Reflections on love, parenting and life from a middle-aged cowgirl. Fueled by good wine, strong coffee and the conviction that learning is a lifelong process.
Juliet loves Roscoe. He isn't her Romeo, but he is her third-favorite pillow after Amazon Girl's lap and mine.
He's not the love of her life nor she his, but they do share a sweet, special kind of relationship.
The Nap Dance usually follows the same format.
1. Roscoe finds a cozy place to take his afternoon siesta, usually the couch, or like today, the easy chair that used to belong to SG's Grandma Lois. Juliet, searching for her own cozy place, spies the object of her affection.
2. She approaches carefully, checking to make sure he isn't averse to her affections:
3. Once it appears he accepts her affections, she gives him a nice back massage as a thank-you:
4. Massage complete, now its time for siesta!
What is this "fighting like cats and dogs" of which you speak?
When Roscoe was fairly young still, about four years old, he began limping slightly on his back legs. Because of the way he lays down, on his belly with his legs out to either side, I assumed he had dysplastic hips. I don't know why I simply decided this was the case, but I distinctly remember being told by someone who had a dog with hip dysplasia that this was a common way of laying down for dogs with that condition. I figured Roscoe would eventually need surgery, just not yet, and that was good because it would give me time to save money.
A couple of years ago it became apparent that he was in a worsening state of pain. I thought maybe I could afford a surgery by then, so off to the vet we went. The vet noted the beginnings of atrophy on the leg he uses the least and took X-Rays.
The news was not so great: Spondylosis.
Spondylosis is a chronic and degenerative condition in which bone spurs begin to form in the spine. Over time these spurs grow in size and begin to bridge betwen the vertebrae. At first the dog begins to lose flexibility, but as the condition worsens it becomes quite painful and can have a serious impact on quality of life. There is no surgical cure that has been shown to successfully relieve the condition.
Standard treatment, and where we started with Roscoe, is a pain reliever. We were given Rimadyl for him. Mostly we gave it on the days he seemed in pain. He would typically be stiff and painful a couple of days out of the week, nothing too bad and nothing the pills didn't seem to help him with. I was told, however, that eventually the medication would no longer be enough to control his pain, and at that point we would have to consider putting him on injectable steroids. This would relieve his pain, but also seriously shorten his life because of the other side effects, so it would only be a last resort.
The last week or two, despite his regular medication, Roscoe began showing signs of getting worse. It started with him soiling his crate, a typically rare event. We thought maybe he'd gotten a bug or eaten something that disagreed with him. I didn't piece it together until I got home Tuesday night and he was lying on the floor of my bedroom, crying, and he had made a very large mess right in front of my closet. He couldn't walk at all, and the pain had made him incontinent.
We went to the vet. I was terrified that I was going to be told there was nothing they could do for him, and girded my loings for the worst. I was so relieved when the vet assured me that we could definitely get him feeling better. She increased his dose for the pain reliever, added an opiate, and told me that if the additional pain relief didn't help with the incontinence issues she could prescribe a hormone therapy.
As soon as we got home I gave him both of his meds and within a half an hour he was playing with T-Bone like nothing had ever been wrong the day before.
I don't think I'll ever be ready to say goodbye to Roscoe. When Hercules passed, there was no decision to be made -- his heart was seriously enlarged, he couldn't breathe, and the many medications they gave him to try and help weren't doing anything. He was so afraid and so sick, letting him go was the kindest thing I could do. But with Roscoe's condition, his health comes and goes. When he's in pain he is obviously miserable, but he can seem almost miraculously better in a matter of hours if he gets meds or a massage or just rests long enough. If you'd asked me about his long term prognosis on Tuesday night I would have replied that he was near the end of his capacity to cope. That night I spent much of the evening curled up with him on the floor, crying and whispering stories in his ear. Wednesday morning, after he'd spent the night on my bed snoring gently into my ear, he was walking on all four legs. He was limping, of course, but nowhere near the crippled puppy he'd been the night before.
We've been through so much together, Roscoe and this family. I fell in love with him through a picture in an email. He moved from North Carolina to New Jersey and then he moved all the way from New Jersey to Washington State with us, and of the three dogs that made that move, he is the only one still alive. He survived being shot. He has gently welcomed every new member into our household. He's seen me through divorce, through dating, through remarriage and through the lonely times when SG is on the road. He and I have a lot of history between us. With a good vet, the right medications and a lot of love, I hope we have a lot more.
I struggle with the way I keep finding myself in the place of being afraid of my own imperfections.
I give everyone else a mile - but not myself. Somehow I don't think I've earned it. Or even worse -- its not that I expect more out of myself than out of others, its that I have a fear of being seen failing. And because failure is such a frightening concept, I do two very destructive things: I apply the word "failure" to many more situations than to which it actually applies; and I will do practially anything to avoid failing or being seen by others as what I believe is failing.
In 2007, not too long after I moved into this house, I bought horses again after more than a decade of what I think of as the 'years when I wasn't really myself.' The horse I bought to be my 'perfect horse' illustrates beautifully another one of my more troublesome character defects: I decide in my head what the perfect situation will be and then proceed to make it happen without making sure the steps I am taking actually match the outcome I desire.
I bought a mother/daughter pair based on little more than the shape of the younger mare's head and the discovery that she shared bloodlines with my old horse. 8 years old, never ridden, not touched at all in at least two or three years. Sounds like a great prospect for a woman in her 40's who hasn't ridden in ten years, right?
I started doing some work with her only to quickly find out I was really out of my league. I sent her off for professional training with a wonderful trainer, I took her to clinics, but ultimately she was the horse I could not trust. She would explode for the silliest of reasons, or even for no reason at all. I grew fearful and nervous of her, and became concerned with the fact that I could get seriously hurt because of her. The day I realized I could not stand to ride her I cried for what seemed like hours. After she had a full year off of being used for anything I paid another trainer to put sixty days on her and I found someone who was interested in buying her. I spent $700 for sixty days of training and let her go to her new home for $300. (Never ever ask me for financial advice.)
But was it a failure? Or was it a difficult situation that resolved successfully because in the end both the horse and I got what we needed? She got trained by someone who helped her lose her tendency to flip her lid and a new owner who thinks she's the best horse in the world. As for me, I got Bugs, who has done more for my skill and confidence than I would have ever guessed.
Still, I confess I thought of it as a failure for a very long time. I felt guilty for having let that horse down, for not being the right person for her.
This week I find myself in somewhat of the same situation.
I have for quite some time been consumed with thoughts of my dog Lady, who passed away a couple of years ago. She was a one of a kind dog, gentle and kind with everyone. I wish I could imbue every family dog with her temperament, because she was perfect with children, perfect with smaller animals, perfect with people. And I've gotten in my head the idea that I want another dog just like her. Last fall we adopted a mastiff mix who ended up being aggressive. After that disaster we waited a little while and then adopted a different mastiff through a rescue. She was - is - a lovely dog, loves everyone she meets, loves going places, loves lounging, loves cuddling. But after two months with us she went from being "interested" in our cats to wanting to eat them. The same day she went after Tucker - he was only mildly hurt, thankfully - she then proceeded to try to eat our little dog Gizzy.
It isn't hard to know what the right answer is -- its much easier to rehome one dog than it is five cats and a football with legs Chihuahua -- but it has been extremely difficult to come to terms with that answer. The best answer to me would be the one where we spend a lot of time diligently working with her on her training and she becomes safe for the little animals in the house. But for that to be very feasible, I would have to become a different person with a different life.
Training a problem dog takes a great deal of dedication and effort; I have the desire, but I'm terribly short on time. If I did decide to give the time, then one of the people or the rest of the critters would have to be deprived of their fair share of time, for who knows how long. As I write this out I am nodding my head at the inescapable logic; but it is a challenge to get my emotional self to stop telling me what a failure I am for not being the perfect home for this dog.
I can visualize what it would be like to be the person who doesn't take a poor fit as rejection or failure; but I am not that person, not yet. I think - I hope - that someday I will be. In the meantime I will continue to repeat to myself what a friend of mine told me what I wailed to her about how badly I had failed as an adoptive home for this dog: "It is not a failure to do the right thing for your family and for the dog." Knowing and feeling are so terribly often disparate concepts in this head of mine.
I think perhaps I might be less prone to these scenarios if I stopped trying to take on so much. Of course, that's another person I hope to be some day -- the person who stops trying to drink the world from the end of a fire hose.
How to turn the me that is overwhelmed and thinks she's failing into the me who is peaceful and OK with the way the world works, that is the ultimate question.
Remember weeks ago when I said SG had a job offer here in our area? The start date finally materialized. He had to wait until the holidays were over for the HR people, who are located in another state, to get their stuff together and get him scheduled for his background check, a DMV report and a physical. The DMV apparently is slower than the social security office because after a whole month they decided to just get him started with the DMV report as a contingency. (They also made him get a spinal x-ray - but no drug screen. Weirdest hiring protocol I've EVER heard of.)
So he passes all his screens, gets his offer, quibbles over it for a few days, then accepts. He finally started on Monday of this week.
While the weeks at a time of wrangling life at home on my own was a serious challenge, the upside was is that SG was also home for weeks at a time. Home to get the kids dressed and fed and on the bus, the animals fed, dinner made, groceries shopped for and household chores done. If a child ended up needing to be picked up at school due to illness or behavior, he was there to take care of it. I got used to coming home to dinner on the stove and kids with finished homework every day.
I was spoiled. I had a househusband.
About Thursday of last week panic set in. We had considered that this would mean drastic changes to our routines at home, but until it was staring us in the face we hadn't really thought it out in detail. Kids going to before- and after-school care would be kids who needed to get out of bed and ready to go an hour and a half earlier than they were used to. Dinners, especially when we wanted to create time at the end of our day to exercise, would need to be planned and cooked in advance. Bedtime would need to be pushed up, undoubtedly spawning cries of outrage. We'd need to plan around guitar lessons, obedience classes, homework and workouts.
We laid out plans for meals, we bought groceries. We identified who was responsible for what each morning and each evening. We were the parenting equivalent of Rocky training for a fight against the seemingly unbeatable Ivan Drogo.
(What was that line of Dolph Lundgren's from Rocky IV? "If he dies...he dies." Yikes.)
Sunday night, groceries are bought and stowed. Dinner has been eaten and put away and the kids have showered and are enjoying computer time before getting ready for bed. I pull all the meat out of the fridge we will need for the meal plan I've written up for the next few days.
"Honey, there's only one package of chicken in the freezer. Didn't you buy any?"
"No, I thought we didn't need chicken. Do we?"
"I don't think four legs are gonna cut it."
Swap Tuesday for Wednesday on the menu plan and forge ahead. Its only a minor setback, we're still on our feet and swinging.
So far we've dealt with:
SG forgetting to set out all of his daily supplements and leaving the house about twenty minutes later than he planned and THEN forgetting his phone on top of it, causing him to have to go back to the house after dropping the kids at daycare
Me forgetting to fill out Race Car Man's medication log resulting in a phone call in the middle of a meeting after I'd forgotten to silence my phone
SG spending an hour on another day looking for his desk key, which just happened to be in his desk at work. In the keyhole of his desk at work.
Guitar lessons being missed
I forgot to buy the M&M's for Race Car Man's class party
Wednesday dinner being changed at the last minute from homemade Ginger Glazed Chicken to McDonald's.
At least three separate instances of me dramatically announcing "I SWEAR I'm going to CUT MY HAIR OFF!"
On top of all of it, the Chihuahua has had diarrhea for three days which has added an extra half hour to each morning of changing crate bedding, cleaning the carpets with my steam cleaner, extra loads of laundry and lots of air freshener. Because we were out of clean bedding last night we had to let the dogs sleep loose in our room. Did I mention Zoey's favorite place to sleep is the bed? Between her insistence on putting her big head so close to my face I couldn't breathe and SG's habit of hogging the covers I finally ended up retreating in a huff to the couch where Iwas then assailed by the cats trying to take advantage of available human real estate to curl up on.
Its only Thursday and I'm starting to feel afraid we're headed for a TKO. Not to mention its Valentine's Day. I'm here to tell you its a sheepish thing to give your husband his Valentine's Day card when you've spent the night in a huff on the couch. To be honest, I didn't actually give the card to him, I just tossed it over onto his side of the bed after I finished getting dressed this morning. I'm not usually this chickenshit, but I'm just wiped out.
Hey, we're still in one piece. No one's lost a finger or gotten left behind at the grocery store, at least at the last head count.
I'm sure we'll have this down in a week or two. I just hope to God the Chihauahua's butt dries up.
We were already set up for a followup IEP meeting yesterday for Race Car Man. As it turned out, even if there hadn't been one on the calendar we would have had it anway. Tuesday...
...He had a good morning. He was medication-compliant. He got dressed when he was asked. He rode the bus, stayed in his seat, kept his hands and his voice to himself, and earned a reward: iPad time when he got to class.
Except when 10 minutes of iPad time was up, he was not ready to be done. He melted down, all the way to the core. It was bad, not only bad enough that he had to be picked up but also bad enough that he said some things he really should not have and got himself suspended for a day. In the wake of events across the country, everyone is on edge and things they might have shrugged off last week aren't getting a free pass this week.
Later that afternoon, the new dog, who had been doing wonderfully well, was unpardonably aggressive. We are responsible dog owners. We knew what had to be done. We checked out some alternatives but none of them were workable.
Tuesday night was kind of a blur of sadness, frustration and fear. Its Christmas, dammit. This is not how I hope for the holidays to commence -- with another tough IEP meeting where I get the distinct impression my son's teacher wants him in a different placement, followed by a tough decision about the fate of a much-loved pet who cannot be rehomed and who is a danger to people.
Fortunately at our IEP meeting, I had support from the district counselor whose opinion and mine were the same: A change in placement doesn't solve the problems. The problems will still exist and we can't ignore the danger of disrupting a child who is already struggling. If the accepted model of behavioral therapy is applied, we see that we are trying interventions that aren't working. Either we are mis-reading the antecedent behavior or the responses we are implementing are not working and we need to figure out new approaches.
We ended the meeting with some plans in place -- my ex will be spending time in Race Car Man's classroom on his weekday off. The district counselor will work with the teacher, the aides, the school counselor and school psychologist to implement some different positive interventions. We have an appointment with a new behavioral therapist and a plan to access some skills classes for both my son and for us as parents. Clearly we all need some more tools for our toolboxes, and although the timing is unfortunate, we've got to move forward with intention and resolve.
I left that meeting to attend another work-related meeting that lasted the rest of the day. I welcomed the chance to concentrate and engage with a cross-functional team of adults on everything BUT autism and dog problems.
When I got home last night I spent some time engaging Race Car Man about what happened on Tuesday. I'm always struck by how honest he is. He admits his behaviors. He doesn't try to deny what happened, but tells me he can't control himself when he gets that upset. And he's right, he can't. He doesn't have those skills yet. So we talk about what are things it is OK to say when we are mad and things that will get you in big trouble, and I know we will have to spend some time helping him to practice using different words when he is angry and upset so that the next time it happens he has more tools to reach for.
I suppose I should be feeling worse than I am, but despite the heavy baggage of the last couple of days, I have a sense of relief. We have a plan and we have a good team to help my son. I know that a lot of his issues are temporary -- he will either grow out of these behaviors or he will receive enough therapy to help him improve them. Naturally, these problems will simply be replaced by other problems, but that's true for every person who ever lived, autism be damned. I am terribly sad about our dog, but its spilled milk; I can't undo what happened and I can't take chances with my family or with other people's families. I salve the wound by offering to foster again after the grandpuppy goes home with her dad, who is spending Christmas with the Washington State family next week. We are all very excited about seeing him.
And finally, with all that has happened the last few weeks, we've gotten a break in an area where we really needed one: SG interviewed for and has been offered a job HERE. ALL THE TIME HERE. Knowing that I will not be dealing with the upcoming months of February and March without my husband at my side makes a lot of things a lot more bearable. Its not that his presence solves all the problems, no one can do that. But his presence means I have someone here who's got my back, who loves my kids, who fills an empty space in my house I didn't even know was there until I met him.
Happiness tempered by sadness tempered by excitement tempered by fear. That's life. That's OK.
I was going to post about our awesome new dog Little Sister, the one I sweet-talked my husband into letting me adopt while he was on the road. She's a Mastiff/Dogue de Bordeaux mix, so fairly big. Instead, though, I am writing about a meeting I had this morning with my son's teacher and principal.
While we've had a lot of very good days since the medication change, the teacher has also seen an amplification of sensory behavior. The day they used clay in art, he spent the rest of the afternoon obsessively washing his hands because he could still feel the clay. His shirts bother him, his socks bother him. Even though his focus improved, his anxiety worsened. And then yesterday, oh yesterday. Yesterday prompted today's meet and greet.
My son has three loves: Video games, computer time and Kindle time. Everything else in life is something that interferes with that time. He hasn't yet been able to understand that notgoing to school isn't going to magically increase the amount of time he gets to engage in his digital universe. He resists doing schoolwork of any kind either at school or at home. Once he is finally convinced to do the work, he finishes it in mere seconds. If he brings home a book to read that he has already read once at school he simply recites it to you without even opening it. (They really need to challenge him more) He loses more play time by resisting than he gains, but he's not yet gained the ability to recognize the cost of this tradeoff.
Yesterday afternoon he had earned all but the last two letters he needed in order to get his evening dose of post-homework electronic joy. However, he was asked to complete some tasks that he refused at school. Sensing he would not earn enough letters to be able to play Skylanders Cloud Patrol on my Kindle Fire, he attempted to rip pages out of his binder, which is his daily communication between home and school. Then he tried hiding it so his teacher wouldn't be able to find it. When it was time to go home, he cooperated to go in line, but once on his bus he refused to sit down. His teacher ended up having to ride the bus with him in order to keep him in his seat. (I'm not sure why the aide on the bus wasn't willing or able to do this, but I'm grateful that his teacher cared enough to keep him safe.)
Needless to say, we all sat down this morning to review what the school is doing and how we can best support Race Car Man.
We're adding a couple of options to his daily sheet of letters earned. This way if he ends the day without having gotten all of them, he will have a chance when he gets home to earn one or two more at most. Doing his homework without fighting is one option, eating his dinner and putting his dirty dishes away is another. This way he still has the opportunity to turn his behavior around, and doesn't send him home without any hope of playing his beloved games. Even though he can eventually calm down enough to just play with his toys, it takes a while to get him past the attitude that life no longer has meaning.
We'll also talk to his doc about med changes next week, and we're going to work together to come up with a reasonable reward system for cooperation in completing tasks at school and homework at home.
I write all this with optimism, assuming that we will see a change for the positive in his behavior.
It is such an intricate dance, trying to anticipate the way I ought to move to meet his needs. One miscalculation and I've mashed his poor feet without meaning to. There is no formula for the perfect mix of what keeps Race Car Man's engine humming. We just have to measure things and try them and change them again if they don't work. The pattern of this dance just keeps evolving and changing, and I must do so as well so that we don't lose step with one another.
Short post tonight. The last few days I've had that periodic sense of wanting to crawl into a hole and pull it in behind me. Everything is overwhelming. I miss my husband. I miss my kids after they drive off with their dad at night because its not my week. I miss the sense of normalcy and calm that pervaded the house just a month ago when SG was home and even on downright crappy and stressful days we could at least just hold hands and hug one another, laugh at the crazy that is our life together and find countless ways to make it all bearable.
Still, there are things to laugh at and find at least momentary relief from my quivering psyche.
Like this:
Poor T-Bone. Somehow he ripped a hole in his groin about the size of a fifty-cent piece. I could see viscera and muscle...and I knew he needed stitches. Which meant an overnight at the vet and anaesthesia, and $260 later (at least that includes antibiotics!) he's on the mend.
I'm pretty sure if I duct tape him to the roof I can improve our satellite reception.
There is a seven-pound Chihuahua in my house that might not outlive Christmas.
When you have kids and animals, you're used to messes. You get used to puke, poo, pee, almost always in places you'd rather not have them.
I had an incontinent boxer. He had accidents. A LOT of accidents. But I couldn't get mad at him, heaven knows its not like he WANTED to dribble on his crate blanket every damn day. But here's the problem with male dogs -- the minute they smell that another dog has peed somewhere, dammit, they must pee there as well, to override the other dog's supremacy over that particular spot with their own spectacular supreme pee-premacy. When T-Bone first joined the house, he found a spot in my son's room that had been dribbled on by Hercules one night when he was sleeping in there. T-Bone promptly marked it, and its been a tug of war between him and me and my carpet shampooer ever since. I very nearly had the problem under control - and then we brought home the little dogs.
Gizmo seems to be on a mission to track down every single location in the house that has ever been peed on, by my dogs or any dog that has ever lived there since it was built in 1965, and cover it with pee. As if that's not enough, he thinks anything the kids leave on the floor must be peed on as well. I have HAD IT UP TO HERE with the peeing.
And then there's Tasha, who at seventeen precious years of age, MUST be let out the minute she knows she has to go, because otherwise she can't hold it. She's such a sweetheart, though. She is one of those dogs that seems to have a desperate need to lick your face. She knows better and she stops when she's corrected, but every so often we just have to let her fulfill her need to nurture. My daughter started a little song about the dogs: "Tasha's a kiss-er, Gizmo's a piss-er..."
With Tash we'll just do the best we can and forgive her for what she can't control. But that damn Gizmo is going into Doggy Boot Camp, pronto. I'M TURNING OFF THE FAUCET.
After you've been through a really sad experience, its good to go to the beach -- even if its freezing and spitting some Seattle rain at you.
It eased my heart to watch my kids play on the beach I played on when I was very small.
There's something irresistable about sliding down the middle of a very big fish.
We got in the the car, chilled and shivering, and made the long drive home. Yesterday, we retrieved all of the dogs from the kennel. We are now a four-dog family. One thing I know my brother would have wanted was for his beloved Tasha and Gizmo to be as well cared for as possible, and Lord knows this is the house for it.
They had a traumatic several days, I hope they know how loved they are and that they are safe here.
I'm kinda guessing they do.
They've been snoring on the couch next to me while I typed this out. I worry about Tasha - she is 17 years old and she has tumors which the vet identified as cancer and said had metastasized. She seems energetic and her appetite is good, though, so we will keep her spoiled, comfortable and loved for as long as she remains with us.
I was notified recently by my ad network that something was wrong with my placement and they were suspending me from the network until I fixed it. Rather than fix the problem I have decided it is more appropriate to go ad-free. If you are kind enough to come here and read my ramblings, I should be kind enough not to bombard you with commercials. Sound fair?
