Happy Birthday, my little man. I hope you had a good time celebrating your birthday with Jesus in person/in canine!
Sad
Frankenpuppy
Just a quick update to thank everyone for their prayers.
(In addition, Toby lost a bad molar.)
Borrowed Time
Toby had another one of his incidents, and family was bitten. I was told, “This dog needs to be put down.” Had it not been the weekend, Toby would likely be gone already. While I absolutely do not want to hurt my puppy, I find it difficult to justify working so hard to keep him with me.
Thinking that it might be my last hours with my boy, I wanted to spend every moment with him. I fed him everything good I had in the fridge. We played his favorite game – Tennis Balls. I took him for as many walks as he wanted. Toby made it harder on me by repeatedly telling me, “I love you. I love you.” (Having a talking dog is not always a good thing.). When I took him out to pee, he insisted on bringing his stuffed dragon with us. When he went to his kennel, he took his stuffed tiger with him and made his bed like he did when he was a tiny puppy organizing the polka-dotted blanket his breeder sent home with him. I cried so much, so hard, thinking of all the ways I had failed my boy I’m surprised I didn’t collapse into dust from dehydration.
For some reason my family thought it odd that I would mourn for the loss of my awful puppy. “But he’s terrible; you should get rid of him”. (True.) “Everyone’s afraid of him”. (I know.) “You could always get a new dog.” (It took me two years to find him! How likely is it that another dog would suddenly plop into my lap?).
In the evening, I took Toby to the church grounds. Even though God is everywhere, it is easier to think of Him hanging around there. I just stood with Toby and prayed the only prayer I could think of: “Help my boy. Help my boy. “
Monday morning I called the vet to discuss what happened and what she thought my options might be. I asked what she would do if he were her dog. Knowing tha Toby has a cyst that won’t heal and how pain reactive he is, she suggeted we go ahead and try surgery to excise the cyst. Perhaps removing the pain from his life might allow him to calm down enough to be able to train with him. She said the choice was mine, though, whether I wanted to destroy him or not.
Toby’s surgery is scheduled for Tuesday. I don’t know how I am going to make it through his recovery since he is so pain reactive. The vet recommended a basket muzzle that allows him to eat and drink. I have been looking into them, but I feel overwhelmed by the different choices and how you need to train your dog to wear one. There isn’t time to get Toby used to one before his surgery. If I put one on him, how long could I keep it on him? How long would he allow it to be on before he figured out how to take it off? I am trying to picture Toby with a cone, it is seems equally dangerous. (Well, for me, anyway.).
While I don’t know how this is going to work out, I am trusting that God will provide what we need at each step. For right now, I am grateful for the two additional days I’ve had with my little boy.
I know he’s scary and dangerous, but this is how I see him with my heart.
Morning
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Yes, we’ve had another of “those” times. Toby was in pain without me realizing it, and the slightest brush against his fur turned him into Mr. Hyde.
Toby’s anger is explosive in these instances. He bites and thrashes and growls ferociously. In this state, he doesn’t recognize me. He doesn’t recognize his name. He doesn’t respond to commands. Normal Toby is adept at disentangling his paw from his leash, but Hyde Toby can’t reason that out. He just gets angrier and angrier until he lashes out and attacks the leash. As quickly as I could, I put Toby in his kennel and kept him there until I could take him to the vet in the morning.
It appears that what set Toby off was the cyst on his back. Of the two he started with, one healed nicely while the other lingered. The doctor drained and flushed the cyst again and sent us home with antibiotics, pain medication and Trazodone. I gave Toby the Trazodone for a few days but worried about him taking it for a prolonged period. He is very unsteady on his feet, and I swear I can hear him mumble “The colors…. the colors…” as he waves his paw in front of his nose.
I gave Toby sleepy pills for several days. When I finally stopped, it was as if he were a puppy again. He bounced around and played with toys. He asked to go outside, and when I took him he ran around with the zoomies for half an hour. When we came in, I could tell he still had energy to burn, so we went back out in the dark and played with tennis balls until he was so tired that I worried that he might hurt himself.
Thankfully my normal Toby seems to be back to inhabiting this terrier body. I don’t know who the monster was that had control for those four days, but I wish he would never come back. I’ve seen his face before. He is the one who controls the sleepwalking.
I talked to the vet about trying anti-anxiety medication on Toby. She said that Trazodone is for anxiety, but I didn’t like the way it affected him. She then suggested Gabapentin since it helps with both anxiety and pain. What Toby really needs, though, is an animal behaviorist to observe him and treat with both training and possibly medication.
Selfishly I wish that someone would watch my Toby and tell me, “Oh yes, he is a broken puppy. It’s not your fault he behaves this way”, but I doubt that will happen. Somehow, without meaning to, I have screwed up this little dog and made a dangerous mess of him.
I hope my little boy can survive my stupidity.
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I may survive you, but will you survive me?
The Bookshelf
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The thought of my overcrowded bookshelf weighed heavily on my mind, yet it was painful to consider giving away something as significant as a book. Still, I forced myself to start the difficult task and set aside a few volumes that I no longer needed.
Then I woke up.
Crap!!!
So sometimes you dream of the devil, and sometimes you dream about cleaning bookshelves? (Humans are so weird.)
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A book everyone should have on their shelves is Dream Our World! Inside, Bitey and Toby visit the museum of their dreams as they view the world of art from a canine perspective.
Dream Our World and other fine gifts are available from my shop at L Bowman Studios.
What I Heard
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Last week I had an appointment with my eye doctor. Unfortunately, the news wasn’t good. What I heard was:
You’re going blind!!
You have cataracts!
The Bell’s Palsy is irritating your eye!
You are diabetic!
Your prescription is off due to your blood sugar!
We can’t replace the lenses in your glasses!
Oh my gosh, did the doctor really say all of those things? No, but that is what I heard.
In reality, the doctor said that although my cataracts are worse than last year, they are still a young person’s cataracts. Also, they really can replace the lenses in my glasses despite me having rimless frames.
The other stuff has me upset, though. It appears that I have developed the familial inherited blindness. When I spoke to the doctor on Tuesday, the she didn’t think I needed to see a specialist about it yet, but after the week I’ve just had, I’m not sure. I plan to call her again this week. (The catch is that she is going out of town for a family situation and won’t be back until mid September.)
After checking my prescription, the eye doctor commented on how drastically different it was from the last time. What I took away from our conversation was that my eyes are acting like those of a diabetic. I had to go home and look up some of the terms she used, and it looks like I have had a number of diabetes symptoms….yet every doctor dismissed me when I talked about them. I am really confused because none of my blood test results ever came back that I have diabetes. Now I am afraid to eat anything. I feel like every carb is a threat.
One can’t help but be upset getting news like this. I know that it is possible that things may never progress or that as the BP improves, my symptoms in general will become less. For now, I fear that I will have another left turn coming up in my future. It seems like I’ve had nothing but left turns. I’ve had so many that I am constantly going in spirals instead of moving forward.
I’m tired. Can I get off this ride now?
Gross Jabba & Doggy Mama
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Sadly those real gobs of hair keep falling out, and I’ve already lost about half of what I started with. I asked the doctor if Lyme’s were responsible for the hair loss since it caused so much pain to my head, but she said it was just the trauma of being sick.
Last night I was glancing over my hospital discharge papers. On them was a note about my blood pressure being HIGH at 144/77. (Normally mine is so low that it is too low.) I Googled whether Lyme’s can cause high blood pressure, and – no surprise- it can. The disease infects every organ and can affect the heart. The article I read said that the tiredness and fatigue that comes with Lyme’s is due largely to how it affects the heart.
Hmm, so if Lyme’s can alter the way the heart works, can it influence the appetite as well? I was curious because I find myself only wanting bland, unseasoned food lately. Off I scurried to Google that as well. While Lyme’s doesn’t cause an aversion to spiced or seasoned food, it can and does upset the GI tract. It can cause this lovely condition called “The Bell’s Palsy of the Bowel” where it can create some wicked bad constipation by weakening the muscles that move food through the intestines. Some people self-medicate for months before realizing that this is the result of Lyme’s and not something else. By the way, there is no reason that I bring this up. No reason at all. However, you may want to buy stock in coconut water and laxatives.
So, there is more than one reason I drew our dear friend Jabba today. I feel as disgusting as he looks.
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Don’t look at me. I’m good at pooping.
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Come see what my boys have been up to by picking up a copy of Dream Our World. Inside, they visit the museum of their dreams and enjoy a day of unsupervised fun.
Dream Our World is available from my shop at L Bowman Studios as well as Amazon and your local library!
HI Friends and Family
Geordie & Toby: Max, do you still have friends and family in Hawaii? Are they OK?
Max: I’ll have to get back to you about that…
Fortunately my family is not in Hawaii right now, but I imagine some of my friends’ families are. Our prayers are with them and you. ❤️
Mike Tyson vs. Batman
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In real life I look even worse than in these pictures. My camera seems to want to color correct. I guess “lobster” isn’t deemed an appropriate color for a human.
Mommy says I have to tell everyone that she has never raised a paw to me in real life.
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To find out what other mischief Bitey and Toby like to get into, pick up a copy of Dream Our World. Inside they visit the Museum of the Imagination where they view the world of art from a canine perspective and enjoy a day of unsupervised fun.
Dream Our World and other fine gifts are available from my shop at L Bowman Studios or at your local library!
The Adventures of Bitey Dog 