They Drive Me to Drink

As I'm sitting at home this morning, waiting for PetSmart to open so that I can go buy Heffner the Cone of Shame, I figured that I should sit my absentee blogger butt down and write a post. ;)  There's not a ton to update about the dogs, so, since I was in a pretty foul mood yesterday and am still a little on the grouchy side this morning, I'm going to explain why my dogs drive me to drink at times.  Please don't be confused and think that I otherwise don't enjoy alcoholic beverages!  I very much do.  It's just that there are times when the dogs do things, not out of malice, that cause me to want to bludgeon something.  I have found it to be far more productive to channel that rage into pouring myself a very generous glass of something yummy that tends to put things into perspective for me.  It also chills me the hell out. ;)  Without further ado, I shall explain my day yesterday.

It all started at about 1:30am Monday night/Tuesday morning.  One of my smoke detectors had a battery that was dying so it started making that horrific, high pitched noise.  I may be a heavy sleeper, but even I will eventually get woken up by it.  Once I figured out which one it was I casually tried to get to the battery.  Long story short, I had to use a pair of needle nose pliers and a screw driver in order to get the "easy" slide hatch open to change the battery.  Mean while, the noise that the smoke detector makes when the battery needs to be changed absolutely unnerves Bess.  I have no idea why.  Doesn't phase the other two, but she will literally stand there violently shaking because it bothers her so much.  I'm sure that my cursing and thrashing things around in the garage to find the tools didn't help matters any.  Once the battery was changed, I set about settling Bess down.  By this time she was stress panting.  Poor chica.  She calmed down after a bit and I headed off to bed.  Translation:  Lindsay is starting her day at a deficit on sleep.

My day at work was actually quite mellow and a pretty good day.  Everything went as it should and I was able to work on a little side project that I have going.  A pretty good day!  I was a little tired despite my caffeine infusion, but so what.  Then I get home.  Walk in the door and like usually Heffner and Bess excitedly greet me and Ruthie is screaming bloody murder at me from her crate.  All seems normal.  Until I'm setting my stuff down on the dining room table, turn around and Heffner has a steady stream of blood flowing down one of his back legs and splattering all over the kitchen floor.  GAH!!  Here's where I need to take a sidebar.

Heffner has this ugly fatty tumor on his back right leg that has been steadily growing over the last few months.  He managed to rub all the hair off of it and over the past few weeks keeps licking at it.  It hadn't been a huge bother.  I planned to have it removed eventually and it looks like the hair is actually starting to grow back on it.  Except for one portion of it that he just won't stop periodically licking.  Now back to the blood bath, I mean story.

I grab a paper towel, get him to hold still, and apply pressure to the tumor to get it to stop bleeding.  Which takes a little while.  Meanwhile, Ruthie is seriously PISSED that she's still in her crate.  The big dogs are clearly getting all of my attention, she hasn't been let out of her prison (btw, her crate is roughly the size you would put a golden retriever in, so it's not like she's stuck in a crate that's appropriately sized for her) and she needs to go potty!!  I keep meaning to get her screaming routine on video so that I can share it and everyone who hasn't lived with a frenchie can fully understand the murderous sounds that they are shockingly capable of.  Needless to say, it was further fraying my nerves.  Oh yeah, and she decided that then was a good time to poop in her crate.  Super.

The bleeding finally stops.  I get all three dogs outside to pee and start cleaning up all the blood that is splattered on the floor.  I did briefly think about taking a picture of the carnage on the floor, but that was before I found out where Heffner was when the bleeding started.  That'd be on the couch.  Because the couch I have is made out of a material that isn't suitable for anyone who has any pets (or actually uses their couch for that matter), I keep the couch covered with various blankets in an effort to get it to last a little longer before I replace it.  The blanket in the area where he had been laying was just trashed.  I won't go into details, but blood bath is a very good descriptor. 

Once I finally got all of the blood cleaned up, found my various bandaging supplies and got all the dogs inside so that I could make an attempt at covering up Heffner's tumor.  I thought I did a fairly decent job and was pretty proud of myself!  Until he tried to lay down and I realized that bandaging that back leg while he was standing up gave me a different perspective than when he was laying down.  Arg!  I loosened things up in a few areas and decided to just see how long that bandaging stayed on for.  I also put the inflatable Elizabethan collar on him.  I'm a huge fan of that collar as opposed to the hard plastic style.  It's worked well on both danes in the past and I was hopeful that it would work now.  It sort of did.  I redid the dressing before I went to bed and was hoping for the best. 

By the time my alarm went off, Heffner had managed to get the primary dressing off, but the underlying bandage was still intact.  I was hopeful that maybe he would tolerate the minimal bandage and just leave things alone.  I went for my morning run with Bess and came back to an irritating boy dog who had managed to get the bandage off and clearly had been licking at the tumor again.  Even with the freaking inflatable collar on!  ARG!!  Okay, fine.  I gave him several chances and I tried to play nice.  That boy obviously just really wants to wear the Cone of Shame.  Only I somehow must have left the one I already had at the old house.  Super.  Which brings us up to the current time.  I'm sitting here waiting for PetSmart to open so that I can go buy him the stupid collar and he can hopefully leave that freaking tumor alone long enough for it to actually heal and I don't have to come home to blood every where and be in a bad mood for two nights in a row. (do you like that run on sentence??)  And naturally, since I got back from my run with Bess, he's totally behaved himself and been lying on the couch, not even attempting to lick at his tumor.  Little turd.

And all of THAT is how a bottle of wine got magically opened last night and my rage monster got temporarily put to sleep. ;)

I have several pictures of the dogs to share, so I think my next post (which will hopefully be along in the next few days) will be mostly pictures.  I did at least include our Christmas card picture from this past Christmas. :)  I hope everyone is doing well in the new year!