babybloomr

OK, so after all of my poop-eating Pip stories…? The little guy is sick!

(And no, it’s not the poop, that happened days ago and besides if that was gonna hurt him, he would have been sick YEARS ago.)

He’s been acting a little weird, very low-key and very little appetite. He is not moving around a whole lot, though still walking fine and going outside, but his face looks kind of, well, pleading. (If you are not a dog person, that sentence just sounded ridiculous– if you are a dog person, you just thought, ‘Yeah, I get that.’) He is quite elderly– not sure exactly how old, because he is a rescue– but we have had him about 10 years and he was no spring chicken when we got him.

I knew last night when he was refusing to eat hand-fed ‘people food’ that we had turned a corner. He threw up a couple of times and I had also noticed a small bloody sore spot on his tiny little bum, so first thing this morning I called the vet and I took him in at 11:00.  Madi went with me for moral support. Pip was huddled in a towel trying to bury his head in my armpit, and after a brief examination they took him into another room to draw blood and do a more intensive exam. After going over his blood work, urine specimen and stool sample (This is already sounding expensive, right? Same thing I was thinking at this point), everyone was puzzled because they were having trouble matching up his symptoms with anything conclusive. None of it added up, and they also couldn’t figure out what that abrasion on his rear end was all about. Finally they decided to do an x-ray to check his stomach and bowels for any obstructions and when the vet came out with those results she was shaking her head and looking very surprised. “OK, Pip has a REALLY large stone in his bladder– it’s just like a kidney stone, but in his bladder, and there’s no way in the world he would ever be able to pass it. The weird thing is that none of his symptoms indicate he is having any problems with that at all right now, and if we hadn’t x-rayed him we never would have found it!”

The bad news is that we are totally looking at surgery to remove it, which will take place on Tuesday, after we get him a little stronger and he recovers from what we now think is just some kind of gastrointestinal thing, probably not serious (though we are watching it and putting him on a bland diet.) The worse news is that we’re looking at waaaay more money than I ever wanted to spend on medical issues that don’t involve a husband, a blood relative, someone I gave birth to or myself. *sigh* But all of his other tests said that he is really a pretty healthy old dog with all of his other organs working just fine, and if we hadn’t found the stone on the x-ray, by the time it DID act up– and it would have– he could have gotten very, very sick very, very quickly. So even Russ who is not what you would call an animal-lover (I KNOW! Go figure) is all in favor of having the surgery. His life will be saved, which makes us all very happy.

There is some other good news. Kinda. We finally figured out what that mysterious red abrasion was on his bottom! The vet said, “It’s not an abscess, it’s very shallow, almost like a scrape or a cut… Does he scoot around on his rear end at all?” (No.) “Would he have gotten in a fight with one of the other dogs?” (No.) “Did you trim around that area at all recently?” OK, oops. I had indeed done a little uh, clean-up trim job last night and Pip had indeed yipped, but then he always does that, the little wussy. Well, this time he wasn’t kidding, I totally gave him a little, um, slice.  Apparently if you are a pet in need of some booty-hair-trimming, I am not your girl. I apologized profusely to Pip, and I think we’re OK, but he’s not making any eye contact with me so I might have to buy him some jewelry or a car or something.

Anyway, hold a thought for Pip the Squeak next Tuesday as he goes under the knife. I’ll keep you updated of course– after all what’s a blog for if not to give a blow-by-blow breathless account of the inner workings of a Yorkie’s bladder surgery, right? Right!

Here is a face to put with your fervent prayers:

And speaking of trimming hair–how’s that for a segue?– here are a couple of pictures of Madi’s glamorous new ‘do. I would say I love it unconditionally because it is so darling, but there is one problem with it– it makes her look, like, college-age or something. Usually, because she’s so dang tiny, when she’s bouncing around here with her long hair flying it’s very easy to just think of her as just a 8th or 9th grader, with y e a r s ahead of her before we have to start thinking about things like graduating and going away and not having her around all the time. Now my denial is a little harder to maintain, because when she comes around a corner and I look up… there’s suddenly a more sophisticated version of Madi looking back at me. Yikes.

Anyway, here she is, rocking the new hair:

And here’s an artsy version of what the two of us looked like in the salon right before she got it cut– if you happen to be on some kind of hallucinogenic drugs, of course:

Hope you all have a wonderful Labor Day Weekend! I’ll be figuring out the contest and springing that on you VERY SOON!

In the comments section of the last post, we all kind of got off on a tangent concerning my Highly Celebrated Husband’s Many Awards. (My tongue is so far in my cheek right now it’s threatening to poke out of the side of my face.) I explained that there was a difference in the number of awards he won and the amount of actual statuary hardware we had in our possession. The gist of it is that where the Grammys are concerned, whether he won them with the Imperials or as a solo act, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences would then send him the classic gramophone award. But when you are part of a compilation or special event or soundtrack album that wins an award, only the producer is awarded the statuette and the artists that appear on the recording are sent a lovely official framed document that says they won a Grammy for _____ (name of project). SO, Russ has won 6, but since one of them was a movie soundtrack (“The Apostle”), he only has five actual little metal Grammy Awards in his hot little hands. Now the Dove Awards are way cheaper set up differently, they only give awards to solo artists– if you win one as a member of a group, they only send ONE actual (heavy and pointy) award to the whole group, not the individual singers. So none of the Dove Awards he won as the lead singer for the Imperials are on his shelf, they went home with Armond Morales and Jim Murray, who co-owned the group. To tell you the truth, I don’t even remember how many he won with them… Anyway, he has 9 solo ones here.

Confused (or bored with this) yet?! Well, never fear, I broke out my handy dandy little Flip camera and decided to give you a guided tour of Russ’ AWARD CASE, better known as, um, a bookshelf in the den. And now for your viewing enjoyment….

OH WAIT!!!! I almost forgot!!! You guys need to help me decide how to decide the winner of the contest! I got such a kick out of each and every one of them that honestly, it’s almost impossible to decide based on their chuckle value alone…

To recap, here are some options:

1) Write down names of every entrant, put them in a hat, have Russ/Madi/Charlotte/one of the dogs blindly pick one

2) Have Russ and the rest of the fam take a vote

3) Download one of those fancy-shmancy bloggy things that scientifically pick one at random (BIG bloggers like dooce use those!)

4) Have YOU GUYS vote.

Weigh in here, folks. *I’m kinda leaning towards number one!*

OH, and one more thing: You guys are KILLING me with the comments! I am now officially spoiled rotten with the amount of Say Its you are coming up with– I feel like a Real Live Blogger!! Seriously? Thank you. I am having such fun checking in whenever I get a minute during the day and watching the numbers climb!

And now at long last, here’s the instructional video. Feel free to take notes,

Bookshelf from Babybloomr on Vimeo.