Not a Good Day

There are far worse things in life than what is going on in mine, but as far as my days go this one was pretty bad. 36 hours ago our dogs escaped from our yard. They don't tend to run away, but for some reason they bolted yesterday. We LOVE our dogs - they are a HUGE part of our life. In fact, I would have to say that I really do like animals far more than people. I've been a vegetarian for 20 years which is directly derived from my love for animals. I spend a good part of my day petting and talking to my dogs. If your animals are not a major part of your life, than you will not understand any of this or the pain that is involved in losing your pets. I drove for hours yesterday looking for my dogs, fearing that I wouldn't find them or, worse, fearing that I would find them dead on the road. As night came and I knew they wouldn't be back, it was heartbreaking. I had to take a sleeping pill to knock me out or I wouldn't have slept at all. At 8:45 this a.m. I got a call from someone who found Abby, our Brittany Spaniel. She was several miles away, so I went to collect her. She was very excited to see me and seemed fine. I glared and swore at her all the way home, which didn't seem to affect her at all. In fact, I'm sure she will escape again the next chance she gets.

Chamois, our yellow lab, is still missing. Chamois is probably the sweetest dog on earth. She is a cuddler and she won't let me out of her sight (unless she is following Abby out of our yard on a 36 hour adventure). She came to us as a stray 6 months ago and we are very attached to her. I have a feeling that she will not be back. She is either dead in the woods or someone decided she was a very nice dog and has kept her. We will have an ad in the paper tomorrow and we have posted signs in the area. I just can't stop thinking about her and I can't believe that we are going into a second night without her here.

I spent 5.5 hours in the ER with Geet Nana today. I guess she didn't sleep all night because she couldn't catch her breath when she laid down. I called the nurse in Cardiology in Fargo first who told me to call the Geet's local physician who told us to go to either the walk-in clinic or the ER. We chose the walk-in clinic who then told us they didn't want to deal with a heart issue and sent us on to the ER. Well, the ER was a fiasco. There were shift changes and screw-ups and AFTER the Geet peed they asked her for a urine sample and then we discovered that the Geet had a bandage over a sore that she got while in the ICU in Fargo and the sore had grown onto the bandage and had to be soaked off and it smelled pretty bad too. They couldn't figure out why the Geet had shortness of breath, but did discover that she has a UTI, abnormal chest x-ray with a spot on her lung and low hemoglobin. They had trouble with her chart - no record of her being in the ICU in Fargo - and basically just didn't know what to do with her.

While there my mother, who was watching my children, told me that my father had again allowed one of my children to visit a neighbor's house on her own. We don't know these people. Their children attend an evangelical school that I find scary and seem to be unsupervised much of the time. I was disturbed the first time he allowed this, but since then I have learned that there is something that happened long ago in this family that is a MAJOR red flag for allowing children to visit there without their parents. My father worked with EBD kids most of his life, and was absolutely incredible at it, and my mother was a child sexual abuse social worker. My parents worked with children who had the most awful things happen to them. I am surprised that my Dad, of all people, would allow a 7 year old to hang out at a home with people we don't know at all. I tend not to be paranoid about most things, but I still shudder when I think of what can happen in this day when you are not more careful. This is not 1950 for Christ's sake.

To top this off, when me and the Geet FINALLY got home there was very little wine left. So, on a night when I could use large quantities, I only had a small glass. I imagine this post is nagging and boring and whiny to most of you who are reading. I mostly wrote it to get it off my chest. Otherwise, I might just sit here and cry.