Shelley's Case

"No" means "maybe later"

In the past, I have said I would NEVER EVER NEVER do the following:

• Get married. 
  
  • Was married December 30, 1992.

• Have a baby.
  
  • Had a baby June 4, 2007.

• Work in a small office again (damn you, evil comic book ladies!).
  
  • Started full time for the boss June 2008, after doing K work starting in 2006.

• Own a small dog.
  
  • Um....

(Which begs the question, why do I make such broad, sweeping pronouncements?) 

 Anyway.  On Tuesday I popped in to Dogstar, a dog daycare business a couple of blocks from my office.  I'd been in once before, when I was trying to figure out what to do about Norris.  The owner of the business, Theresa, was the first person who said, "You know your dog.  You probably already know what you should do."  And she was right - I did.  It sucked.  I did it anyway, I know it was the right decision, and can (usually) look myself in the eye in the mirror each morning.  It was interesting, though, because at that point I talked to her, I realized I'd met someone who shared the same dog philosophy that Matthew and I share.

Dogstar has dogs available to foster or adopt via the Pixie Project - there are usually a handful around at any given point.  And I don't know what made me decide to pop in on Tuesday to see what dogs were available to adopt, except that Tuesday was...odd... at the office, with some weird interpersonal dynamic things going on, and I kept wanting to get out and walk around the neighborhood.

By the end of the day, I was taking a scruffy little terrier-mix home.  She'd been fostered and taught manners by Theresa, the Dogstar owner.  She's an adult, and she maybe weighs 15 pounds, dripping wet.  My best guess as to her antecedents: wire-hair Jack Russell, dachsund, and maybe some Chinese Crested.  She looks just like my husband's beloved boyhood dog, Skippy.

 

Deep breath.  I now own a small dog.  After many false starts, she has been named "Peanut."  She is sweet.  She's around 2.  She has a yappy bark, but thank God doesn't bark much.  She adores me.  She is sweet with Peach, and genuinely delighted to see her when Peach wakes up from a nap.  (I am more worried about the baby hurting the dog than the other way around.) 

Sweet dog.  Mellow, too, for a terrier mix.  She hangs out at my feet all day (she has been going to work with me - the size was a selling point, as our office is in a loft with a HOA that limits dog sizes).  She has been hugely popular when I've taken her out and about to lunch. 

What's more, she's socialized.  She does bark at other dogs, but I don't have to worry about her attacking them - or children, for that matter.   She sits quietly in the car on the way to and from work, and sometimes filches Peach's snack.  She fits into our lives very well and is perfectly happy to be along for the ride.

So, I'm sure I'll regret this later, but I think she's the easiest dog we've ever had.  It's not the same as our shepherding breeds - there is no confusing this dog for a short, ugly human, the way we might with our border collie - but there is a lot to be said for easy (and portable). 

[Mea culpa, Sarah!  I promise I won't bring him over unannounced, like some siblings. :)]

As good as it can be

Wednesday I was sick, home from work, and I saw how old and tired and hurting Norris really was - and finally accepted that things were not going to improve.  He was snappy that night toward Peach, and I knew what I had to do.  And I hated having to do it. 

Thursday morning I made two calls: one was to the vet, to make the appointment for Norris.  The other was to the garbage collection company, to arrange for a dumpster over the weekend.  There is a link: I knew I'd need hard physical labor after the trip to the vet - anything to not have to think afterwards.  And there was a lot of work that needed to be done around the house and yard.

As morbid and awful as this all is, I wanted the end to be fun, or at least as fun as possible.  We pampered Norris on the run up to the vet: all the food he could eat, raw steak with his last two meals, love and cuddles and good rub-downs.  At the vet, he was his usual self: without warning, he attacked a vet tech (he hated people in scrubs), tearing her shirt but not hurting her.  He required not only the IM shot of sedative (which did almost nothing for him - he and I ran around and played in the room until the vet had to take him back for a second, massive IV dose), and he was sweet and calm and loving when he got the other shot, then died.  I hate that moment when the light goes out of their eyes and they're gone for good, I do.  I cried, I petted him a while longer, and I took off his collar --

-- and then he did that death groan/gasp thing and it scared the fuck out of me. I jumped about a foot backwards and up (a neat trick because I'd been sitting against a wall).  And then he did it again. (It served me right - I was the one who was jumping around and playing with him when his sedative wasn't working - he was panting then.)  That time I laughed.  That dog was a clown in life, and leave it to him to get a last gotcha in.

The rest of the weekend I worked.  Peach decided to take a four hour nap Saturday, which gave me lots and lots of time to work in the garage while Matthew worked on his computers.  I used tools, hefted things I normally would not be strong enough to heft, and cleared out the place to the point where someone might be able to park, say, a smartcar in there.  (It is a tiny garage to begin with.)   I cleaned the carpets downstairs.  I did laundry.  I organized books.  I picked up dog poop in the backyard and placed it at the roots of the plants closest to my neighbors with the most annoying yappy dogs. 

(Maybe it's gross, but I have never seen the point of purchasing fertilizer when that salmon/bison meal food produced such great dog poo - it's been awesome for the cherry tree.)

When I was cleaning up the garage, a woman scared me by saying, "Shelley Mactyre?"  She walked around the dumpster and handed me a pot of African violets.  (I had forgotten this vet does this: we have Nika's African violets in our bathroom, three years on.)  At the very moment I touched the violets, I heard Norris bark, clear as day, coming through the door leading from the garage into the house. 

I miss Norris, I do. He was the first and last Belgian Malinois I'll ever own.  It is so quiet around here that it is, true to cliche, almost deafening.  But not having to worry about Norris and Peach is liberating.  I'd been functioning with this low level of guilty and anxiety for almost two years now (more, since I obsessed on this issue of how he would do with the baby throughout my pregnancy).  Our lives recently were not condusive to having a dog, let alone a dog that demands the kind of attention a Malinois does.

Having said goodbye to a lot of pets over the years, this was different.  Intead of reacting to some medical emergency, this was planned.  He was declining, but not on his deathbed, and while he had been in pain, he had not (to my knowledge) suffered.  The circumstances were such that I didn't have a choice, but it was so much easier/nicer to plan out a farewell than be taken by surprise. 

Anyway, it was as good as it could have been.  Norris got the last laugh.  Tears were shed and funny stories shared.  Much work was done, and I have the aching muscles to prove it.  And when I was showing Peach the picture of Norris on the blog this morning, she said, "Good boy," which is exactly how I'd like her to remember him.

Whatever shall we do about Norris?

And now for something completely different.

Our much-loved, much-blogged Norris has become a danger to our much loved, much-blogged Peach.  I never thought I'd be in this position - never understood how anyone could ever "get rid" of a beloved pet - but now I do.  I hate myself for even thinking about it.  I feel like the biggest failure of a dog owner ever for not getting past this or coming up with a solution. 

He has tolerated her far, far more than he has ever tolerated another child.  When she was a disconsolate infant, he would howl along with her cries.  But he was never safe around her.  The gates up around our house?  They've been there since the beginning, to restrict his access to her, because we knew he hated children, and had since he was a puppy.  He drew blood on a child at the vet's office the last time I took him in. Having a baby when he was 9 wasn't going to magically transform him into a child-friendly dog. 

And it didn't.  We have had a few warning signs that put us on edge, but today, when we were all in the kitchen together, he snapped at her face, four times in a row, lightning-fast.  This is absolutely, completely unacceptable.  The choice has to be made. 

Someone said, "Yeah, you're going to have to find another home for him."  If only it were that easy.  But how does one find a home for a three-legged, cancer survivor, dog-aggressive, child/teenager-aggressive, small-animal aggressive, 10-year-old Belgian Malinois?  I'd contact his breeder (in North Carolina), but he didn't even email me back when I gave him the FYI about Norris's cancer.   I guess, maybe if someone has some cats they're trying to get rid of, he's the dog for them.  He's quite loyal and sweet, but is limited to basic in-and-out of the house movement because of worsening arthritis/strain on his one front leg. 

No, not the easiest sell in the world. But I love him - his squirrelly hopping in circles, his nagging bark to let him out, the way he terrorizes the nasty Lhasa Apsos next door and the Bichons behind us.  (Yes, I secretly love the fact he terrorizes small dogs.  I am not a small dog person.) And yet.  It's awful to admit it, but I keep hoping he'll keel over dead, so that I don't have to make the  decision about taking him to the vet.  God, how selfish is that? 

The dog is cruising

Just poking my head up long enough to share:

After I spent my FREE TIME this evening steam cleaning the upstairs carpets, Norris the wonder dog decided to whiz all over them. 

Lovely.

Never thought I'd see this

I was so freaked out about Norris interacting with Eden.  He really doesn't like children and usually tries to nip them. 

But as far as Eden's concerned, she's the pack's puppy and he adores her.  Licks her hands (he is so NOT a licker), whines whenever he hears her cry, and nudges her with his nose in an effort to get her to pet him.  (Maybe in another few months.)

Here's Norris supervising a stealth changing session (while Mommy and Daddy were trying to watch Scrubs and feed her at the same time):

Malinois in the news

This time as military dogs.

He's quirky, all right

A few years ago, Norris was in the habit of wearing my jackets.  Really.  We'd hang our jackets on kitchen chairs to dry out when we came in each evening, else they'd probably start growing mold.  Sometimes I'd look over and Norris would be standing next to the chair, my jacket draped over his back.  He would just stand there quietly.  To this day, I have no idea what he was doing, and he stopped not long afterwards.

His new bad habit is pulling blankets off the baby.  While Eden is swinging in the cradle swing, we drape a receiving blanket over her (she gets chilly otherwise). No matter how well we tuck her in, Norris will come along and pull that blanket onto the floor. 

This evening I put Eden in her bassinet while Matthew and I were busy puttering; she was awake and under a blanket (being chilly after some time in the cradle swing) -- and when I came out, her blanket (a thick one!) was on the floor and Norris was sniffing it.  He had to pull it through the slats of the bassinet to get to it...

...He's an oddball dog. Nine years old, and I still don't get him sometimes. 

Menagerie no more

Long before there was a blog, we were the Mactyre Menagerie (three dogs and eight ferrets over the years -- definitely a menagerie).  It doesn't seem right to be a menagerie with only two species in the household, but when I mentioned this to Matthew, he said, "Don't get any ideas." 

It took me a while to realize what he meant.  No, no more animals, not now.  It used to be that every time I felt the need to have children, we'd somehow end up wtih a pet.  This is how, over the years, we've had those three dogs and eight ferrets.  (The ferrets overlapped and so did the dogs, but there was a lot of ferret serialization. They don't live long.)  Now we have a kid on the way, and it precludes more animals. Irony, I guess. 

Tonight we cleaned up the ferret cage and took it downstairs. There's more to do -- tubes we had running around the room, a den one of the ferrets made behind a desk, that sort of thing.   Although I can't say I'm going to miss having a litterbox to clean up, it's weird for us to have a computer room without a ferret cage or ferrets bounding around and getting into trouble at my feet.  (Or biting toes, or rolling toys around, or wrestling with each other, or....)   We keep -- kept -- the ferrets in the computer room because that's where we were the most, so it made sense they'd get the most attention there. 

It's strange to be ferretless after 15 years.  We started with Gwen and Arthur hidden in the hideous apartment with gold carpet, no pets allowed; if we had maintenance done, we'd hide the cage in the closet.  Later, we had them for a year in California as part of the ferret underground before we moved back to Nevada.  Sometimes I'd take them with me to college classes, and when I had to do a research paper for a scientific writing class (bio requirement - ugh) I wrote it on weasels.   Did you know there are some species of weasels where the males will sneak into dens while the mother weasel is out hunting, and impregnate very, very juvenile weasel females in the litter, and that somehow the little females manage to store the sperm until they're sexually mature?  I didn't either, not until I wrote that paper. 

I would get so tired of people asking me why we had ferrets, like it was a deviant behavior I ought to be ashamed of.  The reason (when I would deign to explain it) was that they're such joyous creatures, it's impossible to be depressed around them (and I need that in my life, I do). All they do is eat, sleep, and play.  That's a good gig.    

But God, they just don't end well -- all the cancers we've dealt with, the heart murmurs, blood sugar crashes, the leaking lymph systems.  I force-fed one ferret through two months of an acute virus (he lived two years more, one of the few who lived past seven) and injected another one four times a day with Lasix using tiny insulin needles.  And the pink splatter I'd get all over my shirts when I'd give one of them oral amoxicillin -- that, at least, I won't miss, or the many trips to the vet with the ferret in my lap (or on the way back from the vet in tears, minus the ferret). 

(And if you wondered why the nurse in the house doesn't tend the animals, it's because he can't stand hurting them without their understanding of why he's doing what he's doing.  He had the same problem, as a clinical RN, with very young children and very old, confused adults.)

In any case, here's to Gwen, Arthur, Llewellyn, Owain, Kai, Brigid, Eleanor, and Gruffudd and the simple, sweet joy they brought us (not to mention the amusement we felt when watching vet techs try to spell their names).

It's going to be a grand day...

...when you're in front of the vet at 7:25 am in your pajamas, with a seizing ferret who needs to be euthanized asap. 

Yeah.  Happy Tuesday.

I'm here.

It's all going.  I'm feeling better, Matthew's feeling better.  I'm wrapping things up (or trying to) at the office as much as possible.  I committed to closing the office the first of June, which naturally means two things would get set over for the beginning of June. I guess I'll just wing it, office-less.  It just didn't make sense to keep up the expense for the duration of my maternity "leave."  (Is it leave when you work for yourself?)   Also, I couldn't imagine trying to get it all moved any later than that.  Just the thought alone gives me nightmares. 

After this, I have to run to the courthouse and then back (it sounds dramatic, but it's a block away), then make a trip into Portland.  Fun stuff, and with gas $3.32 a gallon (at COSTCO!).  I know Americans have it soooo easy, price-wise, but it's been less than a year and a half since I was paying $1.79 a gallon. 

Our last ferret has taken a nosedive, health-wise.  We knew he had systemic problems, but this is probably the fastest I've seen one go downhill.  One of life's cruel ironies is that such fun and sweet animals never, ever have "good" deaths.  We will probably end up having to take him to be put to sleep this week, which is as close to a good death as it can get.  It's the end of an era: we've had ferrets since 1992. 

The baby is still very active, and has had some mammoth cases of the hiccups over the past few days -- much more dramatic than they were a couple of months ago.  It's amazing how loud her heartbeat has gotten when I listen with the doppler.  (Matthew: "Well, it's a much larger heart now.") 

Trying to get the house organized has been a nightmare.  I organized about a third of the baby closet and got the baby stuff out of the loft and into the room.  We may not be worrying about a full-fledged nursery for a while, but that stuff still has to go somewhere.  Aiiee, what a mess.   Anyone interested in my Batman: The Animated Series VHS collection?  (We long ago replaced them with DVDs.)   A recumbent exercise bike?  An old upright piano? 

Anyway, back to the salt mines.

What we feed the pets

The pet food-related kidney failure reports just break my heart. Fortunately, we don't feed our guys any of of the contaminated products.  (In fact, neither animal gets any wheat in their food; it's a major allergen for pets.)

Norris the Malinois eats Solid Gold's Wolf King formula -- bison and salmon, primarily.  I don't ever give him moist canned food, but if he's sick he'll get cottage cheese or brown rice and tuna we prep ourselves.  He'll also get the rice and tuna if we are careless and run out of food.

Gruffudd the ferret eats Innova EVO ferret food. Occasionally he'll get moist food, but only EVO.

[The downer about both foods is the extremely stinky poops the animals produce.]

Some things about my week

1. I'm hungry every hour.
2. My belly is getting quite large.
3. I'm going to OHSU today, but no time to ride the tram.  (We haven't had time yet.)
4. I was chastised by a judge yesterday because of something my client hasn't done yet.
5. It flowed downhill, back to him. 
6. I have two cases where the other parties are drug addicts and are both women. The addicts have the same initials and are represented by the same attorney. 
7. I just know I'm going to screw up the names at some point. 
8. My birthday is Sunday. 
9. Tomorrow Matthew and I will get to spend time with part of the village that raised me, a couple my parents' age who would take me for a week at a time to hang out with when I was both a precocious kid and then later an obnoxious teenager. 
10. I think it probably helped that one of them is a counselor and the other is a psychiatrist who works with vets.
11. In a recent conversation, one of them asked me, "So....do you still dye your hair?" (She meant pink and purple.) 
12. The funny bit was that I had just come from the salon, where I'd had some color work done. 
13. I'm still craving salmon sushi and beer, neither of which I can have for months.   
14. Matthew bought me a huge maternity body pillow -- it's U shaped -- for the pregnancy.  It arrived Wednesday, and it has made a small (queen) bed much smaller -- the dog has to really fight for space with us now. 
15. My garden is coming back: the daphne is blooming, the day lily is coming up, the cherry tree is budding, the roses are putting out new growth, the clematises are shooting up again -- spring is nearly here!
16. I'm really pissed off about the daylight savings time thing this weekend.  I still can't quite figure out the logic of daylight savings time, and would like to ditch it for good. 
17. The law school caught me in an unguarded moment before the panel on Tuesday.  Download parking.mp3
18. Gemini was very active yesterday, including when I was in chambers with the aforementioned judge. 
19. It makes me wonder if I'm somehow poisoning her by exposing her to the law at such a tender age...or if I should have just let her handle the situation. 
20. I have been irrationally, obnoxiously smug since I found out Gemini is a girl.  I think it must be  a chemical bonding sort of thing, but for some reason, I'm very proud of her being a girl -- even though I had absolutely nothing to do with it. 

The K9s

There were two Mals and two GSDs at the K9 event in Gresham.  Naturally, I gravitated toward the Mals, particularly a sweet little female about Norris's age.  She was so tiny!  And still acrobatic -- she alerted on several drug caches, but the police officer had concealed heroin somewhere in the engine compartment, and she effortlessly made it in a lovely leap. 

Mals in action tomorrow!

From the Oregonian:

Gresham K-9 unit to give public demonstration

GRESHAM -- Kyra, Koda, Cvok and Nico may sound like aliens in a science fiction movie, but they are in fact the names of the dogs assigned to the Gresham Police Department's K-9 unit.

And weather permitting, the dogs and their human partners will team up for a 3 p.m. public demonstration Wednesday at Gresham's Main City Park, 219 S. Main Ave.

Last year, the dogs -- three work patrol and one works narcotics detection -- were called into service 3,601 times, with 1,378 of those calls to assist neighboring police agencies.

The three Belgium Malinois and one German shepherd were responsible for capturing 70 suspects and assisting in 57 captures.

Sgt. Teddi Anderson, Police Department spokeswoman, said 11 Gresham businesses have provided the K-9 unit with space to train, and several private and public entities have donated money for the purchase and training of new dogs. All four dogs are equipped with bullet-proof vests.

The teams include:

Sgt. Mike Leduc and Kyra. Narcotics-detection team that has also been assisting in patrol duties since December. Kyra is an 8-year-old Belgium Malinois from Holland.

Officer Shawn Debler and Koda. Started patrol duties in July. Koda is a 3-year-old German shepherd from the Czech Republic.

Officer Scott Cunningham and Cvok. Started patrol duties in July. Cvok is a 13-month-old Belgium Malinois from the Czech Republic.

Officer Jared McGowan and Nico. Have been on patrol duties for about five years. Nico is a 6-year-old Belgium Malinois from the Czech Republic.

Boy, Girl, or Puppy?

Friday's upcoming appointment is at the 17 week mark, which makes it possible that we'll learn the baby's sex for the first time.  Early in the pregnancy I KNEW it was a girl.   KNEW.  Now, I'm not so sure. 

This morning, Matthew woke me up at 6:30 as requested. 

Me: I dreamed it was a baby boy. Maybe it's a boy.
Matthew: The night before last, you dreamed it was a Malinois puppy. 
Me: .... OK, true. 

A good omen, surely

There's got to be a culture somewhere on this planet that views waking up on the first day of the year to your dog barfing as a sign the year is going to be a damn good one.  Right?

Beach Blogging

Matthew and I are in a not-quite-undisclosed-location along with our trusty sidekick, Norris, celebrating our 14th wedding anniversary (yesterday).  Today we had some blue skies in the morning and early afternoon, so we took our three-legged-monster to the beach.  (You can't tell from the pictures, but so did everyone else -- there were more dogs than people, it seemed!)

Greatest Hits: Norris v. David

A couple of years back, I bought a hideous planter from Fred Meyer: a plastic, hollowed out head of David.  It was a really, really bad "reproduction" of Michelangelo's David.  I bought it because it was so hideous I knew my husband would take one look at it and be instantly horrified and yell "AH!"  For $19.95, that was worth it for me.

What I didn't count on was Norris's reaction.  He saw the thing and growled, and I, the mature pet owner that I am, chased him around the house with it.  I later went to bed and forgot the whole thing. 

The next morning, Norris couldn't walk past David without growling and barking, and I saw a photo opportunity in the making.

(David now lives in the yard, and the dog completely ignores it -- but it took a couple of weeks before he wouldn't start at the sight of it.)

I work and I sleep

Really, that's my life right now.  I get up and work, either at home or at the office, and while I can make it through the day without a nap, by 7 I'm flagging.  The past few nights I've gone to bed between 8-9. 

I feel pretty good most of the time, though.  (Last night, one my neighbors pointed out it was like night and day from the previous pregnancy.  True.)  No nausea unless I go way too long before eating or sleeping, and the bloating (so long as I avoid dairy, which is hard, because I've been craving it) is doable.  Next Friday we go in for the First Screen, the set of blood tests and ultrasounds where initial risks for genetic and other abnormalities are detected.  We're nervous about it; this is the 12th week, and we're coming up on the point we were at with Starbuck. 

Still, I've managed to finally find the right fit for a new office situation: in Hillsboro, across the street from my favorite antique store (and next door to a great garden art shop) and just a block up from the courthouse and the law library.  When I walked in (to meet with an attorney about a contract job) I liked the place immediately -- wood panelling, lovely wainscotting -- and could tell it had been an attorney's office for quite some time.  (The current attorney-owner's father practiced there before he did, and it's his dad's office that I'll be in.)  My office not only has a regular door, but a little pocket door that leads into the library, too. I really like it, and the price is right.  The only logistic I have left to figure out is parking, but I'll worry about that later.

The dog is doing pretty well -- back to driving us crazy at times -- and mostly is leaving his foot alone.  Mostly.  (He is a Mal, after all.)

Walking wounded

Norris appears to have forgotten completely about his bandage, and has left it alone, even while unsedated and un-coned. Amazing!  (He has to have a pillow.  I have no idea how he gets himself into these positions!)