A poorly girl

We have a new canine house guest at the moment. Her name is Ozzie. She was originally picked up by our rescue at about ten weeks old, abandoned in a box in Drogheda, covered in fleas and totally underfed. She has been fostered by a single family since then, and did actually go to a new home after she was spayed a couple of months ago, but it didn't work out (the property just wasn't secure enough for her questing nature) and she came back into foster.

We took her when her foster family went on holidays a few weeks ago, and she's been fine in our house so we agreed to keep her a bit longer while they all got organized with getting back from holidays and getting back to school and so on.

She's a sweet girl and she fits in here extremely well. Apart from chasing Linus a bit (which all the dogs do, because he's so chasable), and the odd bit of power-supply chewing, she fits in here pretty well. She has many of the appealing traits of a labrador (likes to rest her heavy head on your lap and sigh, likes to go for a big long walk, loves a cuddle) without the insane food fixation we have seen in labradors gone by, and in a smaller, easier-to-handle package.

Unfortunately she's not well now. She's losing weight, not digesting her food properly, and having accidents in the kitchen at night. Today we went out for a walk and she didn't even chase the seagulls, which is a sure sign something is amiss. So we went to the vet, who gave her an injection, special food, several types of tablet, and some stuff that looks like Maalox that needs to be syringed into her three times a day, an hour before she eats.

She's down from 17.5kg when she came to us three weeks ago (and that was about 1kg underweight) to 15.65kg this morning. When she lies on her side you can see her heart beating under her ribs, and you can see all the knobs on her spine.

I hope she gets better soon. Looks like we might have her for a while yet. As I write this I am sitting on the sofa with her head jammed under my arm. I will be working like this for the rest of the day because I am soppy.

A family man

This is a bad day

Everything's dark. Gloomy. It's the lousy tail end of a piss-poor summer in the weather arena.

We had to cancel a weekend away in England in July, and we've had to cancel our trip to Cuba in November. We've had minor dog complications. I've been eating crap and getting far less exercise than I should.

To top it all off, I've moved to a new position in our company, which takes me away from the world of periodicals and back into the world of writing marketing copy. On the face of it, that's fine, except when I can't think of anything to write and I sit here and stare at the screen just getting tireder and tireder.

And I have barely scraped fifty pages of reading the whole summer long. I seem to just sort of sit here. I'm going to the doctor tomorrow for more blood tests, just to see what's happening with the good old thyroid function.

On the other hand, we have found a new number 2 for the laminated list, so that's something at least.

We take our wins where we can.