Shhh…. I have a secret

I keep getting locked out of my blog! I have no idea how, and it took me two weeks this time to get back in. But I finally (obviously) did.

It is the beginning of June. Already. Where did the rest of the year go? To fast. I feel like I am not getting anything done. Mainly because I’m not.

At least I finally finished chapters 1, 2, and 3 of my dissertation. Well, 1 and 3 for sure. I am waiting the approval of my subject matter expert (SME) before I can submit my proposal to the board.

NEED to be done! I want to finish so I can move on.

Let’s see. What has been going on…

The girls are still dealing with Chiquita’s death. Now, most of the time, it is a shadow in their eyes. However, every once in a while it is so easy to see. For instance, the girls and I go to my (ex) sister-in-law’s house once a month to play games. Their pups always came with us. Yoda is on my daughter’s lap, and Chiquita was on her wife’s. Often they spent time on mine or my SIL laps too. Now it is just Yoda… and my DIL looked so sad.

Chiquita is a presence that is missed, so very much.

I don’t know how one little grumpy dog managed to worm her way into all of our hearts. But she sure did. I miss her, everyday.

Now we are facing issues with our 14-year-old dog. She has had Cushing’s disease for at least the last couple of years and has been on medication for it. The first thing the med did was seriously fluff her out. She looked like she had husky fur! All these months later, she still does.

Unfortunately, that med also drops her appetite. We went form feeing her the healthy weight dog food- trying to get her to drop a few pounds- she was at 22 at one point, to doing everything in our power to get her to eat! She is down to just under 10.3 lbs. When we got her she was about 9 lbs, but she was also about 6 months old. Of course, she gets injections monthly for her arthritis, and that medication also causes weight loss. We are feeding her every time we can get her to eat- which upsets her sister that gets fed twice a day. She’s a chunk.

Well, technically, she is a standard Doxie and should weigh between 20-33 lbs, and is actually at 22lbs. The vet still wants us to watch what she eats.

Hard to do when she will literally eat anything that hits the floor or she can reach.

And let me tell you, Dachshund’s side eye is a real thing! I don’t know how she makes it look like she is judging you for your life choices while tearing your heart out because she is trying to convince you that you are STARVING HER TO DEATH!!

It’s like that scene in The Little Mermaid when Ursula is singing out about “wasting away to practically nothing!”

She is not starving. Poor little thing!

We ended up with the other in the ER vet Saturday before last. Her head was tilted, she was throwing up, and walking in circles, or losing her footing. We took her in to the vet and I was seriously afraid that that was going to be the end for her. I cried the entire time. The vet looked at us and said that he thought it was just vesicular; she was having issues with her nervous system and was dizzy. That was why she was so off balance. And her eyes were freaking out.

We decided to go the medication route first- we are not ready to let her go if she isn’t in pain and can still maintain a good standard of life. It took a couple of days to get her steady, but she is mostly back to normal. I think that her arthritis along with the nervous system issues is starting to affect her back legs and sometimes they ‘slip’ on her. Could be our wood floors adding to that too.

Right now she is doing well.

But with all that has happened in the last few months, I know her time is coming.

The problem is, I don’t know how we will go on without her…