Just a No Good, Very Bad Week

It's a Tuesday and as such I should be doing a training post but I haven't done any training since last week. Bad Erin! But sometimes life gets in the way and that's what happened starting this past weekend. It has been a rather ridiculous few days.

First, Baron bit me. Yes, my dog bit me in my face. It's partially my fault, the dog is not blameless but I put him in that position. He was sleeping on the bed with me and three of the other dogs and I started messing with his back legs. I believe that I caused him pain and it startled him out of his sleep and so he went after whatever was closest to his legs - my face. I didn't have any stitches and it didn't even really bleed, but it was scary and not something to be taken lightly. Plus this is actually his second bite, his first was to Nicholas's thigh in a very clear pain response late last year.

2 days after the incident

Luckily, he was easily redirected and there weren't any resulting dog fights in the bedroom. But now we have to deal with this and figure out the next step. He did go in for blood work and X-rays and everything came back fine. He is showing some signs of early wobblers - muscle ataxia, trouble doing stairs, and some gait issues - but nothing too serious yet. The next diagnostic step would be a MRI, however that is quite spendy here ($1700-$2300) and is out of the question at this time. He has a chiropractic appointment Friday so we'll see what she says when she adjusts him as well. In the meantime, we will have to look at putting him on an anti-inflammatory pain medication. And I will think about putting him long term on the Gabapentin, but I need to see if it's contraindicated with any NSAIDs first.

Unfortunately, we will still have to have that horrible, never want to have again, decision to think about. How long can we maintain a quality of life with him and keep everyone safe? Especially with the steep stairs in our house that he won't be able to safely traverse (he's already having minor problems with them). Almost a year ago, we took him to ISU because of acute shoulder/neck pain and at that time ISU had thought wobblers. At that point I thought no way because he didn't show any symptoms and his pain was very acute, but now ... now he's showing several early warnings and seems to have chronic pain. Anyone's guess is as good as ours.

Second, Vito got into the bathroom trash again and had to go to the ISU ER very, very early this morning to induce vomiting. This is a human management error on my part, obviously I didn't thoroughly check to make sure the door was shut. Very Bad Erin! Luckily, Vito upchucked the used tampons and we went on our merry way. Let's hope the rest of the week slows down a bit, I can only handle so much excitement!

Life with dogs is never dull!!