General update

I just turned up the thermostat for the first time since I-don't-want-to-remember. The temperature outdoors (says the weather website) is forty degrees. I don't know what it was inside. It's uncomfortable, I'm up at 4am on a Saturday and I deserve to feel not scrunched up around the shoulders and neck trying to keep warm. 


I got up about 3, I think. Or, really, 2:30ish. I woke up from another long and vivid novelette of a dream, made a trip to the Small Room, and got back in bed. Max started to wiggle around, settle, wiggle. I got up, carried him downstairs and delivered him outdoors. He is such a small dog . . . his innards must be crowded by his bladder, which has about a gallon capacity. I waited at the door for his gauge to drop to "empty." It takes a long, long time. Then he refilled at the water dish: a long slurpslurpslurpslurpslurpslurp. At least five minutes. MiMau interrupted him, he stood back. She drinks for a long time too; I think she's part camel. Finally, she stepped back and he resumed. A second trip out to make sure his bladder was completely void. 
We went back upstairs to bed.


Angus hadn't moved: Ah, good.
Angus spent a day at the clinic last week, having teeth removed/cleaned, having his anal glands and his ear canals deep cleaned. His mouth has caused him no trouble in the aftermath, his ear canals are no longer itchy and painful . . . but the butt. Oh . . . my. My life for the last two days has been taken over by my black dog's butt and its discomfort and recovery. Twice a day I am to administer 1.5cc of liquid antibiotic. Mm-hm. We aren't doing very well with that, but I'm hoping that whatever remains on Angus' tongue, after he flings it hither, thither and yon, will do some good.
This is my life.
Last evening Angus was suffering quite some anxiety about issues back there. I put him in the bathtub with the handheld shower and washed him off with Dr. Bronner's peppermint soap. Immediate relief. We went to bed. He settled down, sighed, and we all went to sleep. So when I got back to bed with empty Max, and Angus still seemed comfortable, I thought, "Great, back to sleep until the light of the Saturday sun shines on my face!"


Two minutes later, Angus began to fidget. He moved under the covers with me. He moved out from under the covers. He wiggled and squirmed. He settled down at my command. Then the whole routine started up again. I sighed. I flipped the covers back, put on my robe, picked him up and tucked him under my arm and carried him downstairs, delivered him to the door. He went out.
I went to the dog medication corner of the kitchen counter and quartered one of Max's Tramadol tablets. While I was at it, I fixed some food, as Tramadol is supposed to be given with food.
Angus came back in, walked to a scatter rug and resumed his interest in his rear end. I picked him up and carried him to the couch, next to which I had, in his absence, surreptitiously placed the quarter tablet of Tramadol (he's a suspicious and observant little dog), and where I cornered him, pried his jaws open and shoved the medication down his throat. Honestly, you would think that I had given him poison. He spit and shook his head and thrust his tongue out and spit some more. And out came the Tramadol. I hadn't lost patience, exactly, but I was empty of my usual empathy and full of determination. I picked up the wet quarter tablet, pried open his jaws again, and while I leaned my body against his, pressing him into the corner of the couch, calmly pushed the pill halfway down his esophagus. I held his mouth closed with one hand, then the other when he wiggled his muzzle out of the first, and rubbed,  with some vigor, every part of his head and throat. He performed the whole Yuck!  Yuck! Yuck! dog and pony show again, but the medication did not reappear.
You know . . . I have swallowed Tramadol myself. It does not taste that bad.


While I was on a roll, I hid his thyroid medication in a half inch ball of raw hamburger and placed it before him on a small dish of microwaved-for-thirty-seconds-and-cooled kibble/water/hamburger. He ate the ball of hamburger, so the morning dose of thyroid med is inside him. I have a reprieve on that until this afternoon. 
But we still have the morning dose of the liquid antibiotic.


He's snoozing now (thank you, Tramadol!), over there between his little dish of uneaten food and the far arm of the couch. It might be time to load up the plastic syringe with antibiotic. I won't have a better opportunity for hours.

A note to interested entrepreneurs: There might be a real market out there for this design in straitjackets.