Welcome to my Saturday Afternoon Chat!

As I type this all of our windows are open, there is a cool bleeze blowing our veil-like white curtains and the church bells are chiming loudly – finally on time after being off by an hour for almost a month after the time change.

Outside the window tulips are blooming, my neighbor is digging in her flower beds to get them ready for planting, and birds are chirping at each other.

This week I sipping chocolate almond milk as I write but had some tea when I first woke up and I am going to warm it up and finish it here in a bit.

Spring is in full bloom here.

The blooms are out on all the trees, maybe a little early, which I’ve heard is bad for the fruit trees because then they create too much fruit that sometimes spoils. We will have to see what happens.

I took photos of the pear tree (I think that’s what it is..it never really grows too much fruit) at my parents on Sunday and could hear a loud hum as I stood under it. I believe that hum was all the bees swarming it to collect the pollen, but I’m not sure.

The tulips on the side of our house, which I mentioned earlier, and the tree next to our house are also blooming.

I spent yesterday afternoon and evening on my back porch. I think it got up to 80 yesterday but it was a cool 80, not too hot.

Little Miss ran in the sprinkler earlier in the day and then The Husband cooked chicken spiedies and fries and I sat with the pets outside and ate dinner and read Fellowship of the Ring (more about that tomorrow in my Sunday Bookends post).

It was such a nice end to a slightly stressful week which kicked off with all of us thinking we might lose our Zooma. For those who are new here, Zooma The Wonder Dog is our cockapoo-Shetland Sheepdog mix and she’s the best pet ever. Seriously. Ever. Anyone who meets her loves her – well not that guy down the street who walks by and she always barks at but there must be something wrong with him or she wouldn’t bark at him. A guy my dad knows came to Dad’s last week and Zooma loved him immediately so I figure she only barks at weirdos (and my brother. Ahem. I had to differentiate that he is not a weirdo. Not exactly anyhow. Maybe a bit of one.)

Monday night I came back from taking Little Miss to a makeup class of gymnastics and The Boy was in the yard with Zooma who was trembling and wouldn’t jump up on the porch to come in. When he tried to pick her up though, she would cry out and try to nip to get him to stop touching her. We finally figured out a way to get her in the house and sat with her in the laundry room while I called the emergency number of the vet where we used to live and still use.

The vet suggested she had colitis, inflammation of the intestines, based on her symptoms and the fact she has had some issues with her…um…bottom glands in the past. I also had to confess to the vet that we had been sneaking her food, especially on Sunday when I slipped her tiny pieces of pork chop several times. Later that night my dad also confessed that he had seen Zooma eat a bone in his backyard that he had left out for the birds but that had fallen on the ground. And in fact, everyone in the family except for my mom, who is a saint, had slipped the dog food over the last week or more.

I have a feeling that all of Zooma’s issues had been brewing for a while, though. She’d been acting more dragged out and tired over the last couple of weeks.

The prescription the vet gave was to pull up her food for the next couple of days to let her colon rest and heal. We pulled her food up and Little Miss pulled her dog bed into the kitchen (for some reason) and she flopped down and didn’t move all night, which is not her at all. She usually likes to be in whatever room we are and sometimes up on the couch or chair next with us.

The Boy slept on the floor with her that night because she had no interest in getting up to go upstairs with us.

The next morning, we couldn’t get her to stand up to go outside and when we tried to carry her out she cried as she sat down, started trembling and cried again when The Boy picked her up to put her back on the porch. We called the vet again and they wanted us to bring her right up. The office is about 45 minutes away. To make sure she had space to lay down, The Boy and The Husband took her, so The Boy could sit in the back with her. Little Miss was crushed because Zooma is her best friend and she wanted to be there to care for her.

She kept saying she wouldn’t leave Zooma. The Husband and I also didn’t want her going because at that point we were concerned there was something very serious going on and she would be hysterical if Zooma had to be put down. I just couldn’t imagine our life without Zooma, but I didn’t think it looked good.

My worst fear was that she’d had a stroke or she had a tumor on her spine causing her legs not to work right.

Once at the vet, though, the little rascal started to act better by first being carried into the clinic and the x-ray room and then trotting out of the room like she was totally fine.

The vet said she had gas all inside her stomach and inflammation in her colon, so I believe the official diagnosis was colitis, but The Husband just remembers the vet saying she was full of gas. Luckily nothing was broken because at one point we suspected she had something wrong with her paw or paws.

She was placed on anti-inflammatory medication but seemed to only get worse over the next couple of days. She mainly laid down, not even stirring when there were noises outside, which is highly unusual for her. She had no interest in getting up, looking out the side window of our house like she normally does, or climbing the stairs with us at night. One morning, though, she sat the bottom of the stairs, barking at 5:20  either because she was lonely or in pain. I came down to let her outside, but she wouldn’t move from where she was sitting and simply stared at me.

We had been told to pull her food up and I had been making boiled chicken and rice, so I gave her some of that, which she ate, but then stared at me like she still wanted something. Eventually The Husband came down with her and fell asleep on the floor to try to get her to lay down.

Over the next couple of days I spent most of my time boiling chicken and rice, physically picking up Zooma’s backend to make her stand and get outside to move around and use the bathroom, checking on her, trying to get her to drink water, and occasionally warming up warm compresses to put on her …um…bottom, to see if the warmth would have a soothing affect since she was jumping up off and on like something was biting her in her butt. She wasn’t sure what she thought about those warm compresses and gave me the funniest looks. I wish I could have taken a photo of her but I was busy at the time, obviously.

I also had to spend several minutes making her get up, walk out the door and walk around the yard to use the bathroom and then lift her up onto the porch, hoping I didn’t hurt her. My fear was that this would be how we’d have to take care of her from then on, or that the vet had missed something, which would have been a surprise to me because they’ve always been excellent with the care of our pets.

On Friday morning I had to lift her off the bed because she’d fallen asleep there after Little Miss had lifted her up the night before and hadn’t moved other than the lift her head off and on as if pleading with me to pet her and make her feel better. She wouldn’t jump off the bed herself like she usually did.

The Boy and I both tried massaging her belly area and Thursday night she seemed to get some relief because the boy said there was an awful stench from her.

So yesterday morning I got her to go down the stairs and outside and when she saw our neighbors she made her way over to greet them. She even jumped off the porch on her own.

For the rest of the day, she walked up on the porch herself and seems to be on her way to healing finally. It seemed like such a long time of her being sick, even though it was only five days.

It’s weird how a dog being sick can throw life in a family off, especially when they are such a big part of the family like Zooma is.

Not only did it throw our family life off, but it made me feel off-kilter because I was used to Zooma’s perkiness and crazy behavior instead of looking like a spaced-out copy of my once-loving and fun dog.

By last night things were feeling a little bit more normal because Zooma was a bit more normal than she had been. I hope that trend continues on through the weekend, but there were good signs that it will since Zooma was climbing stairs again and jumping up on the ottoman to look out the window and watch the neighbors come and go.

On Tuesday the kids had an eye doctor’s appointment, which The Husband took them too since he had a week off for vacation. We learned that Little Miss will need glasses. I’m a little disappointed with that but it isn’t that surprising considering everyone else in the family has glasses too. I swear we gave our kids the worst genes. I had glasses around 10 and The Boy had them somewhere around 9 or 10, although he says it was 8. He was older, but that’s okay, I’ll let him have his memories.

His memories are a little skewed sometimes, though.  He often tells me things I said that I never said to him and I sometimes worry he’s creating an alternative universe and life experience in his head with ideas of what he thinks I will say about something. (If you don’t know me then you don’t know I joke a lot and since I am writing this and not saying it, you can’t hear the tone it’s being said in. Know that I am joking – yet, I am a little serious because I’m pretty sure I conjured up some scenarios between my parents and I that never happened too.)

We had nice weather almost every day this week so Little Miss and I spent a lot of time outside, including on Thursday when school was mainly reading books on the back porch.

This next week looks like it is going to be a lot cooler so we probably won’t be outside as much, which will be a little sad, but I know warm weather will come to stay soon.

That means we will be seeing a lot more of our neighbors probably. None of us really see each other in winter because we are all running from our cars to our houses to get warm. The neighbors closest to us have two Shih tzu dogs who they are training to stay in their yard if they go outside their fenced in area. They love to come over and visit Zooma, though, and I’m glad for Zooma to have some socialization. She’s not really too sure what she thinks of Little Louie though since he’s pretty interested in sniffing her in places she’d rather not be sniffed in. Gucci is more interested in attention from everyone else instead of Zooma. He also listens better than his big brother.

So that’s my week in a nutshell.

I hope this week will be a little calmer and that we are able to keep plugging away on homeschool lessons which we only have about a month of left. I can’t believe the school year is almost over. I’m sure the children won’t be happy but I am considering starting our school year on August 1 this year but on a reduced schedule so it will only be a couple days a week until we get to September. I think this will allow us to take more breaks during the school year so that it doesn’t feel like we are slogging through long spaces of lessons without much down time. Who knows. It could totally backfire, but luckily homeschooling allows us the flexibility to try things and then stop doing them if we don’t enjoy it.

How was your week?

What are you drinking this week for tea? Or is it coffee? Or are we on to colder drinks as we move toward summer?