn't really have anything that important to say!

The saga of Gracie the night monster continues... Last night was horrendous, she wouldn't stay in bed and she was pacing around our room, so hubby let her out (again) and she went potty. She hadn't done anything when he took them out before bedtime, though - how annoying! Then she seemed to settle, but at 2am she was whining and scratching on my side of the bed. I let her out again - she peed. Again, why she couldn't have done that either of the previous two times we'd let her out, I don't know! Then again she woke us at 5am. Jeez! I don't know what her problem is, but she definitely doesn't like night time. She just won't settle. We have a problem virtually every night and it's doing our heads in! I would put her out in the hallway overnight but she would still whine and cry and then she'd start scratching the bedroom door, so it wouldn't help much. It's infuriating! She wakes us probably as many times as a newborn baby would! (I'm not comparing having dogs to having children, by the way - I know it's completely different but at least you expect a baby to wake you through the night!)

Yesterday we searched online for houses for sale within about 10 miles of our area. We made a list of some of them and went to drive by them, to see what the areas were like and if the houses looked worthwhile making an appointment to view. Of course, you can only tell so much from the exterior, but it was more about location and whether the areas had a good vibe about them. We've ruled out one house for definite, because in order to get to it you have to drive right by loads of really run-down trailer parks and boarded up houses - it didn't exactly feel safe round there! The house itself and its surrounding neighborhood seemed nice enough, but it was almost as though the housing estate was built in amongst all these dodgy trailer parks! It just didn't have a good feel to it. So we didn't waste our time - at least we've ruled some in and some out, which is what we expected to do really. It's going to be a learning curve, that's for sure. We're pretty sure we know what we want, for the most part - our main requirements are as follows:

- 4 bedrooms or more

- 2 bathrooms (or 1.5, 1.75, whatever!)

- 2 car garage

- good air conditioning

- nice location with good access to the freeways and good amenities nearby

In addition to that, I'd like to have a laundry room as we do now and it's really nice not to have to do laundry in the garage (in Phoenix it's way too hot in the summer to spend much time in the garage, since they generally don't have A/C!). The laundry room isn't absolutely essential but it would be nice!

We saw one house which looked nice but it was literally 3 doors down from a big elementary school - that kinda put us off. I mean, we're wanting to have children soon so for that reason it would be good, but traffic would be crazy at school start and end times and there were signs up saying no parking between 7am and 4pm - so you couldn't even park outside your own house! That wouldn't be so much of a problem for us because we'd park in the garage or on the driveway (depending on if we had 1 or 2 cars and if we had enough space in the garage for both) but if we had guests that could be very problematic. We ruled that one out.

There were a couple of really nice neighborhoods we looked at and we want to make appointments to view those houses, so we effectively ruled some houses in! Quite a variation in prices, going from literally as little as $85,000 to $135,000. We could go higher but we figured we'd start out low and see what we can get - in this economy there are a lot of nice houses going for cheap, so we may as well try and get one for as little as we can. We don't need a flashy house, after all! The 4 bedroom requirement is partly because hubby works from home so he needs an office, we need a bedroom, we'll need a nursery when we have a baby and it would be nice to have a spare room. Also, we're planning to have at least 2 kids so when that happens maybe we'll forget about having a spare room and they'll have a room each. We'll see! Neither of us wants to move house again for a long time, so we need to make sure we buy the right one and one that's going to be big enough for us and our expanding family! :-)

I got a message on Facebook this morning from hubby's sister in Florida, asking if we're going to be attending her daughter's high school graduation in June. Maybe it's because I'm not American and I don't "get it" but really? It's over 2000 miles away! It's a high school graduation! I spoke to hubby about it and told him that since his sister didn't come to our wedding, I don't see why we should go all that way for a high school graduation! I'm pretty sure that weddings are a bit more important than graduations, right? Surely they are! Anyway, I've never met his sister and although I would like to, we're not going to be able to make it regardless. Hubby's vacation time doesn't re-set until July, he only has a few days left at this point and he's wanting to take them soon; we're wanting to buy a house and so him taking unpaid leave isn't really an option; I looked at flights and the cheapest I could find was almost $1000 return for the two of us, which is significant when we're going to need a deposit for our house and moving fees etc. Hubby's parents are going, he said they'll probably be driving - so we could go with them if we had the time, but if we were going to go it would have to be by air because we don't have enough time to drive there and back! Also, we'd have to find someone to look after the dogs and they'd probably have to go into kennels for a few days - I'm not keen on that idea, and it adds more expense! A couple of people we know from the dog park offered to look after Suzie if we went away, but that was before we got Gracie - with 2 dogs I'm sure people would be more reluctant to make the same offer! Plus, I couldn't impose the night monster on anyone - how mean would that be?!

So anyway, I told hubby's sister that he doesn't have the vacation time and we're trying to buy a house so taking unpaid leave isn't an option right now. I still don't see why we should make that effort to go all that way for a silly high school graduation when she didn't make the effort to come to our wedding.

Good News!

My green card arrived on Saturday! Yay! Not bad really, 9 days after my interview - can't complain at all! It feels great to have it, it's a big milestone. Now we can relax until November 2012, when we'll have to apply to have the conditions removed. Because it's a marriage-based green card, they only issue the card for 2 years - then you send in more paperwork to have the conditions removed, and you get a new, 10 year green card. In 3 years time from now I'll be eligible to apply for citizenship, so I'll most likely do that when the time comes - it'll save a lot of hassle!

The weekend was a bit miserable weather-wise, really. We had a short hail storm and quite a bit of rain Saturday, then yesterday it rained again. It's pretty big news here when it rains - it still makes me laugh. By UK standards the rain really wasn't that big of a deal, but for the desert I guess it was a lot!

I cleaned the whole house on Friday, then hubby's brother came round for dinner so I cooked pasta. The house looks a mess again now - seriously, having 2 dogs rather than 1 makes a big difference to the state of the house. I'm gonna clean again tomorrow I think.

Tonight we're taking Suzie to her first ever agility class! We got the idea last week, that she might enjoy it and it would be good for her. I found a class and emailed the people who run it, and there's a class starting tonight which is a 5 week course. It's only for an hour each time, on Monday evenings. I think it'll be fun! We'll probably get laughed at by the other people there for bringing a pug to an agility class, but I don't see any reason why she couldn't be good at it. She's clever and she learns quickly, and she's got lots of energy. It'll be cool to see her do that! I'm taking my camera along, of course. :-)

We haven't been sleeping well these past 2 or 3 nights - Gracie has been acting odd, barking at something (no idea what) and getting out of her bed constantly. She comes to the side of the bed and whines, and when she's not doing that she's going under our bed. Weird! Hubby got up early this morning at like 4 a.m. to try to let her outside, thinking she needed to go potty - nope! I don't know what her problem is!!! I'm knackered now, and I'm sure hubby is too. I might take a nap, actually!

Drama at the Dog Park - again!

I emailed APARN and told them that we hadn't been made aware of Gracie's health issues, and the lady apologized profusely - it was some kind of oversight. I can see how that kind of thing could happen, but at least now they might just be extra careful to make sure potential adoptive 'parents' know of any issues a dog may have before they go ahead and adopt.

I joined a pug forum and got some pretty good info from people on there who've experienced the same problems with their pugs, and they recommended starting Gracie on joint supplements called Cosequin DS. I searched around online and the best price I found was $39.99 for 132 chewable tablets. Petco have the whole range on sale if you buy online, but even then they were charging $44.99 for 110 of the exact same chewable tablets, and $52.49 for 132. It was worth the extra time to find them for less, especially as the regular Petco price for that pack size is $69.99!

You're meant to give one a day for 4-6 weeks and then you can reduce it to half a day after that initial period. That means 132 tablets will last for at least 7 months, so it's worth the expenditure. Especially if this stuff is as good as everyone says it is - it's meant to be great for dogs of all sizes and ages. If it helps Gracie's knees then it's worth it. Her patella did actually luxate for a short time last night, she jumped off the couch while we were eating dinner and started limping. It went back in after about a minute though. She didn't yelp or anything, but I can't imagine it would be a comfortable sensation! If this stuff is as good as it's meant to be, then hopefully it will help to prevent, or at least delay, the onset of arthritis. It should arrive either tomorrow or Friday hopefully, I paid for 2-3 day delivery.

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Yesterday when hubby finished work we took Suzie and Gracie over to the dog park. We arrived at the same time as one of our friends, who has a pug and a French bulldog. All was well until Jester, the Frenchie, got mauled by a bloody pitbull. The most horrific thing about it was that nobody could get the damn pitbull off of him - it had half Jester's head in its mouth and it was shaking him like a ragdoll. The pitbull's owner was screaming "choke him!" to the guy who was with her, because despite screaming at the dog and hitting it to try and get it to let go, it wouldn't. I didn't actually really see the attack because we were a little way away and there were loads of people gathered around, trying to get the damn dog off of poor little Jester. To be honest I was trying to locate Suzie as well, for a short time I couldn't see her and I was panicking like crazy. Gracie doesn't venture far from our side so I knew where she was. When the dog finally let go, poor Jester had at least 3 or 4 puncture wounds to his head, neck and shoulder. There was one at the base of his ear that I think had gone through the skin of the ear. It was awful. Considering how prolonged and vicious the attack was, I think he actually was very lucky. The pitbull could've ripped his ear off, he could've even killed him... It's just so scary.

Our friend was in shock, she was pretty calm but you could tell it was the shock doing that to her. I'm not surprised - I'd be a total mess if that happened to one of our girls. The fact that there was nothing she could do probably made it that much worse, too. Luckily someone had some peroxide in their car, so he went and got that to put on the wounds. One of the guys there called the cops, and there was a huge commotion with a lot of people yelling at the people with the pitbull because a dog like that doesn't belong in a dog park! Especially when the dog park is in 2 separate sections - small dogs and large dogs. Well, Jester certainly belongs in the small dog side. The pitbull should never have been in that section - in fact, he probably shouldn't even be on the big dog side. At least if it had attacked a bigger dog, the dog being attacked would have probably had more of a chance. I'm still shocked about the whole thing, really. It's just so horrendous. Our poor friend, she must still be in shock over it. I'm glad I didn't really see the attack - the sounds were bad enough. I knew it must be really bad if the owner was yelling "choke him!" - you wouldn't say that if it was minor, would you? The fact that nobody could get the dog to stop is the scariest thing - I know that not all pitbulls are bad, of course; I know they get a particularly bad rap - but when they start attacking there's really very little you can do. I'm seriously considering carrying hubby's baseball bat with me when we go to the dog park from now on - there's no way I'm going to stand by helpless if a vicious beast goes for Suzie or Gracie. I was angry enough on the two occasions that little bastard pomeranian attacked Suzie, and although I think that dog is capable of doing some serious damage (particularly to her prominent eyes) it's nothing compared to a pitbull. At least you can grab the little fucker and throw him if you need to - he's a nasty piece of work but he's small and light enough that you can pull him off relatively easily. A pitbull is a completely different entity and it really doesn't take much for one to severely maul or even kill a dog, big or small. The people with the pitbull's owner were trying to justify the whole thing - well, I'm sorry, but there is no justification. Jester was no threat to a dog that weighs at least 5 times what he does - he's 23 pounds for fuck's sake and he's not vicious! I'm just glad that Jester is OK. I'm sure he'll be in quite a bit of pain, and there's gonna be bruising under there, but the bites themselves look fairly superficial. I guess that being alive and not too severely injured is a good outcome when you've been attacked by a pitbull, anyway.

When the cop eventually arrived, after what must have been around 30 minutes (even though the dispatcher told the man who called that it was a 'priority' call!) the people with the pitbull had long gone. I asked the cop myself what you're legally allowed to do if a dog is attacking your (or another) dog, and he said, "Don't even worry about that, just do whatever you need to do to stop it" - good! So I think the baseball bat idea is probably a good one. I know it's more likely to be effective in a situation like that than shouting or hitting the attacking dog with your hand, anyway. I'd hate to have to hurt any dog, but I'm sorry, if it's attacking my dog, or another dog, then I damn well will.

Funnily enough, on Monday (the day before the attack) there was a man in the dog park with a handgun in a holster on his belt. At the time I thought it was a little odd, only because he's the first civilian I've actually seen to carry a gun even though I've been here over 5 months now, and also because I thought it was strange to carry a gun to the dog park - well, we could've used him yesterday! I don't like the thought of hurting a dog, but really what else could you do to stop such a vicious attack? The other thing is, that there were some little kids in the dog park yesterday - I know people say pitbulls only attack other dogs, but with a dog like that which nobody could control, how do you really know? I bet the police would've arrived quicker if it had attacked a person - of course they would. I hope those stupid people never come back to the dog park, and if they do then that bloody dog best be in a muzzle or left at home. I said as much to the owner - I told her that if her dog had attacked one of my dogs, I would not be as calm as our friend was. I said that dog does not belong here, and if you're going to take it out of the house it needs to be under control and have a muzzle on. I didn't shout at her, she was hysterical too, but it's something that better not be repeated because I swear, if that had been Suzie, and they tried to justify the attack to me like they did yesterday, I would go ballistic. It just doesn't bear thinking about, I'd be devastated if Suzie was attacked like that (I say Suzie rather than Gracie because Gracie doesn't go far from us, but Suzie does, and I think Suzie would be more likely to be in the situation Jester was in yesterday - but of course, if it happened to Gracie I would go crazy too).

I don't want to stop taking the girls to the dog park, because I know it's good for them (especially Suzie, because she plays and runs like crazy every time we go) but it's made me quite reluctant to want to take them without hubby being with us. I already was reluctant, actually, but now I'm even more so. If anything like that were to happen to Suzie or Gracie, I'd never forgive myself (even though it wouldn't be my fault!).

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.

Would've been nice to know...

We didn't end up going to see the in-laws on Saturday, as hubby was called for work at 3.30 p.m. and ended up having to work until after 11 p.m. We went over yesterday instead.

When we got home I had an email from APARN - Gracie's paperwork. We were pretty shocked to find that she has 2 pretty serious pre-existing conditions which we knew nothing of. She was seen by a veterinarian the day before we first met her, and they wrote a report stating that she has bilateral patellar luxation and also pigmentary keratitis in her left eye which is gradually making her blind. It's a condition where the cornea becomes covered in a layer of filmy pigment and causes blindness - so far, her cornea is 40% covered so she's effectively almost half blind in that eye. The patellar luxation is in both of her hind legs and is currently grade 2 - I've been researching it and apparently surgery is the only treatment option, and even after surgery there's a 50% chance of some degree of luxation recurring. Oh, by the way, surgery costs between $1500 and $2000 per leg - so it's not exactly cheap. The pigmentary keratitis is something that apparently can be treated with eye drops or ointment - but it won't be cured. I've read some articles that say the progression can be halted or slowed down, but the drops are very expensive.

So what the hell do we do now? We've had Gracie for 10 days. She'd been messed around enough before she came to us, so we'd feel terrible giving her back. None of this is her fault, obviously. However, APARN knew about her problems and they did not tell us about either one. If they had, we could have made an informed decision about whether or not to adopt her. Pet insurance is out of the question - they don't cover pre-existing conditions. We're taking her to the vet at 11 to see what they say. We also probably need to get her vaccinated against rabies and kennel cough, too - there's no record of either being given, although she must have had the rabies shot as she was licensed. I'm guessing we'll have to get the rabies shot again, otherwise we can't get a license for her. It was a different county she was licensed in before, too.

I just don't know what to do. I feel so angry at APARN for not disclosing this pretty important information. I mean, do you not think we deserve to know that she has 2 chronic conditions that are only going to get worse? We signed the adoption agreement thinking that she was in very good health. They had this information before we met Gracie and didn't tell us until 9 days after we adopted her. I know we could return her and cut our losses (we'd lose the adoption fee) and they would take her back - but as I said, we'd feel terrible doing that. Poor Gracie. At the same time though I don't think we can really afford all of this - we wanted to buy a house this year and if we're going to have to spend thousands on orthopedic surgery and eye treatments then that will have to wait. We also want to have a baby and they're expensive.

Obviously Suzie could be diagnosed with a problem like this, and we'd have to sort it out. We wouldn't consider giving her away. But this is something we should have been made aware of prior to adopting Gracie, it's like they deliberately hid it from us. We could've made an informed decision about whether or not to proceed with the adoption. You know, we would've adopted a pug anyway, just maybe not this one. I hope I don't sound awful but it's the truth. There should be full disclosure of any medical issues they're aware of. They can't say they weren't aware of them, because the vet report is dated January 28th and it has the name of the woman in charge on it as the person who took her there. The same woman we spoke with for ages on the day we met Gracie - and the same one who was emailing me regarding the adoption. They had plenty of time to tell us about her issues, and they didn't. It took them 9 days to get that information to me. Fucking hell!!!

Weekend!

We took the girls for a nice walk this morning, it's another beautiful day in Phoenix! (as if that's really anything surprising!)

After that we brought the girls home and went to buy my stepdad a birthday card. It's his birthday next Sunday and to be honest, although I knew it, I hadn't really thought past February 10th (my big interview day). Just as well I looked at the calendar this morning! We mailed it right after buying it, so hopefully he'll have it in time. If it's late, then so be it, but it should probably arrive on Friday or Saturday.

I got an email from my friend T, and we ended up chatting on Skype (at long last!). She's planning to come over for a vacation in a couple of months! Yay! She said she's booked the time off work already and is hopefully coming on April 22nd and staying until May 1st. That'll be a great time to come here, the weather will be perfect but not ridiculously hot. My Mom and stepdad arrive on May 3rd, so it's quite close but it'll work. T will stay with us I think, which is fine - we have the air bed and it'll be nice to spend some proper time with her. I really don't think she could be anywhere near as annoying as my Dad when he was here! She won't leave a mess everywhere, that's for sure. I'm really looking forward to it! Hopefully she'll book her flights soon. :-)

Hubby got a call from work about an hour ago, but hopefully we're still going to be able to go to his parents' place for dinner. I'm looking forward to seeing them, now that I've been approved for my green card - my mother-in-law was so excited for me when I spoke to her on the phone, it was so sweet. She even caught me off-guard by saying "I love you" when we said goodbye. I wasn't expecting that! It's so nice to have such lovely in-laws, I really appreciate them. Hopefully Gracie will be calmer there today and not bark so much at everyone!

A Lazy Day

Today hasn't exactly been productive - I didn't get much sleep last night as I had a really vivid, scary, weird dream and I kept getting woken up by my stupid period pain, despite having taken painkillers before bed. I hate it! I've been feeling like absolute crap all day today so haven't done a lot. We took the pug-pugs to the dog park when hubby finished work and Suzie had a good run and play as always. Gracie was a little more confident with people, she even went up to a random guy and let him pet her for a while. I think she's coming out of her shell more every day, it's great! The eating thing is still rather frustrating, she really has to be coaxed to eat. This evening I googled 'dog reluctant to eat' and got some tips - I tried one of them, which was to put something different in with the food. I broke up a beef jerky dog treat into lots of little pieces and mixed it in with the kibbles. It worked really well! I ended up putting another one in there because she stopped eating with about a third of her food left - she ended up eating the whole lot! I don't really want to set a precedent by doing that, but if it makes her eat a good amount then it's worth it. I made sure to give Suzie two of the treats too, so they're both equal! We don't want to create any jealousy between them, of course!

Right now I'm making rice pudding with our leftover rice (we had green curry for dinner) - I'll give the girls a little bit each, Suzie loved it last time. I suppose if Gracie doesn't eat it then Suzie can - she gets plenty of exercise at the dog park! At the moment hubby is laying on the big couch with the two of them, and it looks like Gracie is cuddling Suzie - it's so damn cute! :-)