Oh, The Drama

Its been a crazy few weeks around here. I have 8 weeks of school left, and the papers are getting longer and more complex. The nice thing is that my boss is letting me take off the days before Thanksgiving so I can write my thesis...

I spent part of last week in San Diego. What a mess. My coworker and I flew in on Monday after getting an email saying our corporate meetings were still on the schedule. The airline lost my luggage, which didn’t really add to the trip. Tuesday morning, the meetings were cancelled, because over half the local facility’s staff had been evacuated from their homes. My coworker went sightseeing, but I had no interest in breathing that air. One of the news reports said that the current air quality would negatively affect "the elderly, children, and adults." Not sure who was left, but I figured that since I'm technically an adult and occasionally feel elderly, I should just avoid the nastiness. We managed to get flights out on Wednesday, but what a wasted trip that was. The city was doing fairly well, all things considered. It's in a valley, which helped keep the fires out of it, and the breeze from the ocean helped keep the worst of the smoke out, most of the time. At times, though, the smoke was so bad that I could smell it in my hotel room. And when we took off Wednesday, I could smell the smoke in the plane until we’d been at cruising altitude for about 20 minutes – I guess that’s about how long it took for the air to recirculate enough. Oh, and I did get my luggage back late Tuesday afternoon, in time to pack my new clothes and get ready for the flight back home.

In other news, Reyna is completely off the Prozac, and I’ve reduced her Phenobarbital from 90mg twice a day to 60mg twice a day. She’d reached the point where she was just too miserable – she’d started getting aggressive with me and Duncan, and the folks at day camp said she would just lay down with her head to the wall and wouldn’t play. She seems to be doing MUCH better now. She’s peppier, more playful, and even her hips don’t seem to bother her as much. She and Duncan boarded while I was in San Diego, and the folks there said that, while she didn’t play all day like Duncan, she did play with Duncan, she played tug with the people and she got up to greet each dog as they came into camp (Duncan played all day, every day, and was passed out cold with his eyes rolled back in his head 30 minutes after we got home Wednesday night). Interestingly enough, I haven’t seen any seizures since she’s been on the lower dose of Pb, although she was still having them on the higher dose. I took the dogs out into the woods today, and Reyna was more active and energetic than she’s been in a long time. She’s still not doing a lot of running, but she did trot ahead and then wait on me a good bit. And she actually jumped over a couple of fallen trees, instead of looking for ways to go around them. I looked for ways around the trees, but thats because my knee and hip hurt every time we go walking in the woods. Apparently, the wreck last Thanksgiving hurt my hip a lot more than I realized.

We’re also working on Reyna’s allergies, testing different foods and kibbles to try and figure out what she’s allergic to. So far, she’s done fine with pepperoni, cheese, and Frosty Paws (both plain and peanut butter). The lamb and rice kibble – the pups’ normal kibble – seems to have sparked itchy spots. They’d been eating a chicken-based kibble before we started the test, so I’m avoiding that since she was constantly itchy. Right now, we’re trying a venison and rice kibble. If she shows an allergic reaction to this kibble, then she either has a very odd protein allergy or she’s allergic to grains. My guess would be the grains, since venison is one of the few proteins given to food-allergic dogs. Time will tell.