save the pit bull, save the world.

I keep trying to write posts and they keep turning out far too prickly and pissy, so I keep deleting them. That leaves me with nothing to say but “here’s a cute picture of Steve, who is, by the way, doing much better at the moment. I can’t wait to have his PT vet put her hands on him on Thursday. He’s down to 1/4 tablet of Robaxin once a day and is having a fair amount of time out of the crate. He’s still waking me up at a ridiculous time every morning and I still fantasize about baseball bats.”

Oh Steve.

We skipped physical therapy last week (which was the plan). That in combination with increasing his activity and then decreasing his medication resulted in a big backslide. Steve has two speeds: zero and 90. Unfortunately, the speed I need is somewhere around 25. He doesn’t want to stretch. He’s not striding correctly. He’s offloading when he’s standing. I am so frustrated and the whole thing makes me want to cry. I have tried to decrease his activity again and bumped his muscle relaxant back up (I actually dosed him twice yesterday, which he hasn’t needed in a long time.) and I think things are better today, but I haven’t done any stretching with him yet.

I know both PT vets said that this is one of the most frustrating injuries to deal with, but that doesn’t make me feel any better.

Even more frustrating, for the past week and a half, he has been absolutely miserable to live with. Through most of his crate rest period, he’s been pretty accepting. Lately he’s been pitching fits, thrashing and tearing his crate blankets, and kicking his crate door repeatedly. He’s not slept past 5:30 am in days (I get up at 6:30). Many nights he’s up around 4. He won’t settle. I take him out to let him pee, and then crate him again, and he’s rattling the crate door shortly thereafter. I tried tethering him instead of crating him and that didn’t help. I’ve tried various medications but none last long enough. I am seriously approaching my wits’ end. I do not want to crate him in another room, one because the idea makes me incredibly sad, and two because I’m afraid he’ll escalate to barking, and I do NOT want a dog who is in the habit of barking in his crate.

Tonight’s plan is to keep a chewie in my nightstand and when he wakes up, drop that in to him and hope it occupies him for awhile and that he settles down afterward. I guess there’s the chance that it’ll reinforce the behavior, but I need to sleep and I know it’s not really his fault. He’s bored and he’s got too much energy and no way to burn it off.

Last night I walked him late and then we did half an hour of training immediately before bed. He was up at 5:23. That’s better than 4, I guess.

The good, such as it is, is that he seems more comfortable walking after dark. Summer’s combination of fireworks and thunderstorms made him anxious to be outside after dark. Not too anxious to sniff and mark, but anxious enough that he was hypervigilant and tail-tucked. Unfortunately, the only way for me to get the prescribed number of walks in for him per day requires that we go out after dark (I’m fortunate to live in a neighborhood where I can do that). I guess we’ve had enough uneventful dark walks lately that he’s relaxing a bit, with a happier more relaxed tail and a softer mouth set. At least I have one good thing to report.

My poor collie dog. I try to not be frustrated with him because I know it’s not his fault, but it’s so hard sometimes.

They’re growing like weeds. There are at least 21 of them in there (maybe more that I missed when I was counting) and I still have no idea what I’m going to do with them when they get bigger. Transfer some to my 29g tank and hope they don’t procreate. And I keep kicking around the idea of setting up a larger tank for my betta, who is currently in an unfiltered 2.5g.

But in the meantime, they’re ridiculously cute, eating voraciously, and looking more like snails and less like little dots. The only bad thing about them is that they’re eating the Java fern that is in that tank, so I’ve been trying to offer them other things. They really like green pepper. Go figure.

See that lovely new collar that Luce is sporting? I shouldn’t have bought it. But it jumped off the rack and into my hands and I couldn’t help it. I’ve been looking hungrily at satin ribbon greyhound collars for ages, but haven’t been willing to spend the cash for one, but this one was a really good price and it’s pretty and. Well.

I sent in the registration form for another night of APDT rally trials in a few weeks. I just bought a Level 3 run in each, trying to be thrifty. Steve’s weekly rehab is putting a lot of strain on the bank account right now, but I’d really like to finish Luce’s RL3. After that… I’m not sure where we go. At what point does APDT just become a money suck, and not worth it? To get her ARCHX we have to go back to doing Level 1 again, and that’s boring. 5 QQs in Level 1 and Level 2 with all scores above 195. We did that the first time around, when all we needed was 190s. Why spend the money to do it again?

I’ve been meaning to get her UKC LP so we can play UKC rally as well, but even that is just another variation on the same theme. What I’d really like to do is try for her CDX-H, but I can’t do that until she learns a go out, and I don’t know how to teach that and can’t afford the private lessons that I’d need to learn. Very frustrating.

Stupid money. Stupid bills. Stupid being a grown up.

*stomp*