I'm guessing most people are like this, so I'm probably not totally alone in these feelings...
I haven't written a Press in almost four months... I got a few more of those 'you always write about your dogs or some dog' complaints and just threw my hands up in disgust over spending the time to write something as mundane or time consuming as the Press with those kinds of complaints... So I took a hiatus subconsciously for months...
I had quite a few "What happened to the Press?" emails and comments in the past few months... While I'm glad to know I was missed, I put the Press on my list of 'to decide about for 2010'... So as I worked down the list, I hit upon this topic and have decided... The Press will ALWAYS mention dogs or dog issues - they are a part of my life and even moreso since I 'birthed this baby of a rescue' experience...
If you don't like dogs, simply remove yourself from the REAL Family's email list at Topica... I just cannot eliminate this part of my life when I write... Sorry, but that is the way it is...
I see as I read the last blog post here, I mentioned Mr. Sweetie... He is no longer with us and lost his battle the day after Thanksgiving... It was a harder-than-granite decision for Paul and I to come to... We tried drugs with the dementia for months (several different ones in fact), to little avail... Mr. Sweetie had reached the point a few months ago where his senility caused him to cry the majority of his waking moments...
Last year in 2008, his back legs started failing and during the summer of 2009, his front legs started following suit... For the most part, my home cooking for the dogs stopped the pancreatic attacks that landed him in the hospital in the previous years... While we had a few bad times with his digestive system, for the most part, I had that issue licked... The failing leg strength and increasing bouts of dementia were beyond me and my knowledge as well as my vet's... While in my heart of hearts, I know I gave 150% of my energy, love and care to Mr. Sweetie the three plus years he was with us, his heart murmur increased one grade in a month... To me, the quality of life is of the utmost importance and when I came to the conclusion the majority of Mr. Sweetie's days were in pain or a low standard of quality of life, I accepted the fact his days were limited...
Paul and I didn't agree on this... He and I had had several deep discussions about Mr. Sweetie since the summer months... Paul would go out periodically and find Mr. Sweetie if he saw him headed towards the patio... Mr. Sweetie would go out to go potty and forget to come back in or lose his way on the return... Even 10' would be enough to disorient Mr. Sweetie... We were always afraid that he would get chilled during one of these journeys to 'the back fourty' once the fall months started getting cooler at night... Paul used to say that he was always afraid he'd go find Mr. Sweetie passed away in the backyard somewhere... It was a fear I had as well, but I was more worried it would happen to me when Paul wasn't home...
So the day after Thanksgiving, we took Mr. Sweetie to the vets, looking for that 'silver bullet' and found none... Found not much more but even more bad news as his health was diminishing despite our best efforts... He would have been 16 next month, but he'd had 13 years with the care of other hands...
My one regret with all of this is allowing the vet to be in charge of what happened... I assumed she'd use a sedative before the final injection, but you know what happens when you assume, right?... Mr. Sweetie screamed all the way out and Paul, who was holding him, said he'll never get those screams out of his head from Mr. Sweetie as long as he lives...
... whew...
Mr. Sweetie had become Paul's 'heart child' the past year or so... Paul made it his own personal job to comfort Mr. Sweetie when he got home from work... I had the day shift (up, down, up, down to the spot underneath my computer desk that Mr. Sweetie felt safe in), but once Paul came home, I was chopped liver (more or less)... Like Rogaine, there will never be another Mr. Sweetie and I just wished I had found him much earlier in his life... He was a BEAUTIFUL little Chi and although he never liked anyone outside of this house or my family, he loved us unconditionally with a heart of 400 pounds, despite his 4 pounds in weight...As for our other crew, the twins are still doing well despite their age and Peanut is still in charge at 13 years old... Louie, Frito and BeeGee are still doing well despite their various health issues...
The rescue 'birthed' in March of this year has saved 76 dogs and puppies from dying in the shelters... We are small with only a few volunteers, but we are mighty as they say... We operate on a VERY small amount of donations, but continue to put one foot in front of the other...
I guess the biggest reward in all of this is that my family comes together once a week and between the three of us and two volunteers, we hold adoptions... Come rain or shine... We've taken dogs that were about to be killed because they were too aggressive or biters and rehabilitated them into great dogs (most were probably accessed incorrectly at the shelter level)...
We continue to specialize in dogs under 10 pounds, primarily Chihuahuas and Chi mixes, because that is the 2nd largest dog breed on the kill lists (only the Pitbulls are killed in greater numbers)... Every 4 minutes and 32 seconds a Chihuahua has to die in the State of California... Los Angeles is over-run by Chihuahuas between Paris Hilton (they even named a syndrome after her) and the movies --- "Legally Blonde" and "Beverly Hills Chihuahua" helped this breed even less...
While those ten years or older have the typical Chihuahua applehead and great breeding, those younger are likely to be products of the breeder's marketing and look like something not even close to this breed... It is not uncommon for me to be emailed about a 20+ pound Chihuahua someone wants to surrender... sigh...
The puppymill industry continues without abatement and last week I was talking to my rescue network, saying I didn't see myself doing this five years from now unless the legislators got off their butts and started doing something legally about this problem... I'm sure everyone has heard about the budget crunch here in California and between the backyard breeders and the puppymills importing 'products' into our state for us to dispose of down the road when they're no longer cute and puppy-like, we'll never get ahead of the huge volume of unwanted companion animals...
...
Desiree continues to do well at college but is taking a semester off to work full time next week through the summer to save up the funds needed to finish her five year degree... She's still sweeter than strawberry shortcake and every day I am amazed that she is my child!!!... I can think of only two episodes that I consider 'rough' or that we might not get through them in her twenty years... One was when she was learning how to drive, and I thought (literally) that would be the death of me!!!...
Her love life has been a roller coaster ride, to say the very least, and we survive it by doing our best (Paul and I) to stay out of it and let her work it out on her own... Unfortunately, Desiree is a lot like me in many ways (although she can 'right write' beautifully), and I'm not an easy person to live with on my best days!... Let alone my 'bad days'...
Paul is doing well... After two years, he has finally decided to tackle remodeling his office... Well, he says he is... And we have offered to help, too... He wants to upgrade his computer and it is the same story as when we got our SleepNumber bed years ago... You don't want to do this without doing that first... And his office is STILL the 'black hole of Calcutta'...
If we start this now, it might get done by next Christmas, huh?...
As Always,
The Lady
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