I have a new project. This one doesn’t involve fabric, yarn or paper. This time it is all about Heidi (Maizey gets the benefits too but it isn’t all about her.) I guess you could call it a “pet project” (groan).

Since Shadow died in May Heidi has been visibly aging and losing control over her hind quarters. I noticed she wasn’t getting up and about as often or as energetically as she used to and she was dragging the toes on her back left foot. Then one day she was dragging the toes on both feet and was quite unsteady on her feet. Then she fell. She just lost footing in her rear end and her feet slid out from under her. Other things were changing too. Her once gleaming white teeth were now yellowing and collecting tartar and her gums were inflamed. Her once thick shiny coat was getting duller and and didn’t have its usual thick texture.

I took her to the vet. They examined her and said she had lost quite a bit of muscle mass in her hind quarters and when her back foot was placed toed-under she wouldn’t correct like a normal dog would. This indicated she probably has some neurological degeneration in her spine. They offered to refer her to a neurologist at U of I for a MRI and other testing but said nothing would be conclusive and there was little that could be done if it was found to be Degenerative Myelopathy anyway. They did suggest we sedate her and have her teeth cleaned sometime in the near future. I took her home and started Googling and looking to the berner-l for answers. I joined the Berner-L when I decided that a Bernese mountain dog was the next dog for me. The people there have years and countless dogs’ worth of knowledge.

At this time I was also pointed toward a help wanted ad in a local newspaper for a job for someone with retail experience and who loves dogs. I sent my resume immediately! It was for a place that offers hydrotherapy for dogs and also has a boutique that specializes in holistic care items and whole, natural, mostly raw dog foods. I interviewed and met the owner. A light bulb went on in my my head, this is exactly what Heidi needs. I intensified my research, went to Amazon and the local library and loaded up on everything I could find on raw and home cooked diets for dogs, holistic health care, massage therapy, you name I’ve been reading about it. I didn’t end up getting the job because the owner decided they just weren’t busy enough yet to be able to afford another full-time employee. I will still take Heidi there for therapy as soon as I get clearance from my vet.

I decided instead of spending time and money taking her down to U of I for an inconclusive diagnosis and causing her the unnecessary stress of a bunch of medical procedures and tests that I would work with her here at home, keep her regularly monitored by our vet, and see how it went. I’ve been switching both her and Maizey over to a mostly raw diet. I’m hoping this will help clean up her teeth and gums naturally because I know right now she isn’t strong enough to withstand the stress of being sedated for a clinical teeth scaling.

Her hair and skin have already begun to show signs of improvement after only a week on the new diet. A month ago she developed a nasty hot spot on her right hip and I noticed a pervasive odor about her in general. The first weekend of our new regimen I spent two days methodically working my way over her entire body grooming and checking out every inch of her. What I discovered was a great deal of nasty dandruff and areas where her hair fell out in clumps. I also think that the last time I had her professionally groomed they not only didn’t get all of her dead undercoat out but also didn’t rinse her to the skin and that is why she had so much dandruff and why she smelled so bad. After two weeks of my diligent brushing, combing and raking and a week of the new diet, the dandruff is almost gone and some of the bald spots are showing signs of new hair growth. She is also smelling better!

I’ve also started giving her massages. One morning I woke up and decided that I would give it a try. At the end of our session I laid down on the floor next to her and she just sighed and rolled back into me for a whole body snuggle. Later that morning after her breakfast she and Maizey were out in the yard and for the first time in months I saw her run! She was practically bouncing. For weeks prior to this it was all she could do to get up from her spot in the house and go outside twice a day for potty breaks.

This hasn’t been all miracles and rainbows. At first she had some disagreeable bowels. (One thing I’ve discovered about people who spend a lot of time working with dogs and especially those who feed raw/home-cooked diets, they do seem to be a tad bit obsessed about their dogs bowel movements. I’ll try to refrain from that here.) But now that she has completely transitioned and gets zero kibble that has passed. She still has a really hard time in the mornings getting up from her sleeping position. If she is near a wall she will use it to support her rump until she gets her feet under her completely. Most often she just lurches around like a drunk sorority girl during rush week. Once she is up and moving she’s fine unless she is on a particularly slippery surface. (I will be investing in a bunch of carpet runners and area rugs with rubber slip mats very soon.)

I know there is nothing I can do to avoid the inevitable. She will be 10 years old in March, that is ancient for a dog her size and breed. Right now I’m taking it day by day and week by week. My goal now is Christmas. Then if things keep holding steady I may dare to dream of March and our birthdays. Otherwise I’m giving her all I can for as long as I can. I didn’t get that with Shadow. By the time we realized something was seriously wrong, it was too late. I barely had a week to prepare to say good-bye. If nothing else she and I will have had time to share together doing something special. She will know she was loved and well cared for and I will know I did all I could and gave her the best I had to give.

** As a side note Maizey is thriving on the new program. She loves the new food and I can already see an improvement in the condition of her coat already. She gets little massages when she snuggles in bed with me at night and practically groans with pleasure to the point that it is almost a little obscene. I’ve also noticed that she chews up shoes and other forbidden things around the house less now that she gets bones to chew on in the backyard.

***If you are considering switching your pets to a raw or home-cooked diet PLEASE do you research! There is an overabundance of information out there and some of it is contradictory. I tried cooking for my first lab 16 years ago but gave it up because I was afraid that I didn’t know what I was doing and I could only find one diet and it was time consuming and confusing. I tried feeding a mixed diet 10 years ago when I got Heidi but gave it up for simplicity and because I was confused again by all the options and opinions. Education is key as is just knowing your dog and what works for them.

I keep having brief ideas for a blog post and then lose them when I sit down to write. Or they just kind of fizzle after the first sentence or two. Or worse, I have SO MUCH to say I can’t get my thoughts organized or don’t have the time to write what I really mean in a complete way.

Sooooooo, today you get random thought farts. Lucky you!

Twitter I signed up for Twitter (Follow me! I’m Snarkdog) this summer. I’m still not sure I really get it. I follow about 20 or so people. I find following “famous” people the most interesting thing about Twitter. Jason Mraz sends regular inspiration/gratitude/thought-of-the-day kinds of tweets. (He doesn’t actually type them himself which is kind of a bummer.) It has been interesting to read P!nk’s posts from her Australia tour this summer too. I also follow Dooce and she has just recently started Tweeting a lot. But I have to say, I don’t think if I ranted about crappy customer service anyone would be offering me a free washing machine. I guess having 1000s of blog readers really helps in that regard.

Facebook Oh Facebook, how I love and loathe you! I think I have a serious addiction problem with Facebook. Screw vodka, I walked away from that bitch with hardly a tremor, but take away my social networking and Bejeweled Blitz/Farkle fixes and I may have to be institutionalized. Of course as anyone can tell you, the coolest/scariest thing about FB is that it is like a cyber high school reunion except at this reunion you can avoid the people you hate and those that you don’t want to know that you got fat and did nothing to live up to your potential. (But you can show them that your hair finally recovered from that unfortunate perm you had 1980) I’ve heard many people talk about old flames finding them on FB and just for shits and giggles I did a search for an old high school boyfriend. I found him, didn’t send a friend request. He didn’t go to my high school so we don’t have any friends in common, he did have a friend in common with a couple of my friends but it was like 3 degrees of separation and quite frankly, he was a douche and no one liked him so I doubt he’ll be mixing with my cool crowd anytime soon.

I do have the usual complaints/annoyances with FB as a lot of you do I’m sure. While I do love a stupid quiz to pass the time on occasion, I do get annoyed with the constant stream of them from some people. I equate them to Christmas cards. Follow along with me here. Do you get those Christmas cards from people you’ve known for years but never get to see anymore that are just signed with their names and no note or anything? Or worse, a photo card with pictures of their kids that you’ve never seen in person and the card is “signed” by the computer that created it. I would much rather receive a long treatise of your year in review complete with details of your last surgery and pics of the scars and photocopies of your brilliant 3 year old’s transcripts from Harvard than some bullshit generic holiday greeting. But I digress…These are the same people that do nothing on FB but play games and take stupid quizzes and post EVERY score and result on their feed. (You can disable these notifications and believe me I have!) They never comment on anyone’s status or shared photos. They rarely even update their status. Facebook is about connecting with people, getting to know them better or reconnecting after years apart. It is a dialogue. Also, I don’t care if your cow is missing on Farmville or if you are looking for an exploding cigar in Mafia Wars or what your latest Hatchling became, especially if you are over say, 12 years old.

The other really interesting thing I’ve discovered via Facebook is just how many LGBT people went to my high school. I graduated in a class of 106 students in a very small town in rural Michigan in the mid 80s (1985 to be exact, and yes that song was written about me, why do you ask?) I knew what gays and lesbians were and even knew a few personally but no one was “out” in the way we are familiar with today. My cousin moved to California sometime in the 70s and I remember when he came home to visit with his “friend” (or maybe we were progressive enough to call him his “partner” I don’t remember) and there were assumptions and rumors about a girls’ volleyball coach or two over the years but that was about it. But it seems that the “10% rule*” holds true even in small rural communities. (*Common belief is that 10% of the population is LGBT) Many of my gay/lesbian classmates haven’t attended any of our class reunions over the years and I think it is probably due to the worry that their lifestyle wouldn’t be accepted or understood. I’m hoping that through the buffer of “coming out” on FB and reconnecting with some of us they will realize there is nothing to fear and feel comfortable enough to attend a reunion in the future.

Blogging and reading other people’s blogs. I have been blogging since about ‘01 or ‘02 I think. One of my old original blogs is still floating around out there in Blogspotland and a couple years of original posts to this blog were lost in an unfortunate database accident about 2 or 3 years ago. I come and go with how diligently I post new things. Probably because I change my mind every 6 months or so as to what direction I want to take with my blog. (Which incidentally is why I chose “eclectic mess” as my name because I knew I would change my mind and naming it something with Knitting, Mommy or Crazy in the title wouldn’t make sense in the long run, well except for that last one maybe.)

I really enjoy reading other people’s blogs too. I’m very much a voyeur that way. (Which is also why the game/quiz/signed-card only people annoy me so much I guess.) Right now I only have about 30 subscriptions on my blog reader and I need to weed those out further too. I’ve been adding a few new ones here and there now that I have a little more time to go link surfing and comment reading. I’m always curious to try to figure out how some blogs get so many readers and especially commenters. I’ve never been very good at self-promotion (see: failed business venture 2008). Because I read so many blogs in my blog reader I don’t often see other people’s blog templates or sidebar junk but often to read comments I have to click through to the actual blog. (BTW, if you only have a partial feed sent to the RSS reader, I will drop my subscription to your blog unless I really love you. Just saying.)

This leads me to a question. Can someone explain how BlogHer works? I think I joined it or signed up or posted my blog address there ages ago but never had the time to figure it all out. Recently I found a few new blogs that I really enjoy (Aunt Becky I’m talking about you again in that weird stalker way I have) and I know they are “members” of BlogHer but I still don’t quite understand what is involved and how one goes about getting involved. I’m not sure I’m really down with the big ugly (sorry) advertising thing I see in sidebars across blogland so if that is required I may have to think it over more. The other problem I have (and I have many as you are well aware) is I don’t know how to classify my blog. Is it a craft/knitting/sewing blog? Yes, sometimes. Is it a parenting/mommy blog? Yes, but rarely. Is it a humor blog? Only because if I don’t laugh I may never stop crying. Is it a lifestyle/personal blog? Most definitely, sometimes too personal. But what am I to do? It’s my life.

School started this week Both girls are fine with it. Sarah is a sophomore and Emma is a 7th grader so neither of them had a new school to adjust to so it was pretty smooth sailing yesterday. They both came home with fairly standard first day of school reports. A few weird teachers, a few annoying students, no locker problems and the usual complaints about the bus. I’m trying to acclimate to the 6 a.m. alarm and it has been cold and rainy so I’ve had to drive them to the bus stop. But all in all it is just another school year.

Maizey got spayed a week ago. She is still wearing the “cone of shame” because she is a tad bit obsessive about her stitches. She slams around the house and into things and people. It is a quite entertaining and a bit annoying. I tried taking it off her and putting a T-shirt on her but she found a way around that too.

Plus she looked even more ridiculous wearing a “Have you hugged your Big Dog today” shirt than one would imagine.

Quite the clever title there huh? Somedays you just have to go with what life deals ya and today it is dog shit.

The last post I just finished and published was not what I intended to write when I sat down in my comfy recliner with my HP-mini notebook and can of diet Pepsi. But it is what came out and what obviously I NEEDED to write.

Today was just one of those days. One of those days that just keeps getting better and better. I won’t rehash the last post. I’ll just remind my gentle readers that I took my girls shopping and it was trying and tiring. We went to one mall initially and ended up back at what I lovingly refer to as Chuckletown Mall where most of the stores are empty spaces. But there is a Deb store that sells plus sizes and it is one of the last remaining places in the state of Illinois where my daughter can find jeans and homecoming dresses that fit her and don’t (usually) make her cry.

When we got home around 5 p.m. I had the horrifying realization that the puppy had been in her crate since around 10 a.m. and that may just have been longer than her digestive system could handle. We came in the house with a sense of exhaustion and trepidation. Fortunately she was fine and clean. She ran for the backdoor immediately and went out to do her business.

But alas! All was not well in the land of the Shiny Island. As we progressed further into the house we smelled the distinctive air of canine defecation. Upon close inspection a steaming pile of crap matching the living room rug almost exactly was found. Heidi had a bad day.

All I wanted to do was relax in my chair with a can of Diet Pepsi and watch last night’s episode of Mad Men. But no. I got a pile of shit to clean up instead.

Thank goodness I bought this little machine right after I bought this new rug and before we adopted the new pup. It has paid for itself many times over.

I think the color of that water about says it all.

When I was done I found this glass’ worth of wine left in the fridge. I think I earned it.

Edited to add: I find it very difficult to watch Mad Men without a martini and a Lucky Strike but was so pleased to find on this weeks episode the crew at Sterling Cooper working on the “Patio” (the working name for what would become Diet Pepsi) campaign. Cool.