Halloween Fun at Work and at Home!

As of Wednesday I had actually come to the decision to get one of those T-shirts that just said something corny like "this is my costume" but the kids kept hassling me about not dressing up and I had plenty of co-workers say they couldn't wait to see what I came up with this year because I always come up with crazy costumes. So I guess I did succumb to the peer pressure of it all and decided not to be so ba-humbug about it and figure out something to wear. I bought new things minimally because it was two days before pay day and I actually have a pretty good stash of wigs and crazy makeup...so I created a costume that seemed to work even though it didn't have a "name". Katie (a friend and co-worker) who always has the spirit to dress up stopped by my classroom in the morning for a quick photo-opp. as "little bo-peep". We then had a pizza party during lunch for the kids in my class and I turned my math classes into a circumference finding pumpkin seed estimating goo factory as some of the kids got to carve pumpkins for the very first time! It was messy but fun on a Halloween Friday! I later came home to deal with trick-or-treaters in my neighborhood so I just left on the costume all day...most of which was fine but the wig gets itchy and hot! I took the time to get a couple of pictures of Baylie and Ginger in their witch costumes and some with me too and answered the door 5 or 6 times for kids I recognized. At around 8 the door bell rang and I peeked out the window to see only a few small feet so I answered the door to surprisingly find about 12 kids on my doorstep and a freakin' van parked across the street none of which I'd seen before! It took so long for me to pass candy out to each kid that eventually Ginger squeezed passed my legs and the crack in the door frame and ran out to "greet" all the people! I wasn't worried about my goofy puppy interacting with the people but I worry if the people are scared of dogs in general...so I quickly finished throwing candy into buckets and then went to get her...at this point I'd had enough stress and decided Halloween was over! I blew out all the pumpkins, turned off the spider lights, and tried to make my house as dark as possible so that people would stop ringing my bell then I riped off the wig and hit the showers to get off the crappy fake makeup and wash away the very LONG day! So Happy Halloween Everyone...it was fun while it lasted!

Houdini strikes again!!!

Well believe it or not the whole get to the vet before work on Thursday and make it back before 4th period (11:45) actually worked! They took Ginger to the back to get the suture line cleaned up and then about 15 minutes later they called me back into an exam room where the Vet met me with Ginger...who was now in an even BIGGER cone that the one I paid 13 bucks for on Monday! The Vet agreed that it was infected and gave us antibiotics but insisted that Ginger was somehow still licking at the incision even with the cone?!? In my opinion this is impossible but it is infected so who knows? I also asked the Vet to give her some kind of pain pill because she's so restless at night that her body is gonna be too weak to fight an infection! THEN...I get home on Friday afternoon at 3 (which was early thanks to it being Highland's home coming) and find Ginger VERY happy without her cone on!!! Yep! You guessed it, my little Houdini somehow chewed the cone off and proceeded to eat off each loop where the tie goes through so that it was impossible to reuse it! Her belly was again raw from licking so I risked my life to pour hydrogen peroxide on it to clean off the gazillion germs she no doubt licked into it! (OK, so that's a bit exaggerated but I'm telling you for a little thing she kicks hard and is quite strong!) Then it was a trip to Pet Co. to buy yet a third cone! At least the Vet exchanged the 1st cone for the bigger one without extra charges but I won't complain over a 13 dollar piece of plastic again because at the pet store I paid 17! O-well...at this point I'll do whatever it takes to get past this...I'd love to sleep in my bed again and not see her in so much distress! It has been 2 days now and thanks to the antibiotics, the pain pills and the children's Benadryl we are surviving...but sleep is still pretty priceless!!! Oh, and PS...Baylie still hates the cone...even her new pretty pink one!!! Four more days and counting for stitch removal...

Miserable and frustrated!!!

AHHHHHH!!! I'm so frustrated...as of tomorrow it will have been one full week since Ginger's surgery and I'm ready to rip the cone off because it is such a pain! Then today her wound is STILL oozing and bleeding...I came home to little gnats bugging her! She looks to me incredibly miserable and it is so hard to see her this way and not be able to fix it for her! When my mom came over to help me hold her to put the hydrogen peroxide on we got a good look at it and it is red and raw and hot...pretty clearly infected! It is obviously bugging her to death because she has been trying to scratch at it so much that she has now caused red raw claw marks on her upper belly. We just can't win...so I've already called my boss and friends at work to help me cover my morning classes tomorrow (Thursday) so I can again take her back to the vet for the second time. I hate having to take more time off work but it can't wait and I just hope I can get in to see a doctor early so I can start her on antibiotics! She was originally supposed to get her stitches out 3 days from now...then when they added the staples the removal date was pushed back until next Wednesday the 29th...who knows how far THIS will set us back (time wise or money wise)?!? We'll see tomorrow...I'm gonna call first thing and then beg for an early appointment! For now she is finally asleep thanks to the last tranquilizer pill that Sherry and Matt gave to me (thank God)...it is the only thing that seems to help her relax! My body is tired of sleeping on the floor each night next to her...but sadly it is the only thing that seems to comfort her and help her relax enough to sleep...only it means I don't sleep that well. Keep your fingers crossed for us that modern medicine can help fix her...because both of us are ready for this to be over and get back to normal!

My Poor Little Cone Head!

Ok, so once again a spay surgery that just doesn't go smoothly. Back when Baylie got spayed she never had any problems with the initial stitching. She didn't lick the wound or pop any stitches...HOWEVER her body couldn't dissolve the interior stitches so that was an extra trip to the vet! Now it's Ginger's turn...as of Friday everything looked pretty good, but by Saturday afternoon one of the stitches had come untied and the wound bled and leaked a bit. By Sunday morning the stitch was gone and sometime during the night she'd licked the wound clean (not good). Anytime I tried to clean the area she whined, squirmed, and kicked me in the face which didn't feel so good! So thank goodness I'd taken Monday off work because I called the vet this morning to let them know that at least one stitch was out and that the area was oozing...and yep, they wanted me to bring her in before 11 am because they thought she might need antibiotics! So we got there around 10 and had to sit in the waiting room for 20-30 minutes. When they came to get her they didn't want me to come back with her...so I waited. Finally, about 10-15 minutes later Ginger comes round the corner wearing a huge white plastic lampshade-style cone! Aww, crap! Now her new rules are that she has to wear the cone 24 hours a day FOR THE NEXT 8 DAYS!!! They also informed me that they had to add "a few" staples to pull her cut back together. Now I don't know about you but I was taught that a "few" meant 3...yeah, well when we got home I counted 8 added staples in addition to her remaining stitches! Well hopefully she won't rip any more out...but with those new stab wounds we are back to having a bloody belly! I worried what would happen when we arrived at home because Baylie is a BIG scaredie cat! Sure enough, Ginger and I walk through the door and Baylie's mohawk on her back goes up and she is barking in her "big girl" bark at poor sulking Ginger! I even tried giving them treats to get them to stand near each other to show Bay that Ginger is not scary--no success at all! Baylie refused to get within 5 feet of Ginger and her alien cone! I felt so bad for poor Ginger because she is running into everything, has a rough time drinking, and turning her head to see things (why they don't make the stupid cones see through is beyond me...it was so opaque that it deleted all of her peripheral vision!), she couldn't even figure out how to lay down and now she's getting barked at! Finally after about an hour and a half of convincing I finally got Ginger to lay down for a nap...she was literally falling asleep standing up because she didn't like the way the cone felt! I also think that the wound is itching as it heals or maybe she feels it oozing...because she does these crazy flinches where she jumps up or turns around in a flash as if something bit her! I just hope that she heals up quickly now because I go back to work tomorrow and I won't be able to comfort her and lord knows Baylie won't help! I can't wait to get her stitches out next week Wednesday the 29th!!! Eight days and counting......wish us luck!!!!

Ginger...outta commission & moving slower for a little while!

Poor Ginger has had 2 rough days in a row! On Wednesday October 15th I took Baylie and Ginger down to the 17 news station for the annual SPCA Unleash Your Love fundraiser. Two years ago I actually got Baylie microchiped at that same event...so when we went the other day I wanted to get a chip put in Ginger and I wanted to get Baylie scanned just to see if her chip was still working right. I feel strongly about the microchip because it actually helped to save Baylie the time the gardeners left the back gate open when we lived off of White Lane. She was caught running down White Lane by a good samaritan who called my cell phone from her PetsMart tag but I was at work and didn't get the call so he then called the 800 number from the 24-PetWatch microchip tag were he got my mother's number (who was listed as my emergency contact). Between the three of us we got Baylie back alive and unharmed! Now I'm even more compelled to pull off the road and pick up dogs running on roadsides with tags...so far I have safely returned 2 dogs to their owners...I just figure karma...what goes around, comes around!


THEN...Yesterday (Thursday October 16th) I dropped off Ginger at 8am at Auburn Animal Hospital for her spay surgery. When I called at 3:30 they said she'd came through the surgery just fine! Luckily the vet allowed me to pick her up by 5:30 that evening with the deal that I'd keep her still and quiet. I arrived about 5:15 and when the nurse brought her out she looked pretty lethargic and pouty (for lack of better terms) but she was medicated so I didn't think much of it. The nurses teased her though, because they said that two seconds prior she had been happy and wagging her tail in the crate round back...but the instant she saw me she put on this pity-party-drama-queen "show" for me! She is feeling and looking better today...still sleeps more than normal but she's much more alert than yesterday! Her little belly looks so funny all shaved and for her sake I hope the hair grows back faster than Baylie's did!!! I'm sure that by tomorrow she'll be back to her old self and it will be my challenge to keep her from playing too rough and ripping out all the stitches!

More Photo Fun...Happy Halloween!

After I got Ginger weighed the other day and found out that she was almost 50 pounds...I decided that I needed some updated photos with her and Baylie now that she's growing out of being a puppy! Putting them side by side it is surprising because even though Ginger still has a puppy face, her body is becoming a dog! She is much more lanky than Baylie ever was...she is just all legs!

Check out my new Halloween collars at http://www.moesdogcollars.blogspot.com/ !

Some Fun Halloween Decorations!

So at school the kids have been bugging me to start decorating before October even started...and this year they wanted spider webs! Ok, fun--but small issue...my classroom has 10 foot ceilings so hanging spider webs up there would be quite a feat! I don't keep a ladder at school so I always have to get creative when it comes to reaching the ceiling. I have this gigantic TV stand and if I climb up on a desk and then stand up on my TV stand I can reach perfectly! Most people freak out when they see me do this, but honestly the stupid cart will barley roll when you are trying to move it, so its pretty darn sturdy...the desks are actually much more dangerous to stand on because they aren't balanced! So all the kids grabbed corners of the webs and started stretching, then one piece at a time with paperclips I pinned it to the ceiling tiles...finally we added spiders and bats for that hanging 3-D hanging effect. Then at home I decided to do something basic and cute...I found fun spider lights and it was funny because my neighbors caught me putting them up and accused me of already hanging Christmas lights! I also wanted a something to hang on my front door and couldn't find anything I liked that wasn't outrageously overpriced...so I made my own! Enjoy and happy haunting!

Someone forgot to tell Ginger she GREW!!!

When Ginger was just 7 weeks old I bought her a super cute little pink and white striped bed to sleep on and it went everywhere with us...the living room, bedroom, car, and "Grama's" house. She fit so perfectly in it for quite some (The "before" pictures are on the left) time but after a few months we upgraded to a BIG donut-style bed that measures 50 inches in diameter so she was able to stretch out and feel comfortable. The funny thing is that she will turn 7 months old on Oct. 19th and she STILL tries to curl up into the little pink bed every once and awhile. (The "after" pictures are on the right just in case it's not OBVIOUS!) It is hilarious to see her in it now because she clearly overhangs every side of it...although, it doesn't seem to bother her in the slightest!!! When I took Ginger home for the first time she didn't weigh over 12 pounds and just yesterday we stopped into PetsMart to pick up a few things and while we were there I decided to weigh both of the girls...Ginger is up to 49.5 pounds and Baylie is down to 66.7 (guess it is all that Rollerblading in the morning!) It won't be long before Ginger catches up (or surpasses) Baylie!