I am here. I am alive.

Wow. I'm like the worst storyteller ever.

If you are still hanging in there on ol' Chickenbone Jones - and I can't blame you if you aren't - then thanks. I really love writing in this blog, and I really love when you read it, and I feel horrible that I went this long without posting, especially when my last post ended on a bit of a cliffhanger.

In my defense, though, it would be easier to finish that "Setback" chapter if things were actually finished. To make a long story short, Chickens did just fine on the crate rest, and seemed to be back to his old self again. For about five minutes. Then, in developments that were either related to the setback or unrelated to the setback, in mid-September we entered a difficult stretch in which Chickens was having violent leg spasms, lots of trouble walking and copious amounts of diarrhea. We discovered some sort of problem with his back left foot, and he is obsessed with licking it, and that makes the spasms worse because the whole thing gets red and irritated, and it's even harder for him to walk than usual. These problems continue today.

We have been to a bunch of vet appointments - some at the regular vet, some at the fancy surgery vet - and there seems to be no answer other than this: We just have a very messed-up dog. In other words, regular problems that happen to healthy dogs are much more difficult when they happen to Chickens. His little nerves don't fire correctly, and lots of his muscles are either way too strong or way too weak. One small irritation on his paw might feel totally crazy to him and he can't leave it alone, which just makes things worse. The leg spasms can topple his whole back end, which makes him stop in his tracks and not move anymore. We are carrying him around more and not letting him use his dog ramp much because he's just not a good mover right now. It is frustrating for him and for us.

The most important thing, though, is that he's not in pain. He is lovable and smiley and tries all the time to wag his little limp tail. When one of us sits on the couch, he loves to sit on our laps snuggled up in a warm blanket. And now that his sister is mobile, those two adore taking turns chasing each other down and planting kisses on the other's face. He's a happy dog, and that matters more than all the rest.

Speaking of his sister ... guess who has a birthday next week!

The festivities have already begun, as we picked up her grandma and one of her four grandpas at the airport last night. I am looking forward to posting all 12 of my monthly Mia-in-the-chair photos when I take the last one on Monday, her first birthday. So, see? I already have my next post planned. Stick around, will ya?

Setback

Last night I was in Mia's room putting her to bed when I heard Chickenbone yelp in the living room. My stomach lurched to hear him in distress, since earlier in the evening we noticed he was walking a bit gingerly and was more subdued than usual. I decided to finish putting Mia down and then go see what was up, but then I heard him yelp again. And again.

I opened the bedroom door and walked into the living room to find Chickens on the couch, with Sal standing in front of him. Sal said every time he went to try to lift him off the couch, Chickenbone snapped at him. So I gave it a try, and Chickens bit me. He immediately felt sorry about doing it - he was just in pain, and that's how dogs in pain react. We know this from too much experience.

I tossed a soft blanket over him and lowered him to the floor. (See? Experience.) Then Sal and I sat there staring at him in silence for a few minutes, until I said, OK, I'm going to put the baby to bed. And then we'll figure out what to do. I went back into the bedroom and was rocking Mia in the dark when Sal opened the door and said, "Stop what you're doing."

He said Chickenbone's back leg had gone out from under him when he tried to stand up. And his chin was quivering, just like it was that night in November when he went paralyzed. So, we loaded up the whole family and made our way to the animal hospital ER.

Did you know a baby can totally stay up till after midnight, an go nine straight hours without a nap, without totally melting down? Ours can, at least. That's how long we were out dealing with this, no thanks to a particularly busy night at the hospital. So busy, in fact, that after we had spent the better part of an hour waiting there, they urged us to go across town to their sister hospital where there was no wait. (A dying cat and two other patients were in front of us and it was going to be a good long while before they got to Chickens.) So! We loaded up the whole family and made our way to another animal hospital ER.

There a vet finally examined Chickens. He said it was tough for him to know exactly how much deterioration there had been - after all, Chickens wasn't neurologically normal to begin with, so our observations were all he had to go on. And he said that if we sensed a problem, then there's a problem.

I was stunned. And numb. We had done EVERYTHING to make sure this could never happen again. We kicked him off all furniture. We built the stupid ramp. We practically destroyed our back door to create an easy walkway for him to get in and out of the house without extra effort. How could we possible be here again? But the vet pointed out that people can throw out their back with a sneeze. It's not like Chickens needed to have some big accident for this to happen - it can just happen.

Now, it's not nearly as bad as it was last time. He isn't paralyzed, and he has deep-pain sensation. He's just very, very weak, and as we know, it's a quick slide to the worst-case scenario. The vet gave Chickens steroids and pain medication, and then said the two words I dreaded most: crate rest. Ten days of being in his cage around the clock, except for potty breaks. I wanted to throw up. We barely survived that the first time, back when both mom and dad were on leave and our daughter was a tiny newborn who slept through most anything. But what is our option? There isn't one. This is the only way to give his back time to heal, and hopefully avoid another disk rupture that only surgery will fix.

At the moment, I'm surprisingly calm about all this. I'm keeping the panic at bay by thinking about how it isn't EXACTLY like the nightmare we had last winter. After all, it's not like we're putting post-op Chickens in the crate, with the staples in his back and all the drugs making him crazy. We don't have the stress of learning how to express a bladder. It's only 10 days, not two months. And when I was reading the paper this morning, I saw the obituaries page and thought, those people are dead! That's WAY worse than what we're going through!

So, it's day one of 10. Right now Chickens is in his cage resting quietly. He's actually a little too quiet - I think we'd all feel better if he were good and pissed off about being caged up. That would be like his old, feisty self. But right now he seems lethargic and depressed. Think a happy thought for him, would you? Maybe one for the rest of us, too.

Con man

Do you know how much it costs to fix a dog's broken back? No? Well, let me tell you. It's just a shade over twenty jillion dollars. So when we were trying to pick up the pieces after Chickenbone's accident in November, we decided to be prudent and offset that cost by skipping a big vacation this year.

This plan seemed all well and good until about March, when after two months of two full-time jobs, a full-time baby and a dog bladder that needed full-time expressing, I realized it wasn't going to work. So one evening I sat Sal down. "Hi!" I told him. "I'm losing my shit over here. We NEED a break."

I didn't have in mind anything huge or expensive. Maybe just a nice weekend in our favorite place on earth, Santa Barbara. Just the three of us - me, my husband and my daughter. Well, let's just say this wasn't a hard sell. Sal's wiped out, too. So it was settled! And the next day I gleefully started calling around to make a boarding reservation for Chickens.

Five calls later, I hung up the phone and burst into tears.

Because, you see, it's difficult to find accommodations for a dog who can't pee on his own. Three boarding facilities flat-out refused to take him, and two vet offices said they could do it, but their employees go home at 6 and don't return till the next morning. Chickens just can't go that long without a pee.

Panic welled up inside me as I began to realize the situation we were in. That any "break" we could take would be limited to five hours, for as long as this FOUR-YEAR-OLD DOG shall live.

I've since been banging my head against a wall trying to figure a way out of this. Lots of friendly professional pet-sitters are willing to come stay at our house, and a few even offered to learn how to express his bladder. I wish it could be that easy. But it took me two solid weeks of expressing him five times per day to get good at it. Same for Sal. It's quite a special talent! One that takes lots of patience and lots of practice.

Then it hit me. There is, in fact, another solution. And that would be a little something I like to call THE GOD-DANGED DOG PEEING ON HIS OWN. Wacky, I know! So I did a little research, starting with a wonderful web site called Dodgerslist, which is devoted to dogs who suffer from IVDD. And I read that when a dog is able to use a leg to scratch his head, that's a good sign that neurological function has returned to his back end. Well, guess what. Chickens can do that.

So I sent an e-mail to one of the site moderators, an angel of a woman who has offered her advice and encouragement to us many times in the past six months. And I said, look. Chickens can scratch himself. He can walk fairly well. He spritzes pee on bushes and trees when we go around the block. What gives? How can we get this dog to empty his bladder on his own?

She replied with a question: "Is there a reason you're still expressing his bladder?"

To which I replied, "Um ... "

Is there? I don't know! We just are! It's not like we've seen him trot into the back yard and take a whiz on a tree - but then again, when would he have had the chance? We've been expressing his bladder morning, noon and night for SIX FREAKING MONTHS!

She wrote back and asked me a bunch of questions. Like, was his spinal rupture in his back or his neck? (His back.) Does he ever leak urine? (Thankfully, no.) Does his tail raise up when you express him? (Every time.) Do you ever have him him diapers? (Dear god. NO.) I answered all her questions and waited anxiously. And then I got this reply:

"Amy, congratulations - Chickenbone has bladder control!"

She said she's never seen a dog regain the neurological function that Chickens has without also regaining the ability to go pee. "When he marks like that, it is sure-fire proof that nerve messages are traveling to and from the bladder and brain through the spinal cord," she wrote. "The brain tells the bladder to release pee to mark, and the bladder releases." This is also in line with what Chickens' surgeon said at his last checkup, which is that it's rare for a dog to be able to walk again but not pee.

In other words, he's been scamming us!

Then she offered advice on how to retrain Chickens to pee on his own. She suggested that we get another dog to come pee in our back yard to trigger his marking instinct. Then we need to bring him outside regularly, encourage him to pee, and give him lots of treats and praise if/when he does. This will not be easy - he is just so accustomed to being expressed now. And ironically, just expressing him is actually easier for us than taking a bunch of time for training.

But whether he can pee on his own or not, one thing's for sure - we are getting awfully tired of carrying him up and down those steps in the back yard, especially when there's a dog in one arm and a wiggly baby in the other. Also, I suspect that if Chickens could get to the grass by himself, we might have more success with all this. So! This weekend my father-in-law came over and built us a spiffy new handicapped-dog ramp! It is excellent. And the moment it was complete, Chickens raced up and down it several times.

Next comes a trip to the neighbors to borrow some dog pee, and then we're going to solve this nonsense once and for all.

The jig is up, little buddy!

Quality of life

I'm part of an online moms group - a bunch of us whose babies were born in October 2009 - and this week I was heartbroken to read about a family whose dachshund suffered a back injury just like Chickenbone's. The mom wrote that her 8-year-old daughter accidentally dropped the dog, who could not walk the next morning, and she wanted to know how to keep the girl from blaming herself for what happened.

The mom also wondered about the dog's suffering, and whether it would have to be put to sleep. For a moment, my mind flooded with the terrible memories of the night of Chickenbone's injury, his surgery, and his long road to recovery. I vividly remember us sitting in the vet hospital exam room as the surgeon explained that lots of people think paralyzed dogs are better off being put down. But she said even if Chickens recovered no leg function whatsoever, he could still live a long and happy life using a little wheeled cart. So that's the worst-case scenario we braced for, and we went ahead with the procedure.

For a long - and, you'll recall, mostly miserable - five weeks, we saw not even a flicker of leg movement. Even when he did begin to move them, it still took months before he stood properly, and more months before he became a real walker again. Now he runs, scratches himself and whips around in little circles when he's excited about something. As I wrote my advice to the mom, I realized that it has all been 100 percent worth it. Which I suppose is another way of saying that a few times along the way, I wasn't so sure about that. But Chickens brings such joy to our house, and particularly to our daughter, and I just couldn't imagine our life without him.

But an important concern for us is whether HE is happy. Chickens was an incredibly self-sufficient dog before his injury, and he had many ways of entertaining himself when we weren't around. Most of which involved jumping up on furniture. Well, obviously that's a thing of the past. But even though he has to remain on the ground, we have figured out a few adjustments that help him enjoy his favorite things from his "old" life.

Old Chickens loved to hop up on the couch and doze in the sun.

Now, when we see a "sun spot" on the floor through a window or the front door, we drop a blanket down and he races over to lay down and catch some rays.

Old Chickens also liked to jump on the loveseat and stare out the window all afternoon.

Sal used a bunch of couch cushions to invent the "soft shoe" (explanation on that term here) so that he can still enjoy the view, and the pillows create a barrier that keep him from leaping off the couch when a cat wanders by.

Luckily for Chickens, there's someone else in our house who's on the floor a lot, and even has toys to share.

When she's not on the floor, he just needs a little boost to give her a kiss.

And now that it's summertime, we can just plop him down in the back yard where he can sniff the grass, chase squirrels and take long afternoon naps. I'd say this is a dog who's glad he stuck around, wouldn't you?

Guess this one's for the blooper reel

When I started recording this, I merely wanted to show you how well Chickens gets around these days. But you! You're in for much, much more!

Life is looking up

So I just spent the past 20 minutes chasing Chickens as he ran in circles around the living floor and under the bed.

Yes, ran.

It's wobbly, and there are plenty of stumbles, especially when he gets to the hardwood floor. But it is an unmistakable run, complete with a curly-tail wag and a big old Chickenbone grin.

Unfortunately, I have no such positive news on the bathroom front. In fact, I just got done expressing his bladder in the back yard (where, I might point out, he did more gleeful circle-runs beneath the big peppercorn tree). Do you realize we have been helping this dog go pee five times per day for four months? FOUR. Friends, that is a LOT of canine-bladder-squeezing. The pooping situation also remains the same. In fact, the day after my post about the housekeeping, a girlfriend and her 2-year-old daughter stopped by for a visit. Again, Chickens got so excited that he pooped. Again, nobody saw it. Again, my guest accidentally stepped in it, smooshing poop all over her pretty shoe and leaving me completely mortified. (On the plus side, you can totally tell who your friends are by how gracious they are when your home is a minefield of dog crap.)

But overall, I'd say we are adjusting. And it's moments like right now, with Chickens contentedly sitting in my lap as I write this (and Mia dozing in her swing, in my freshly cleaned house) that I just can't believe how far we've come. I mean, remember when I was going to pieces over having to "tail-walk" Chickens everywhere he went? While also holding my wiggly infant? And remember how he'd drive me crazy by barking at me to put him on the couch when I was feeding Mia? And this isn't even going back to the REAL dark days of Chickens with a giant gash down his back, weeping in his cage for hours on end. Of packing our newborn into the car in the middle of the cold winter night to drive to the animal hospital, again. Of Chickens refusing to eat because he was in too much pain, which also meant he wouldn't eat treats filled with medication, so Sal had to wrestle him down and shove food down his throat. Of his lifeless legs that never, ever moved. Man, those were some hopeless days. How far we have come!

Chickens is such a happy dog now. He has recently been discovered by his sister, who stares at him intently and reaches out to clutch his fur. He returns the affection by trying to jam his tongue down her throat as far as possible. The other day I thought he was being a little rough with her, so I reached over and gently batted him back a bit, but Mia just cracked up laughing. Those two are pretty adorable together.

Yes, it's a pain in the ass to do the bladder thing. And to pick up the poop. But you guys, we are pretty much down to these two issues. Out of all those countless problems and endless days and nights of worry and frustration and sadness, we're down to TWO problems. Uh, I'M PRETTY SURE WE CAN HANDLE IT. And that's the big difference between now and then. Now I know our little family can definitely handle it.

And if he never pees or poops right again? Well, we'll just have to focus on the good stuff.

Um ... welcome?

This afternoon I noticed my neighbor's housekeeping service at work across the street, and I popped over to ask if they'd come over and give me a quote. Housekeeping is something I have been dreaming of for months. While I truly love cleaning my sinks, scrubbing my floors and making my home spic and span all by myself (seriously), it might not surprise you to learn that deep cleaning in this house has become a thing of the past. We do OK on day-to-day maintenance, but this weekend when I used one precious hour of a Mia nap to mop the kitchen floor, I realized it hadn't been mopped since, oh, maybe when I was seven or eight months pregnant. That's just sick.

I held Chickens in my arms while I waited for them, since Mia was sleeping and I didn't want him to run to the door and bark when they arrived. A little while later, the owner of the company and his sister walked over. They came in and looked around, and then we all stood in the living room as he explained their services and pricing. Well, Mia woke up and immediately began to wail, so I put Chickens on the floor and went to her room to get her out of the swing. When I walked back into the living room, to my complete horror, I saw Chickens stumbling around in a circle around our guests, with that familiar plop, plop-plop of poops falling out of his butt.

"HE'S POOPING! HE'S POOPING!" I yelped as I lunged toward them, so startling the nice housekeeping man that he took a step backward and planted his foot right onto a piece of poop.

Which he did not notice.

"YOU'RE STEPPING IN IT!" yelled the crazy red-faced lady with the crying baby and the crapping dog. "OH GOD! YOU STEPPED IN IT!"

Dude calmly opens up the screen door, kicks off his shoe, and then continues to describe all the wonderful things they will do to make my house sparkly clean. Completely ignoring the fact that he was surrounded by a circle of poop. But I was just so embarrassed. I kept trying to explain about the spinal injury and the surgery and the paralysis and how he can't poop right because he can't go on real walks yet, and he finally stopped me and kindly explained that he has lots of animals at home, including two cats, a bird, a pit bull, and a doberman who recently had surgery to remove a corn cob from its stomach. And then he smiled and said, "You know, I have a friend from India who says that when a person takes care of an animal, they have many good things coming to them."

So, yeah, they're pretty much hired.

The small shoe

Back in December, a couple weeks after Chickenbone's surgery, some of my relatives from New Mexico and Arizona came for a visit to meet Mia. One of those visitors was my brother, who is a sheriff's deputy in Curry County, N.M. As we were explaining Chickens' back injury and his round-the-clock crate rest, Mike nods at the big cage and goes, "So you keep him in the shoe, eh?" Er, the what? Well, in prison, "the shoe" is actually the SHU, or Solitary Housing Unit. It's where the baddies go, confined to their cells alone for 23 hours of the day. The nickname stuck, since "Stick Chickens in the shoe!" is funnier than if we just called it the cage.

Well, when an awesome Chickenbone Jones fan named Meghan read about our troubles with Sal sleeping in the living room to keep the dog quiet, she kindly offered to give us a wire crate that would probably fit in our cozy bedroom. And so we have the small shoe!

We began the transition to the bedroom last Friday night, and it was about as painful as I expected. Chickens basically sat with his whole face and body smashed against the side of the shoe that faces the bed, as close to us as he could possibly get, with this pleading look on his face. I lost track of how many times we had to get up to shush him (after a poop check, of course) and pull his blankets back over his head hoping he'd fall asleep. There was a lot of whining and whimpering, but we hung in there till dawn.

On the second night we had some quiet stretches. Between the two of us, we probably got up to check/comfort/shush him eight times, with a poop somewhere around 4? I think? When that night was over, Sal and I were sorely tempted to sneak in one couch night, just to have a break and catch up on sleep. But once you start down this road, it's just stupid to backpedal, so into the third night we trudged.

Shockingly, we only had to get up four times that night. And it was poopless! There is hope.

And on the fourth night, all was quiet until a poop at around 5:45 a.m. (Which, in the post-baby Pizarro household, is actually a perfectly respectable time to wake up.)

Four nights did the trick. I even let two nights go by before posting this, just to make sure I wasn't going to jinx it! But the past two nights have been peaceful as well. One thing that really helps: Sal figured out that if you want Chickens to fall asleep right away, just wrap him up in his favorite blue blanket before putting him into the bed. That's right, we're swaddling the freaking dog. And good lord, we Ferberized him, too!

And this is how comfy he is now: This morning when I opened the door, Chickens looked up at me and then put his head down and went back to sleep. He loves the small shoe! I told Meghan that if this worked, I was going to buy a star and name it after her. I am so grateful to her, and so very relieved to have this problem behind us and my husband back in his own bed.

Now, who knows how to fix the poop?!!

Cry it out, Chickens!

Tonight, you guys, is a very big night in the Chickenbone Jones household. It's the night we're finally going to bring poor Sal off the couch, where he has been sleeping for weeks (and holy crap, maybe even months) and back into the bed.

I've outlined the problem before. Basically, since his back surgery in November, Chickens has to stay in a crate in the living room at night. He's actually somewhat OK with that, except for the fact that he's a giant sissy who doesn't like to be all alone in the dark. So Sal stays on the couch to ensure that the only whining we hear is because Chickens pooped his cage, a problem that needs attention right away. When there's no poop - which happens maybe half the time - we all get a decent night's sleep.

One solution might be obvious - put the dog in the bedroom. Right? Except we live in a house that's nearly a century old, so the bedrooms are very small. And the cage we bought him after his surgery is huge.

As was the Pack-n-Play where we stored him when he first came home. (What, mom? That's not why you bought us that?)


That first week, we did lug the cage into the bedroom every night, but it is ridiculously heavy. And that strategy was doomed anyway because Chickens was in so much pain and so drugged up that he cried a ton. And remember, Mia was just 4 weeks old at that time, so we (read: I) needed any amount of sleep possible. So to the couch Sal went, and he's been there ever since. (Oh, except for New Year's Eve, when we gave Chickens a sedative because of the gunfire and fireworks, and we gave ourselves a sedative of a bottle and a half of champagne, and Mia inexplicably, miraculously slept for like two extra hours. Otherwise known as The Last Good Night.)

Anyway. Well, here is where I have something very cool to report. A Chickenbone Jones reader whom I have never even met in person (HI, MEGHAN!) got tired of my whining - or, maybe she's just a very nice person - and offered to give us a smaller wire crate to put in the bedroom. Can you believe it? Sweetest thing ever. So it arrived last weekend, and we bought a pad for it, put some blankets and treats into it, and look what happened next!


Chickens walked right in and plopped down for a nap! I heaved a huge sigh of relief before it hit me - this isn't going to be nearly as easy as it looks. First of all, Chickens is all nice and used to his slumber parties with dad out in the living room. And I think he has made it clear he's not too fond of change. Second of all, this new "house" is putting him smack in the center of a memory that pains all of us - that for three years he slept in the bed with mom and dad. He'd start the night buried deep in the covers at our feet, but by morning he always worked his way up until he was laying between us, his head on a pillow and the blankets tucked over his shoulders like he was a real person. He loved it, we loved it. And it can never, ever happen again.

The chances of him leaping off the bed and reinjuring himself are just too great, so after his accident, away went his little steps and he hasn't been up there since. Which hasn't been a problem, but I have a sinking feeling that when we put him in the crate and he watches us climb into bed without him, it is NOT going to go over well. I fear we're in for some long and noisy nights as we all get used to the new setup.

So we decided to wait until tonight to try it, since as of 3 p.m. today, I'm off for winter break. And if my nights get ruined, at least I can try to nap during the day and not have to be coherent at work for eight hours. We have a full nine nights to work this out, and as with everything in my life these days, I think patience is the key. (Well, patience and bourbon.) And if we can solve this problem, it will leave us with just the whole handicapped thing.

Oh! And good news on that front. Lately we have been able to take Chickens on a "walk" outside without using that rear-end sling. He can make it maybe five or six house lengths, carefully putting one foot in front of the other, and not falling down at all. After that he gets a bit wobbly and tired, so we put him in the sling so he won't scrape his little knees. But still, this is huge progress. When I am feeling very blue, Sal likes to remind me that it was not even seven weeks ago that Chickens stood on his own for the first time. That we can take him on even a semi-successful walk less than two months later is pretty amazing. And when we get a bit more progress on that front, he can resume his regular pooping schedule, meaning no more little brown surprises at 3 a.m. Unfortunately we are still expressing his bladder four or five times per day, but when we go on walks he is still emitting small spurts of pee, so SOMETHING is going on there. We are convinced that we'll see improvement as we get better with the walking. The poor guy just needs some practice.

So, tonight! Here we go. I'm just glad I recently discovered the key to surviving sleep deprivation: It hurts a whole lot less if you stop counting the hours!

Three months in

So the 14-week-party known as my maternity leave has drawn to a close and I have returned to work full time. On my first day, people kept coming up and asking about the baby, and then they'd give me a sympathetic head-tilt and ask gently "So is it hard to be back?"

To which I reply: AHAHAHAHAHA! Are you kidding me? At work, I can actually sit down and enjoy a meal! I can go pee whenever I want! I can set goals for myself, AND THEN ACCOMPLISH THEM! I freaking LOVE work!

Fine, so it wasn't quite that easy. I do miss my little baby girl something awful. But she is spending her days with her favorite person in the universe (dad), and a couple afternoons a week her grandma comes over. So I know she is in excellent hands. And I love my drive home every afternoon - it's the most thrilling 12 minutes of my day, knowing that I'm on my way to see her.

Here are some pictures I took at 1, 2 and 3 months old. Look how much those little legs chubbed out!

And here's Mia at very beginning. She was maybe two or three days old when we took this picture of her laying in her bassinet on top of her blue bilirubin blanket.

She's grown a little bit, eh?


Also, it took me a week of working in 5- or 10-second bursts to put together this post. Why does it seem like the less time I have to blog, the more I have to say? Folks, my brain is bursting at the seams with stuff I want to write. More to come, including an update on Chickenbone (who, incidentally, recently pooped in the bathtub, just as I predicted.)

They tried to make him go to rehab

Six weeks after Chickenbone's emergency back surgery and confinement recovery period, we got new directions from the surgeon: Time to focus less on rest and more on rehabilitation. Since then we have embarked on many adventures in doggie therapy. I thought I'd share them here, in case you ever find yourself nursing a feisty chugweenie back to neurological health. (But I really hope that never happens to you.)

I already mentioned the bathtub therapy. We fill it up with water up to about his chest, and then plunk him down and coax him to walk back and forth using treats. He really loves this. I try to break the Pupperoni down to the teensiest shreds possible so I can make the session last longer (he's already gained weight from having too many training treats, so it's two sticks only per session). I can't believe the effort he'll go to for one microscopic fiber of treat, but if it's at the other end of the tub, he'll clumsily make his way over there. He has not yet pooped in the water, but I have seen tiny bubbles float up from his rear, so I know this day is coming.

Another easy way to treat dogs with this kind of disk injury is to give them one sardine per day. There are lots of omegas and other things that help with spinal stuff. Oooh, see what an expert I am on this topic? THINGS THAT HELP WITH THE STUFF! Whatever. He thinks it is delicious, and I figure it can't hurt. Though it stinks to high heaven.

This tip we got from the rehabilitation person at the hospital: Put his dog food on a little riser. If it's higher up, then he's more likely to stand up when he eats, allowing him to work on his strength and balance. We also a put down cheap little rug down to help him with his traction.

This is the cool underwater treadmill they have at the animal hospital. It's a lot fancier than the pink bathtub! That girl in the tank is the rehab person, and Sal sat by the little window to cheer Chickens on. He did a great job and was walking on his own after just a couple of minutes. Everyone was very impressed.

OK, here's where we get a little ... you know. But we took Chickens to a holistic vet who does acupuncture treatments on animals. I wasn't sure if Sal would buy it - usually I'm the one in this family who gets into all the hippie crap - but he's a good husband and agreed we could at least try it. As you can see from the picture, Chickens was completely relaxed. Do you see the needles?! Crazy! He barely even noticed. She was so fast inserting them, and he just laid down on the cushion and waited patiently. Nutty dog. Anyway, who even knows if this will help, but as you know I'm quite desperate. I'll do just about anything to get this dog back to his old self again. Including...

... putting him on something called GREAT YANG RESTORATION. I had to try so hard not to look at Sal's you've-got-to-be-joking face as the holistic lady was prescribing this, along with another herbal supplement that supposedly helps restore neurological functions. I don't know much about Chickenbone's Great Yang, but if it needs restoring to get him peeing and walking again, well, here's my Visa!

Important announcement

I know this is going to sound kind of unbelievable, but I would like to report that Saturday, January 16, 2010, was a good day. The whole damned thing, good! Let me tell you.

It started at Weight Watchers, which I rejoined two weeks ago because I am carrying around one hundred eleventy thousand pounds of baby weight. Unfortunately I had a supremely lousy performance my first two weeks out. I didn't write down what I ate, I didn't weigh or measure my food, and I consumed a ton of junk and approximately no fruits or vegetables. But Saturday morning when I climbed on the scale, I didn't gain ANY weight! Good ol' breastfeeding! OK, that's the first good thing.

Then: We came home and cleaned up the house. Nothing makes my heart go pitty-pat like a clean house.

And then: Mia's grandparents stopped by, so we had them hang out with her while we took Chickens for a "sling walk" up and down the street. Not only did he spurt out some pee, but he also pooped. In someone else's yard, just like a real dog!

AND THEN: Sal, Mia and I went downtown to a comic book festival, where Mia had lots of fun staring at all the nice nerds and their pretty pictures. Afterward, we walked to Caffe Trieste to have coffee and a pastry. You know, just like leisurely, breezy people! Who have time to go to COFFEE SHOPS!

AND THEN! After we came home, I was changing Mia's diaper and singing her a song. I sing to her a lot, very theatrically, with hand gestures and a fake microphone and everything. She loves it. And I don't sing those goofy kid songs, either. Lately I've been on a Lisa Loeb "I Missed You" kick, which is what I was singing when she looked up at me and laughed. She unmistakeably, adorably LAUGHED! Oh, you guys. There's just no way to describe how cool that is. And I am allowed to sound all goopy and obnoxious-parent about this because, is it just me, or has this blog been a bit of a downer lately? There's just a bit of imbalance between depressing dog stuff and cool baby stuff.

We wrapped up the day with an actual home-cooked dinner. OK, it was for the most part Trader Joe's quickies: orange chicken, which we served over some fried rice made by my wonderful neighbor across the street, plus some pot stickers and steamed string beans. String beans might not have been the wisest side dish - snipping all those tips with a fussy baby in the Bjorn was not easy. But snip them I did, one damn bean at a time! It was the first real hot, healthy meal we have pieced together in I don't know how long. So I was very impressed with us.

The nice thing about a string of endlessly shitty days is that a good one feels downright miraculous.

The problem of poop

Last night we tackled a bad habit that has been going on far too long: Sal sleeping on the couch. This began shortly after Chickens came home from having his emergency back surgery. The dog had to remain on crate rest for 23.5 hours a day, coming out only for pee breaks, and this made him miserable. And barky. Which doesn't work very well with a sleeping infant in the next room.

We figured out that Sal sleeping on the couch helped the situation tremendously, as Chickens gives a very big damn about being alone in the living room at night. But a couple of times, Sal has tried to sleep in our bed again, and this never lasts longer than an hour or so because Chickens starts to whine and bark. Even though our bedroom door is RIGHT there, four feet from his cage. That's not good enough. There needs to be a warm body on the couch within sight of him, or else.

So you pet-owners might think, well, this is just a battle of wills with a stubborn dog. You just need to go all alpha on him, right? Show him who's boss! Squirt him with the water bottle, or rattle a can of coins, or some other training method to get him to quiet down. Yes, that's what you'd do normally. If your dog wasn't a cripple.

The problem here boils down to poop. Poop is a now very huge issue in this family, well beyond the 10-diapers-a-day infant. The thing is, Chickens' bowels move just fine, but obviously he isn't able to just trot out to the back yard when he has to poop. So he holds it as long as he can, sometimes trying to give us signals that we may or may not recognize. But when he can't hold it anymore, the poops just come out.

In fact, here's a story to illustrate what life is like in this house right now: A few weeks ago I was nursing Mia on the couch, and Chickens was relaxing with Sal on the loveseat while we quietly watched TV. All of a sudden, Sal leaps into the air and yells "He's shitting! HE'S SHITTING!" And I'm like "RUUUUUNNNN!" And as Sal races toward the door with the paralyzed dog in his arms, the poops are falling out of Chickens' butt, plop! plop-plop! right onto the hardwood floors. I laughed until I cried. This is just so completely ridiculous.

But my point is, the dog can't help when he poops. And when he accidentally goes in his cage, he is mortified and disgusted and wants it cleaned up NOW. And who can blame him?! I'm frankly glad my dog doesn't enjoy sitting in box with some shit. But this also means we can't scold him in the middle of the night for barking or whining, because half the time it means he has pooped. So when he cries, you have to turn on the lights, take him out of the cage, remove the 17 blankets he loves to sleep in, shake them all out and carefully check the (conveniently brown) floor of the cage. It's a whole huge process, and it's much easier for everyone to get back to sleep if Sal just sleeps out there. Especially since Sal on the couch usually eliminates the "I'm lonely" crying - in other words, it cuts the noise by about half.

Well, last night we decided enough was enough. We knew Chickens had pooped at like 7 p.m., so chances of a middle-of-the-night poop were slim. After Mia went to sleep, we had some playtime with him on the floor, and then we kissed him good night and put him in his cage. He burrowed into his blankets until we couldn't see him anymore, which is usually the sign that he's out for the night. But just in case, Sal starts building a Ferris Bueller-style decoy "person" on the couch, using my big pregnancy body pillow and some blankets. I think this is truly a stroke of genius until I see Chickens' head poke out of the blankets and whip around to glare at us. I swear to christ, this dog knew EXACTLY what was going on. So Sal pretended to sleep on the couch for a little while, and when Chickens appeared to fall asleep, Sal sneaked into our bed.

We both laid there awake for a bit, and sure enough, we heard Chickens start to whimper. But the TV was on, and I think that helped him go to sleep. Until about 3 a.m., when I heard him start crying. When I heard a bark, I sadly nudged Sal, who got up to check on him. Turned out the little weasel was just thirsty - he darted out of the cage, and when Sal picked him up to "tail-walk" him, he trotted over to his water dish. (And yes, we will be getting an in-cage water bottle just as soon as humanly possible. There just hasn't been much humanly possible around here lately.) So. After he had some water, Sal put him back in the cage and tried to fake him out again. But about a half hour later, as he crawled back into bed, Chickens started to bark and cry again.

We gave up.

I simply don't know how to handle this. One one hand, I can't have my husband sleeping on the dang couch for the rest of Chickenbone's paralyzed days. 'Cause, uh, that could still be ALL OF THEM. So we really need to just bite the bullet and win this war. On the other hand, and this is probably obvious, we need sleep. We need sleep so bad we could nearly lay right down and die of all the needing.

One wonderful resource on dogs who have had this kind of injury is a web site called Dodgerslist. Suggestions I have found there include bringing the cage into our bedroom at night (we can't, it's too big and heavy); getting another cage for the bedroom (the room is too small); and giving him benadryl or some other kind of sedative before we go to bed (um, we can't go around drugging the dog to sleep for the rest of our lives.) We also can't just bring him into bed with us because the risk of him jumping off onto the floor is just too great. I am telling you, there is no solution.

Though I suppose it would help if Chickens ever figured out HOW TO WALK AGAIN. Then we could let him be free throughout the house, and he would able to sleep in his regular doggie bed in our bedroom. I really believe that would help so much. He just wants to be close to us.

Last week we met with a rehab specialist at Chickenbone's hospital, and she is going to begin some work with him this Thursday. They have a great facility there that includes an underwater treadmill. While we were visiting with her, one of the two surgeons who operated on him popped into our room to say hi. He was so impressed with how well Chickenbone was moving that he grabbed a video camera so he could e-mail some footage to the other surgeon.

So everyone there is very encouraging, and they do believe he will walk and go to the bathroom on his own eventually. We are also going to be doing some acupuncture (yep, doggie acupuncture - totally a thing!) which will hopefully help him with peeing, another thing we're still taking care of for him. As for the sleeping ... well, this is why shortly after Chickenbone's injury, we doubled our weekly lottery purchases. Surely our luck is due for a change, and $4 million can probably solve just about anything!

Feeling a little frayed

I wish the bar on what constitutes a "bad day" would quit moving on me.

Six weeks ago, a bad day was listening to my paralyzed, stapled-shut dog sob for hours on end. Locked in a cage, unable to move his legs, drugged out of his gourd, and snarling and snapping at us whenever we tried to take him out to squeeze the contents of his bladder onto a pad on the kitchen counter.

Now that dog can darned near walk, he can wag his tail and play with toys, and he has even started to pee a little bit on his own. So how can things possibly still feel miserable?

Well, it turns out Chickenbone's progress somehow makes this situation feel worse. For one thing, while he can sort of manage a very wobbly walk on our big rugs, he slips and stumbles on the wood floors. So whenever he wants to go anywhere in the house besides the living room, he sits at the edge of the rug and barks for someone to come over and "tail-walk" him to his destination. (He moves his front legs, and you hold his back end up by his tail. After awhile, this feels REALLY great on your back, especially when you are hefting a 12-pound infant in your other arm.)

Also, now he wants to jump back up onto his beloved couches, where he spent 90 percent of his days before his injury. Uh, Chickens? Hate to be the one to tell you this, but you're still crippled. You ain't jumping anywhere. Plus, even if he could physically jump, we simply can't let him do that ever again. Never, ever again can he get on the sofas by himself because the risk of reinjury when he leaps to the floor is just too great.

But today, with Sal back at work after his 10-week paternity leave, I was sitting on the couch when Chickens got out of his doggie bed, wobbled over to my feet, and started trying to come up for a cuddle. We can't even let him ATTEMPT to jump, so I had to stop him somehow, but I was nursing Mia so I couldn't do anything but yell at him. It felt awful! He is like the kid who had to stay home from school with the flu, only now he feels all better and he doesn't understand why he still has recuperating to do. He just sat there giving me his pleading eyes, and moving his upper body pathetically up and down in an effort to jump. It broke my heart.

Meanwhile, breaking my eardrums today was Mia, who was suffering some tummy and sleep issues. For four hours, she wouldn't nap, wouldn't eat, wouldn't do anything but squirm and wail in my arms. A couple of times, thanks to wild swinging and shushing and pacing and singing and bouncing, I finally got her to doze off in my arms. JUST IN TIME to hear Chickens sitting at the edge of the rug barking for a "ride" to his water dish, waking the baby and making mommy cry.

Folks, life is not easy around here.

I guess I just got used to Sal being around all day to help with the Chickens stuff. He had his baby, I had mine. At least we could divide the work. But one person dealing with both Mia and Chickens is very, very hard. If you're not neglecting one, you're neglecting the other. Neither one of them appreciates this very much, and they aren't shy about telling you so.

And then there's the pressure of all the stuff I want and need to do. There are basics, like taking a shower, doing a load of laundry, eating lunch. When I'm lucky, I get to a couple of these things. But there's a second to-do list in my head, one that every single day I intend to tackle. And every single day ends with absolutely no progress. Answering 800 e-mails. Writing in Mia's baby book. Digging my non-maternity work clothes out of storage and pressing and hanging them. Uh, BLOGGING. Putting away Christmas. Going through Mia's drawers and removing clothes that are too small, which is, like, everything. And don't even get me thinking about the third-tier list, stuff I'd just really like to do, but since they aren't necessities, they flat won't happen. Like going to a yoga class, cooking a fun meal, or reading a book. The hours just seem to slip right through my fingers, and it seems nothing gets accomplished except getting through the day.

That's a lot of whining, I know. Sorry. We just really need to get to the next part of Chickens' progress soon. So much of this will be solved when he's strong enough to walk through the house on his own. To that end, next week we are going to have a real physical therapy session at the hospital where he had his surgery. And we'll keep working on the pee thing. We take him out for a sling walks now - me holding the regular leash attached to his collar, Sal holding up his back end with a homemade sling (made of a leash, an old sock and rubber bands) and Mia in the baby Bjorn. We're quite a sight! And during these walks, we have seen many little spurts of pee come out, meaning there has been some neurological healing with his brain and bladder. (And can I just say, I never in my life thought I'd spend this much time squatting down to stare hopefully at a dog's penis. Not my most glamorous moments.) We still have to manually express most of his urine four or five times a day, but that's still improvement.

I guess I just need to dig a little deeper and find a lot more patience, because that's the only thing that's going to get us through to the other side of this mess.

Here, let's look at some fun pictures. Here's photographic proof of Chickens walking. He was eating a sardine (he gets one per day - they contain lots of good vitamins that can help with things like a back injury) and every time he licked the bowl it would move, so he'd walk to follow it.


Here is Chickens during his bathtub therapy. We plop him into the tub and wave treats back and forth across the water, and he walks trying to get them. He finds this setup terribly convenient, since if he gets thirsty, he just sticks his face in the water and drinks!


Speaking of baths, here is Mia's favorite time of day: bathtime with dad. Even if she is screaming her face off - as she often is at night - stick her in the tub and she's all coos and smiles.


Obligatory mohawk shot.


I love this one. I just wanted a picture of the cute outfit Mia's nana gave her. But it ended up being such a perfect snapshot of our life right now. Check out my messy, unwashed hair, and that big, wet spit-up splotch on my shoulder. And in the background, you can see the sad dog watching all the fun from his cage. Oh, poor everyone!


Christmas morning, Mia surrounded by a bunch of her presents.


And here is an exhausted husband and wife, staying home on their favorite holiday of the year. After Mia went to bed, we had a party for two, sitting in the back yard listening to a live mariachi band that was playing at a party down the street. We made it to midnight and well beyond, enjoying champagne and cocktails that resulted in my first hangover since January 2009. And that little Mia, she decided to sleep for 10 hours straight that night. So I guess life isn't all bad!

All we wanted for Christmas

This morning when we opened the door to his cage, Chickens stood up and walked out.

He may have wobbled like a drunken sailor, and after two steps he promptly fell down. But this is still huge, huge progress. Three or four weeks ago, he couldn't stand on four legs even with our help - we'd prop him up and he'd flop down like a rag doll. But this time, ever so briefly, we had dog who stood up and walked all by himself.

Now, there's still much ground to cover and many problems to solve. For instance, how to get the husband off the couch, where he has slept every night for three weeks because that's the only thing that keeps the caged dog from barking and waking up the baby. Or how to get Chickens to learn how to pee without his beloved lifting of the rear leg. But for today we're just going to be grateful for his Christmas gift to us.

Chickens on the mend

As we enter the fourth week of Chickenbone's recovery from emergency spinal surgery, I have a few hopeful things to report.

Last week after giving him a bath in the kitchen sink, I sat down on the living room floor to finish toweling him off. For one split second I relaxed my grip on his body, and before I knew it the HALF-PARALYZED DOG skittered on his front legs across the floor and flung himself headfirst into his old dog bed. The one that has sat empty for three weeks while he has lived in his crate. It was the most unbelievable thing - the little rascal was just so damned FAST. And when he hit that cushion, he began wriggling around joyously and wrapping himself up in his little blankets. You could almost imagine that he had been eyeing that bed from behind bars every single day, just waiting for the opportunity to make his great escape. After so many unhappy days, it was thrilling to see him act like his old self again. Here is the triumphant Chickens relaxing in his bed:


The other cool thing is REALLY cool: Sal's parents, who are two of Chickenbone's favorite people in the world, came over for a visit this weekend. And when they walked in the front door, that freaking dog wagged his tail.

HE WAGGED. HIS TAIL.

Now, it was the sorriest, most pathetic wag you ever saw. Especially if you knew how he wagged it before, when his tail was a springy little curl that popped up above his back. This new wag was fairly limp, and the curl is mostly gone, but who cares? It wagged, man. And wagging was not even within the realm of possibility two weeks ago.

I was really bummed that Sal didn't see this (and a bit fearful that I imagined it) but Chickens wagged it again today when we visited the vet for a post-op checkup. We got a pretty good report, all things considered. No miracles yet - he still can't walk, and he still needs help going to the bathroom. But in addition to the wagging tail, the vet also detected some small movement in his back left leg. So small we could barely see it, but it's there.

It may not seem like a lot to get excited about, but very slow progress was something we were warned about from the start. Chickens isn't even halfway through his two-month initial recovery period, so we still have lots of time for more improvement. Now, since he is in no pain and his surgery wounds have healed up, our focus is less on crate confinement (though he still needs to stay in there most of the time) and more on rehabilitation. Each day we will continue doing range-of-motion exercises, as well as sling-walking him in the back yard, encouraging him to pee on his own, and even doing water therapy in the bathtub.

So, pretty good news, no? Let's see how the next four weeks go. Even if improvements continue at this exact rate, we'll be overjoyed. And hey, maybe Chickens and Mia will learn how to walk together! AWWWW!

A little bit of peace

The baby is asleep in her swing, the dog is asleep in his kennel, and the husband is at the gym. I should be taking this opportunity to nap myself, but I'm just so thrilled about all the blessed silence in this house that can't bear the thought of falling asleep and missing it!

So at least one of our suspicions regarding Chickens was correct - that big surgery collar was making him miserable. After the vet removed 12 industrial-sized staples from his back incision yesterday, we were finally able to take the damned thing off. And when we got home, Chickens promptly curled up and slept for three hours. Without drugs. We couldn't stop staring incredulously at that quiet little heap under the blankets. It seemed miraculous that the dog who kept us awake for a week with his crying could sleep like such an angel.

No other updates on his paralysis - his back end is floppy and limp. But the good news is that his spirits are getting higher by the day. Yesterday when the vet set him down, Chickens bolted across the floor like a little seal, "walking" with his front legs and dragging his back behind him. He went straight to his dad for a kiss and a cuddle. A few minutes ago when I opened the door of his cage, he skittered toward me and out onto the floor. When I gave him a treat, he started whining with it in his mouth (he does that when it's a REALLY good treat) and then he dragged himself back into the cage to bury the treasure inside his blankets. And about 15 minutes ago, he even growled at his mortal enemy, the mailman! So his back end aside, he is more and more our old Chickens every day.

Now we wait. It could be weeks or even months before we know whether he'll ever walk again, but there's still plenty of room to hope for the best. We just have to be vigilant about his care. Several times per day, we have a session of P.T. in which we extend and retract each of his back legs 30 times. We also have to help him go to the bathroom. Poops come out on their own, but pee only comes with some help, so four times a day we have to manually express his bladder onto one of those doggie pee pads. You guys, I am an EXPERT manual-canine-bladder-expresser. It was really difficult at first, because I was so nervous - you have to push kind of hard, with your hands all over his back end where the surgery happened. Plus, well, it's just not easy to locate a dog's bladder with your hands and squeeze it in just the right way that makes pee comes out. The nurse who taught us how to do it was like, "Oh, don't worry - it's just like milking a cow!" Ah, yes. Very helpful. I'll just fall back on all of those cow-milking talents I picked up in college.

Later today we're going to take him to the back yard and let him sniff around. See if we can help get his brain and his bladder talking again. We're also very excited about giving him his first bath, now that the staples are gone. I mean, during those first dozen or so potty breaks, let's just say the farmer had a tough time aiming the teat at the bucket. The vet also said we could let him out of his cage for short, supervised periods. Let him scoot around and feel like he's part of the world again.

Life with a dog who requires this much attention, plus an adorable 5-week-old baby who is even more demanding, is hard. But when I start to feel like I'm losing it, I try to think back to where we were even five days ago, and I realize we have already come a very long way through this storm. And I'm hoping that five days from now, and five days from then, life will settle back into something that - even if it isn't - will feel kind of normal.

Turkey day, Chicken nights

Hi. So remember how I ended my last post with "See you guys later, I'm going to get some sleep now!"

AHAHAHAHAHA. No. That is not what happened. Chickens did, in fact, quiet down long enough for me to snuggle into the chair in Mia's room and drift off for approximately four seconds. Then the crying started again, and then it got louder, and then it turned into crying mixed with barks, yelps and howls. By the time he had reached five and a half hours of this suffering, I couldn't take it anymore. I called the ER vet, who said we should bring him in. We didn't know whether he was in pain or just really pissed off about being in a cage and, you know, paralyzed. But regardless of the reason, healing requires rest, and he was clearly not getting that.

So for the second time in a week, we packed up the baby and the dog in the middle of the night and drove to the hospital. We arrived at around 4 a.m., and they said they'd like to admit him until the following afternoon. They wanted to monitor him, run some tests, and shoot him full of potent drugs. They told us to go home and go to bed. Of course, the moment I closed my eyes, the baby was wide awake and demanding her breakfast. Sal managed a couple hours of sleep before waking up to run the Thanksgiving Day Turkey Trot, where Mia and I watched him cross the finish line of his first 10K.

After Thanksgiving dinner at my in-laws' house, we returned to the hospital to get Chickens. They still weren't sure whether his distress was because of pain or sadness and frustration, but likely it was a great deal of both. So they replaced the pain-medication patch on his skin (which had worn off the day before) and injected him with some kind of super-painkiller. He was pretty well stoned out of his gourd. They also sent us home with a bottle of sedatives to keep him calm inside his cage.

It was a really good night. He was feeling so free of pain that he even showed a few brief flashes of his old, lovable Chickenbone personality. When we put some dry dog food in his cage, for the first time since all this began he gobbled it down. (Though the drug patch gives him the munchies when first administered - seriously.) And did I ever tell you how one of his favorite things is to get himself all wrapped up in a blanket from head to toe, like a little burrito? Well, even with his useless back legs flopping around behind him, he started nudging the blankets in his cage with his nose and teeth, and we watched incredulously as he somehow pulled one over his body. It was unbelievable. It was like seeing OUR Chickens again.


Then we all collapsed into bed and had an incredibly peaceful, uneventful night. And how I wish we could have strung two such nights together, but last night the crying began again after my 2 a.m. date with Mia. It wasn't as shrill as it was on The Very Bad Night, but it was enough to tear my heart into pieces as we laid there listening to him. (Luckily, I didn't break down crying myself because I'M TOO TIRED TO CRY! Silver linings, you guys. Silver linings.)

The crying went on for about 10 minutes before we got up to give him more pain medicine, but even that is an ordeal because his appetite is crap. He doesn't want treats, and he ESPECIALLY doesn't want treats with pills in them. Sometimes it can take more than an hour to coax him into eating something. But even after we got him to take his meds, he cried for an hour. This is an hour we spend busting our brains trying to troubleshoot the problem. Does the ticking clock above his cage in the bedroom irritate him? Is he cold? Does the fan bother him? Is he lonely? Our minds race trying to figure out how to help him. One thing we realized is that he rarely cries like this during the day, when his cage and his family are in the living room. So at 4 a.m., we got up and dragged the cage back out. We turned on the TV and hit the couches with blankets and pillows. He quieted down, and we all slept for about an hour before Mia woke up for a feeding. (I would whine more about not sleeping if I wasn't so relieved to finally be in the daytime again. Daytime is so, so much better than those endless nights.)

We just have to get to Monday. On Monday we get the staples taken out, and Chickens can stop wearing the big collar. He HATES the collar. Check out how he glares at us when we put it on him!

Scary Chickens! Anyway. Let's end this on a positive note. I'm afraid to think about this too much, because I don't want to get my hopes up, and I'm trying to brace for the worst. But when we were at the ER on Thursday morning, the vet did a little diagnostic test by propping up Chickenbone's back end so he'd stand on all fours. When they did this a week ago, his legs flopped down like a rag doll. But this time, he stood on his own for maybe 10 seconds. Which is AN ETERNITY in paralyzed-dog-land. It means he is getting a little bit of tone back in his muscles. Sal and I also wonder if his increased pain in the past few days doesn't mean he's regaining some sensation back there. Maybe we're just kidding ourselves, but sometimes for sanity's sake, we just need to indulge in a minute or two of hoping.

Better late than never

I started this post about Mia's first few weeks at home awhile ago, but then I got sidetracked. Gee, wonder why! Might as well finish it now, while I'm sitting here in the dark listening to the dog sob in his cage. It has been a very, very long night. Chickenbone's crying - the most mournful, soul-wrenching weeping I have ever heard in my life - has been going on for almost two hours nonstop. Why can't the little guy just go to sleep, pleasepleaseplease?!

I think Sal finally fell asleep after I gave him some earplugs - he is running his first 10K in the morning and needs rest. I can't enjoy the same solution since I need to hear Mia when she wakes up for her feeding. I tried to sleep in the chair in her room, but I can still hear Chickens crying, and it's so upsetting. I'm wide awake right now. You know how everyone is always warning new parents about that moment when they are so sleep-deprived they could die, and the baby won't stop howling, and they can actually feel their mind coming apart into little tiny pieces? I think I'm experiencing that feeling right now. And my daughter is sound asleep. God.

But anyway. Let's cheer up for a moment and look at some pictures.


Mia had a touch of jaundice when she was born, so they sent us home from the hospital with something called a "Bili blanket," which isn't nearly as cute as it sounds. In fact, it's not even a blanket. It's a flat piece of plastic connected to a big heavy hose and a loud machine that lights up the plastic and helps get rid of the bilirubins in Mia's blood. She had to lay on it 24-7 without clothes on for the first four days at home. I personally would have screamed bloody murder, but she was a trooper.


This is Mia yawning. She is a champion yawner - each one lasts like a full minute, start to finish. They are endlessly entertaining.


Chickenbone and Mia get along famously. He was a little bit WTF when we first brought her home, and he spent that whole first night following us around barking incredulously. But the novelty of it wore off. He loves giving her big kisses on her face and hands, and he likes to snuggle with her and mom or dad on the couch.


Mia's first bath! I was sad to wash her because I was afraid that scrumptious baby scent would go away. Turns out it grows right back.


Mia and her dad, who adored each other from the start. I love this picture so much I can barely stand to look at it right now. I can't believe it was taken a mere two weeks ago. WHEN LIFE WITH A NEWBORN WAS SO EASY!

OK, I just gave Chickens another pain pill, and I sat by his cage and scratched his ears until it started to kick in. I don't hear him anymore, and it has been a good five minutes or so, so maybe he finally fell asleep. I'll take advantage and try to close my eyes for a few minutes, since Mia will be awake and hungry in an hour or two. Hope I don't fall asleep into my turkey dinner tomorrow, but if I do, I hope my face lands somewhere near the gravy.