Never A Dull Moment

We're starting the year with a bang. Save the fireworks, people, we've got enough drama going on without them. Josh woke up this morning with a fever and sore throat. Well yippee yahoo! He was diagnosed positive for strep at the doctor this morning. I'm mentally counting; this is 2 cases in 3 weeks. We're still at the don't panic, it's completely normal stage, but if it continues too long I should probably consider having the dogs tested. And which one would I start with? Although we just kicked one out yesterday, we still have 4 wonderful 4-legged shedding machines in the house. And if we test them for the sake of the 2-legged non-shedders, would that fall under our insurance? Because our dogs don't have that little luxury of having all their bills covered.

And because these things always happen in 3's, the dogs stepped up to the plate to fill in the remainder. Our chocolate lab, that we bought for the express purpose of having beautiful puppies sired by our gorgeous yellow lab, and that has a medical condition that prevents her from having puppies naturally, has suddenly developed what looks to be severe arthritis. My brain keeps screaming hip dysplasia, but I've never seen it personally and don't know what it looks like. The dog is not in any kind of pain whatsoever, but won't bend her back legs. She hops around on them and gets around very well, but there's obviously a problem. Yesterday morning she was fine, yesterday evening not so much. It was that fast. Today she's doing much better but it still isn't looking good. Because of the lack of pain, I'm adopting the wait it out method. If she gets worse again between now and tomorrow I'll take her to the vet. If she continues to slowly get better, but is still obviously not right, I may take her to the vet Monday. I just cringe at the bottom line of that bill.

But it's 3rd bang that's taking all our bucks. We set ourselves up quite nicely with a modest corgi kennel and were looking forward to a year of puppies. No more running our girls all over the country to rendezvous with their lovers, no more making arrangements to meet someone midway on the 3 hour trip, no more fees associated with the services I was getting the girls. But it's just our luck that the beautiful male we got has decided that it's a whole lot of bother to get the job done. What kind of man is he?! Is there a little blue pill for dogs? Because this stupid idiot needs one. Or two. He's been a daddy before and knows what to do, so I'm not understanding his new position on this. I've always been under the impression that all males, no matter what species, were all about doing the girl. I have no idea what ails this stupid, stupid dog, but I don't have time to find out. My girl wanted him yesterday and I'm running out of time. (A quick disclosure of TMI for anyone who's not into raising dogs; they ovulate twice yearly. It isn't like we can just say we'll catch her next month.) So my husband spent all morning searching for a fertility vet while I had the boy at the doctor. Shockingly, not every vet does this kind of stuff. We are incredibly fortunate to vet with one of the only ones in the 4-county area that does. Except that he's on vacation until next week. I've got 2-3 more days looking at me before the window of opportunity closes. We found a vet who actually was able to get us in tomorrow, and it's only 2 hours away. The cost isn't as much as we'd feared it could be, but when you've got both the male and the female, shouldn't the end result be one happy boy and one knocked up girl?

So if this is the first week of January, I shudder to think what the rest of the year will be like.