Dogs, Dogs, Dogs

I feel really bad not keeping this blog updated so I made a pact with myself to keep writing in here on a daily basis if not for therapy but to let everyone know how I'm doing.

It's. Been. Crazy.

I don't know whether it's the holidays but it seems that when the weather changed, my life has become even more chaotic. Business is going great and I shouldn't even complain as it sure does beat my "other" job, which really isn't too big a deal since it's only on the weekends, but still.

Anyway, Thanksgiving was great and I believe the major stressors set in around then. My seven-year-old cocker spaniel, Max, has an awful ear infection. We've been taking him to a doctor here on the island but the infection just wouldn't ever go away. He's had it a long time. The pills he gave me to give him would work to the extent you couldn't smell the infection but little did we know, it was eating away at his ear canal and we didn't even know it.

Over Thanksgiving, he ran out of pills. I called the vet but no one was in the Friday following Thanksgiving so we had to wait it out all weekend. I didn't want to take him to the same one as it was getting us nowhere.

Dr. Nickol's is great, only he's about an hour away and that's why we went from him to this other one when we moved to the island since the one on the island isn't but 3 minutes away. Seriously. If it's nothing major, he's great, but obviously he's not good with ear infections as the dog has had one for maybe a year now, off and on.

So over Thanksgiving, the dog was getting worse. He smelled like dead carcass, I'm serious. He had leakage out of his ear and his eyes. The once happy running-all-around dog didn't want to do anything but hang his head or sleep or shake his head.

We finally got an appointment on Monday. Dr. Nickol's said that his one ear was so bad, bone had grown over the ear canal and there was nothing short of an operation that would allow him to hear out of it again. The other one is getting near that point but there was still a little passageway.

We had to muzzle him and a good thing as he wanted to take everyone's arm off. The doctor shaved on the inside of both ears and put some kind of medication on it and told us to bring him back in 2 weeks. He gave us 2 kinds of medication to put in his ear, a wash of some kind and some pain pills. The pain pills are the only thing I can get in him as he tries to bite my hand off when I just go to put the muzzle on him, so I can't do it myself.

I was waiting for my daughter to get back from taking her Sheltie to the vet (to the tune of $180 for a skin ailment) to help me put this medication in Max and I'm waiting now for her to finish lunch so we can do it. And I'm dreading it.

Stressors, stressors, but I need to save the dog. I love him so much that when he cries out in pain, I cry out, too.

So that's the extent of my morning and what I've been going through. It seems the ill health of anyone you love takes a lot of out of you, but I do what I have to do and pray for the best.