Pupdate

I got an email from BlogHer, the lovely people who post advertisements over there in my sidebar ----->, the other day that I thought was hilarious. They mentioned that, if it was okay with me, they would like to switch my blog to their 'parenting' section after Baby is born. I had to laugh because I SO don't want to become a one dimensional blog but seriously it is difficult to think about or concentrate on anything else besides the 4 pound human that currently dominates every aspect of my life. So, I guess in a few weeks this will be an official Mommy Blog...but there could be worse things!

For today though I'm going to give a little dog update. Our complete and utter love affair with Waffles continues unabated. There is something about that dog that we adore so totally that it is actually sort of strange. He is so terribly sweet and sensitive to our moods that I frequently have to calm myself down in order to MAKE THE DOG FEEL BETTER.
(Mama's crying! It must be my fault! Maybe if I press my ears flat to my head I will be less noticeable.)

He still regularly (although slightly less regularly) destroys our belongings and yet we are still in love with the little idiot. He is also so smart that I can give him complex commands and he will follow them. The other day he had three toys downstairs (when they belong in a basket upstairs) and, rather than bending down, I told him to 'pick up his bunny and bring it upstairs'. He snooted through his three toys until he found the bunny, picked it up and brought it upstairs. I found that eerily intelligent and he does similar things all the time. His vocabulary is massive.
(Lying in the sun with one of his bunnies)

And then there's Smeagol. I've written for around 3 1/2 years about Smeagol's health problems. She gets these random infections about every 6 to 16 weeks or so. It will start off as an irritation in her facial wrinkles and eventually spread to sores on her belly and swollen, irritated paws. We have seen at least four vets over the years and each one goes through the same routine: 'it's a food allergy, change her diet', 'its an environmental allergy, clean her off when you come back inside from walks, 'its a bacterial infection, here's some expensive medicine and cream', 'its random, all we can do is treat it each time it occurs'. We have gone through this cycle literally dozens of times and it is exhausting and expensive for us and miserable for little itch-face.
(Papa, I thought you'd never come home. Is that really you?)

The vet we started with here in Tennessee went through this as well in our first year with him but then he said something that I've been hoping to hear from a person doctor for myself for years - he said 'I'm frustrated and we are going to figure this out'. He contacted a veterinary dermatologist and said that if we agreed we were going to follow her timeline suggestion.

So, first he instructed us to bring Girldog in one morning for a 'sulphurated lime dip' (stinkiest substance known to man) to see if that would do anything. We agreed because we are amenable to anything and this was something that had never been done before so that made us feel hopeful. He then scraped bits of hair and skin off her paws and neck and put them in a 'dermatophyte test medium' (a little vial of orange goo) and told us he would watch it for 21 days and if it turned red it meant she had dermatophytes so we could start treating that. This was also something that had never been done. This week he called to say that the medium had turned crazy, bright, cherry red (which it did, I saw it...it was actually really pretty, this bright red vial with little white streaks growing in it. Andrea, did you ever study dermatophytes?) so we needed to come by and pick up anti fungal medication.

Last, but not least, in the timeline is to get Smeagol spayed which is going to happen on Friday. The vet and the dermatologist vet both seem to feel that unspayed dogs, particularly as they age and particularly the pug breed are just slaves to their hormones and thus some of them become susceptible to every bacteria and fungus that enters their living area and are thus almost constantly tormented by infection and itching.
(The black part is my leg...this is her way of letting me know she doesn't feeeeeeeel well)

So, that is the plan. It is an expensive plan and a time-intensive plan and in some ways a dangerous plan but it is the best we can do. Fortunately veterinary treatments are individually quite cheap (the lime dip was $22, the pills for the dermatophytes were $14 for example) it's just the cost of all of these treatments added up over the months and years that makes me feel faint. But, at this point we felt that this had to come to a head. We are so utterly broke and I am freaking out trying to figure out how this month we are going to be able to pay normal expenses plus immigration fees plus spaying plus buying all the baby stuff that we still need but we are not prepared to give up our dogs unless it becomes absolutely, critically necessary. These are last ditch efforts here to get Smeagol better. If this program does not get her better I do not know what we will do because after Baby is here we will not have the time or money to try to help her constantly.

When I went to pick up the pills yesterday I asked the vet if he thought that the dermatophyte infestation was what had been wrong with Smeagol all along and he said that in his opinion that and her need to be fixed was what was keeping her this way. He said 'in another month she is going to be a healthy, happy girl again'. That's what we're asking for.

(We have no couch, only a love seat, so the little bit of time that we spend in the living room is a little awkward. There is barely room for Paul and I on the loveseat but on this day both dogs were DETERMINED to be on the loveseat with us. First, Smeagol rearranged Papa into this very awkward sitting position so she could lie on his leg, then, not to be outdone, Waffles managed to find himself a position too. They would have been content like this for hours, but, needless to say, poor Paul was not.)