A few weeks ago my retriever mix, Veda Jane, began acting funny. We couldn’t really put a finger on it and I considered taking her to the vet but, ‘She doesn’t sit by me when I draw’ just doesn’t get taken seriously. I’ve had similar conversations with different doctors and they just get dismissed until something real can be brought to attention. I also noticed that the dogs were drinking about 2x as much water- but there are two 60 pound dogs in my house and I didn’t know which was drinking the extra or if it was just both of them. Maybe Kevin just wasn’t giving them water as he usually does? So it seemed like they were drinking more because I was giving them water for both of us?

Then I woke up one night and found a pool of blood on the floor. Veda was in the hospital the next morning and I spent the whole day crying. Her diagnosis was much worse than I expected and she ended up in surgery.

After, she looked fantastic. I was shocked. She slept a lot- deep, drooling sleep- but seemed to feel a lot better.

Battling Veda into taking 3 pills two times a day was not easy. She is a smart, stubborn dog. I would get one into her mouth and hold it shut and bitch (hey, she IS a bitch, so shutty) would swallow repeatedly and as soon as I’d let go she would spit it- and not just onto the floor, but UP INTO THE AIR. I sliced a hot dog down the middle, crushed her pills in a napkin, rolled them with a rolling pin and poured the powder into the hot dog split. Then I rolled the hot dog so it would absorb and coat the powder and she seriously ate the hot dog from the unsplit side all the way to where it was split, leaving the rest on the floor.

I was left scratching my head and thinking, I have to be smarter than a dog? After a few days I found she would eat tuna, pill powder or no. Other soft foods (chili, soup etc) she was not convinced of, but Tuna did the trick.

I think that I am still exhausted from worrying. I have been sad and distracted. I am incredibly thankful that my sweet puppy is still alive. It takes me a while to get past sadness, though. It’s a bit difficult to explain- I don’t feel depressed, I just feel very drained. I feel sensitive and raw.

While I try to get organized and back on track, here are some snippets from our Autumn, since it’s shortly coming to a close…

Working on our first and smallest jack-o-lantern, I carved this and two large ones before I developed and annoying rash that lasted for days.

Angel had what has become his traditional Spider-Man themed birthday. I’m getting pretty good at this theme ; ) I managed some great portraits of him.

Two days later I had a more subtle celebration.

We’ve been loving cider and anything we put in our cute little teacups.