Raising the Herd

I am a terrible tweeter lol. I need to tell a story and 140 characters isn’t cutting it.

Last night Bubba was yelping when he slept I assumed it was a dream until this morning when he started doing it when I think he’s awake. He definitely does it when he’s moving so I think the girls were a bit too rough, again.

I called the vet just to see what I could do to help. I was already on the right track with isolation. Which I had been doing since this morning but Samantha doesn’t listen so I had to resort to putting Bubba in his pen. He doesn’t like it much, but he he’s surviving, and actually a lot less noisy than I anticipated, but then the girls are sitting outside his pen watching over him. He’s whining now, but the kind that means let me out not a yelping painful kind of one.

I can tell he hurts, but he’s still a puppy. He’s eating and drinking to my knowledge and he’s going to the bathroom. I’m hoping that he’ll be fine in the morning if not I’ll call the vet and see about picking up some pain relief for him and to keep him isolated until he does feel better. I really hope that he’s okay we can’t afford any type of vet bill right now. This cold weather is kicking our financial butt. If Shea doesn’t work, Shea doesn’t get paid and that’s the short and sweet of it, nothing I can do about it.

So my tummy is in knots and its no fun. The only good thing is at 5pm or so the weekend starts and Shea is home for 3 days. Not that he wasn’t just here yesterday cause of a “cold out”. Released because they couldn’t do any hot work cause the fire mains were all frozen. Yeah, that’s the south for you. We are lucky he went to work today.

As I’m sure Bubba an attest to being sick sucks!

The girls are at least feeling a bit better. Not 100% but better. It has been a challenge to keep them in clothes. Thankfully today is a bit warmer outside then yesterday.

Me I’m still pretty out of it. I was so bad last night that the only sinus meds i had was a day time formula, so I took it. And it helped enough that I passed out.

Shea and I have been letting Bubba lay in our bed while we watch TV. I think that has spoiled the pup. He’s decided that he wants to sleep with us, which right now isn’t a problem. In a month or two when he’s grown up a little more then I’ll be hurting so we’ll see if Shea puts him in bed again with us lol.

My biggest concern all day yesterday was that Bubba hadn’t had a bowel movement. He decided this morning after Shea went to work would be the best time to alleve himself of that problem lol. I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy/proud of an accident in the house before. I would consider it a big achievement too as it was not yucky. Stinky but not the same kind it was before that permeated the whole house.

So yay for accident this morning. Now hopefully on to full on potty training. With our eating and watering scheduled right now it shouldn’t be overly difficult lol, but we’ll see.

Yesterday he was given food every couple of hours, he’d eat and sometimes he wouldn’t. I also was giving him some food when I saw he was starting to scavenge everything.

With a sick puppy in the house I forgot how much he could get into when he got to feeling better. The day before he came home I had cleaned up most of the house. But with him being sick things got to the normal house standards with the girls, their toys and the crumbs they leave behind. Not as big as usual. So this morning even though I feel like crap I spent the time to clean up the office and hall way floors, vacuum up them, even in the corners and edges to get all the “yummies” out of the crevices that got pushed to the sides with the vacuum. And I did a quick once over of the bedroom to get anything that he’d been sniffing at before. He has free reign of those two rooms. And by free I don’t mean he’s wandering around unattenuated cause it’s very rare that that girls aren’t attached to him. I have to fight them off of him to let him sleep. He’s at my feet now where it’s safe so he can rest in peace.

Two nights ago Kathleen had a nice fever. Nothing I was overly concerned about I knew how she’d probably gotten the cold – going out side with out the proper clothing on. Since we’ve had the puppy there has been only one good day for them to go outside and I let them under my supervision. It’s really hard not to let them go out into the yard, but it’s better until Shea can get the tall grass down. Last thing we need is for a snake bite or worse. I don’t even let Bubba get into the worse of the tall grass but he does have to go out in it.

Yesterday Samantha felt overly warm so she must have gotten something too. They’ve both been fussy so it didn’t surprise me any. I went to the store and bought some Children’s tylenol – something I haven’t had in the house since Kathleen decided to drink the last bottle. I have been very careful with this bottle. However I doubt there isn’t a place in the house she can’t get to if she really wanted something. All the currently active meds (the girls tylenol and the puppies meds) are on the second shelf of my kitchen cabinents. Almost out of my own reach.

I feel like crap. I felt like crap last night and I went to go watch TV in our bedroom. I managed to watch Phineas and Ferb’s Christmas episode and the episode that followed, and got a little way into rerun of Sactuary and then fell asleep and was woken by a dog yip from his pen. It was halfway through the new episode of Sanctuary. Yay! *sarcasm* I missed an episode. Though I probably will get to see that next Friday. I’m so drained.

Well last night he started feeling better, was drinking water at twenty minute intervals a few laps at a time. He was peeing normally and sometime in the middle of the night he pooped – still the runs in a dark green color with an icky smell, but after my research about what the parvo smell actually smells like I’m pretty sure it’s just an awful poo smell and not the smell of “death” that was described. But I guess we won’t really know much until he starts eating, which will be in about 30 mins or so.

We slept better last night, or so I thought until Shea told me Bubba and I kept him awake. I really didn’t think I’d been out of bed that much, and the girls only came in a few times, and not overly excessively considering Kathleen has a fever.

I was slightly worried last night about her, and around 3am Kitkat, Sammi and I took a luke warm shower. Sammi only joined us because she was awake. They came out when Shea went to work this morning and Bubba was attacking them like it was the first day. The girls were screaming cause he was nipping at their toes. Yeah, back to normal. He’s also very hungry. He’ll have to wait on that though he’ll be eating little bits over the course of the day. He is trying to eat everything in the world.

I had to bring the crate into the bedroom so that I can keep an eye on him while I tend Kathleen. The living room is too cold in the fall/winter so we stay in our bedroom for the warmth, and comfort of a bed instead of the leather couches. The lady at the vet told me if the crate was too big to throw in some boxes to make it smaller so that’s what I did. He and his bed can fit in the crate so hopefully this will do two birds with one stone, potty training/crate training and keeping him from over extending himself activity wise (and also keep him from the girls, he’s already been sent to his pen to day for biting Kitkat – after Samantha let him out of course).

I’m running on about 9 hours of sleep over the past two days. Which is also another reason we are in the bedroom and Bubba is going to spend most of his day in the pen. So I can rest and not worry about him eating things or cheweing on things he should not.

But all in all things are looking up. I’m still worried but today looks better, he’s acting like a puppy and that is not something he’s done since we brought him home.

Between Bubb and the girls it took me nearly half an hour to write this lol. So I’m gonna go prepare Bubba some dinner for the first time hopefully in two days he’ll eat.

Tuesday Bubba had a doctor’s appointment. Roundworms was the only negative at the time. I had mentioned that he has loose stools and was a bit lazy.

When we got Bubba he chased the girls all over, enough that they were constantly complaining about him nipping at their feet and legs. Well since Tuesday he’s been out of it.

Last night he started with diarrhea in full force AND vomiting. The poo smells awful and not in the poo kinda way, that I’m okay with this is nasty foul smelling stuff. I don’t recall when that started.

So last night I was up all night. Worrying my poor little soul over what to do, what we would do if something bad comes of it. I searched the net sometime on his symptoms and of course found the worse of the worst that fit his symptoms – parvo. I went back to bed an even worse mess than I came out to my computer in.

About two hours later I got up and did another search, on roundworms this time. And this actually helped, granted not enough that I could get some sleep as Bubba decided then would be a good time for another round of puking on the floor.

His symptoms – diarrhea, vomiting, loss of appetite and lethargy. There is nothing we can do about parvo except see if it gets better, there can only treat the symptoms. So this basically means keeping him hydrated. Roundworms on the other hand we can treat and we are currently doing so.

So my second search helped calm my nerves a little but not enough that I’m not calling the vet as soon as they open.

My biggest worry is Kathleen. If Bubba was to pass away I’m not sure we’d have a good Christmas. She is absolutely in love with him. She is being very motherly towards him, taking him outside every few minutes or whatever. I didn’t have to clean up one poop or pee mess yesterday until bed time because of Kathleen’s efforts with Bubba, granted she went outside by herself on a number of occasions with out asking. It is going to be a very difficult few hours until the vet opens and a very difficult next few days if we are playing the wait and see if the roundworms is the problem game.

I’m not sure I can handle the loss of another pet. We’ve not had him long but he’s part of the family and just not sure my aching heart can handle it again. I’m praying for the best and hope things look up if only for my little girls.

Well, I had decorated my tree the day after Thanksgiving as is per my tradition. The girls and I made snowmen and a paper chain and some snow flakes.

I had hoped that this would be the easier of the solutions but it was not. The girls decide it was more fun to play with the paper they’d made then leave it on the tree. So last Saturday I bought ornaments and a tree skirt (which I needed anyways). And last night I decorated the tree.

The girls were naked while decorating the tree so we have no pictures while we decorated. Only this falsified one after I got them dressed lol.

I had to move decorations around, the girls didn’t understand the “do not put them on top of each other” or “too close together” so I just rearranged afterwards. Here is a before and after:
Before:

After:

And I tried to grab a picture of the kids and the dog but it didn’t work out so well, this is the best of them.