Attack of the wild puppy!

Where have I been the last week, you wonder? Well, we got a puppy. That kind of explains everything, doesn't it?

Stella is FIFTEEN POUNDS of half purebred Border Collie and half purebred Lab, and is every bit as energetic AND intelligent as those two breeds would suggest.

Her Daddy, Jake, apparently commands hefty stud fees normally, but his visit to Abby when she was in heat was a surprise, shall we say. My gorgeous little girl and her siblings were the result, and I got what I wanted--a mixed breed dog, med-large size (we hope!), of two breeds at the top of our "good breeds" list.

Not that there are "bad breeds" of dog out there, don't get me wrong--I mean, I'd love to own an Akita, or a Siberian Husky, but they are on our bad list because they tend to be very territorial, one-family, and do not do well with visitors or young kids. We'd love to adopt a rescued Greyhound, but they tend to chase and eat cats. Those are traits we do not want in a dog--so that's how we made the "good" and "bad" list.

She is, of course, a handful and a half, if not more!! She's exploring everything, getting into everything, chewing on everything---oh, god, she just discovered the doorstop that goes BOINGGGG, and after twanging it twice, barked at it--but anyway, she is gorgeous enough, and smart enough to make up for all the usual puppy-ness. She actually understands "sit" and even "lay down" most of the time.

{I'm on the "morning shift" right now, meaning that after the 6 am potty run, I stay up and deal with the ball of energy. Luckily, the house is big enough because she is small enough to provide ample space to run! Anyway, I take the morning and let Lloyd sleep in, and then I get a good nap in the afternoon in return. Today will be just a little different; I'll have her most of the day by myself while he takes Anna to Kaiser for her final Gardasil shot....Trevor will be here though, maybe I'll make him take a turn!}

She's actually so smart so much of the time that it surprises me when she gets in trouble. We've designated the kitchen and dining/family room has her play zone (supervised, of course) and I've got gates across so she can't get anywhere else. She still finds things....dishtowels are the latest "prize" but I'm learning to ignore it until she starts to get bored of it and then take it away with a firm "NO" of disapproval.

The Bible right now is "Puppies for Dummies." Laugh if you will, but the woman who wrote it seems to really know her stuff. Everything she's said to do really works. I'm reading and re-reading and sticky-note-ing and writing things down on index cards... I am so determined to do this right, after my experience with Dildo the Golden Retarded and having just read "Marley & Me," I'll stand on my head if I have to.

The good news is, I bet I won't have to. For one thing, this experience is different, because I have a husband to do it WITH me, and two out of three kids who want to help train her. That changes the entire equation. Thank god! And, you can look into this dog's eyes and see the intelligence. When you get her eye to eye, and talk, she's really paying attention to what you say, and I am pretty sure she already knows her name, and is starting to associate basic words like "potty" and "NO!" (our current favorite).

By now, you're wondering what the rest of our household thinks of Stella.

Well, the birds couldn't care less. I'm not sure they've noticed. It's just one more thing that crawls around on the floor, right? Gracie is most amused. Something to torment!!!!! The other cats....NOT amused. They've been pretty brave overall. Oz just came out of Stella's playpen, where he was scoping things out. Oliver has come very close to her, while she was sleeping of course, to check things out, but they're not interested in putting up with her when she's mobile and wanting to play with them. That's all she wants, is to play with someone.

Pea has behaved almost exactly as we expected. This is "her" puppy. She doesn't "fuss" over Stella, grooming her, as much as she did with Laci, the puppy we babysat for 2 weeks a couple of years ago. But she plays with her, to a degree, and lets Stella know, in a Mommy-dog kind of way, when it's gone too far. She's made sure Stella knows that SHE is alpha, and Stella always rolls over to give Pea her belly and submit. Pea watches over her, and the two of them regularly lay on the soft doggie beds in front of the fire here in the "family room" I've created in the dining room.

{in this house, this room was supposed to be the family room, but we turned it into a dining room. After we painted, I turned the table around, installed a rocker by the fire and some doggie beds, and now we can use half the room for dining and half for just relaxing in the rocker and communing with doggies.}

Sparky is not amused. No, not amused at all. As long as puppy stays far away from him, he's fine. Life goes on as usual. But...when puppy notices him, and wants to play, which is her number one goal in life, he turns on her and she turns tail and runs like a smart dog. We have to watch her and and try to keep her from bugging him.

Overall, aside from me being sick (explanation in a minute), a new puppy wreaking havoc in the house, 3:30 am and 6ish am potty times, aka lack of sleep, and the fact that it's raining on Conner's camping trip, all is well. We are happy, if exhausted.

On the medical front, dun dun duh.... life is strange. I had another night like I've had twice before now (I think twice). It was sort of like the night before I had to go to the cancer center in emergency mode, after I'd missed all my pills for a day. But this time, I hadn't missed all my pills, at all. And, I hadn't felt like I was getting a cold or flu, like I did that time. This time, I went to bed a totally normal person, and woke up somewhere after 1am with massive diarrhea and chills so severe that I knew I had a fever. Took temp, and yes, it was quite a significant fever, and no, I'm not going to tell any of you what it was.

Repeat that scenario several times, with my fever decreasing a little each time, and that's what my night was like. In some of the later wake-up times, I started noticing that my lungs hurt. A lot, almost like pneumonia. Eventually, I got something of a cough, but not often. And a headache to end all headaches.............you know, the "hit by a truck" kind.

I spent a large part of the day in bed, trying to recover, headache, still dizzy, very shaky all over, seeing double, not able to walk straight, and utterly exhausted, until the time came where Lloyd had to cover for me on driving Anna and her friends to the movies for her much-belated birthday party. I set up the cake and utensils on the table for them, dragged Stella's playpen upstairs, and managed to fashion things so she was contained on my side of the bed and the bathroom so I could go back to bed. She's paper trained, thank god, and THANK YOU MARY, so I was able to crash out.

Eventually, my fever went down to 99.2, which is within the no biggie range. Today, I'm 99.5. My lungs still hurt like hell when I breathe, REALLY hurt when I breathe deep, but don't feel congested at all. I'm still headachy, still kind of dizzy and shaky, but otherwise doing alright. The diarrhea is an entirely separate issue. I saw Andy on Tuesday and he set me up with 4 separate sets of stool sample/culture kits, which is just a JOY, I tell you. But, at least Andy is being exceptionally proactive, as usual, testing me for parasites, a specific bacterial problem, and some other stuff I don't remember, so he can hopefully rule all of them out, and diagnose me with post-radiation colitis, which he can then treat.

And yes, Andy needs to know about this last incident. He knows about the previous, but not in great detail, because I went to the cancer center for treatment, since it was a weekday and therefore I was going to the cancer center ANYway! This one was just bizarre...but that's what Andy's good at. I've tried doing some research myself, and I can't figure out for the life of me anything it could be. He has a magic little handheld device that can figure out anything, apparently. The irony is that I just saw him Tuesday, when we started addressing my massive diarrhea problems, but this hadn't happened yet, and I was honestly too sick to call him yesterday. So, since he's not in the office today, I'm going to write him up a very detailed description of everything that's gone on, and fax it over to him. He loves figuring out difficult problems, so this one should be a kick for him, right?? Lungs and an astronomical fever. Hmm.

Ahh, my little blog entry for the day has taken me almost 5 hours to write! thanks to the obvious interruptions of puppy, illness, and a DH in a really horrible mood. So, I think I'll close now and get back to my puppysitting. God only knows when or if I'll get a shower today, but that's ok. Trevor's the only here to see me, and he doesn't care what I look like.