mo’s back home and up to his old tricks, albeit skinnier than he was earlier this week… if that’s possible! i suppose that when one’s metabolism is as fast as a puppy’s, losing a day’s nutrition is rather significant. we’re fattening him up with wet food mixed into his kibble, so hopefully his ribs will soon recede under a thicker layer of flesh. in the meantime, he didn’t even try to eat a single mushroom on this morning’s walk: a big relief.
mo spent some time this afternoon "helping" oats arrange art supplies in her studio
If your dog is a canine vacuum, avoid mushrooms. This is easier said than done, here on the wet coast in autumn, but it’s still important to keep in mind. Also, consider pet health insurance, because trips to the vet are expensive and it make take a costly test or three to confirm that poison is the cause of your dog’s distress.
Mo’s doing okay, though still staying at the hospital until this evening at the earliest. I am relieved, though feeling fragile. Also, even more exhausted than a few days ago. We’ve canceled the open house/puppy warming that we’d planned for tomorrow night, because it looks like none of us will want to do much beyond cuddle on the couch.
mo’s at the veterinary hospital, hopefully in recovery from an evening of severe gastric distress. we don’t know what caused it: it could be a reaction to the dewormer we gave him this morning, or a toxic effect from some mushroom he ate, or possibly a blockage in his digestive tract. when i took him to the park after school, he was in fine form, but apparently it all went downhill after i left home to meet a friend at the pub.
i’m trying to be optimistic, because i ought to: mo is in good hands, and they will take care of him as best they can. puppies can and do recover from all sorts of crises, including bad reactions/poisonous mushrooms/blockages. he is a strong little creature, and has a lot going for him.
i’m very grateful for excellent community support: when oats rang me at the pub to tell me what had happened, my friend drove me all the way to the hospital… and s.u.m. and captain pestou drove oats and mo to the hospital, then stayed with us through hours and hours of waiting. thank you, friends.
it’s almost 1 am and i’m going to bed, tired and fighting the bad worried feelings with logic and hope. this is the first time i’ve let myself get all wrapped up in a pet since my cat died 6 years ago, the first time i’d chosen an animal instead of having them just wander into my life… i’m trying hard to let this choice still be a good one.
our boy, earlier today at the park
I’m back. Actually I got back a few days ago, but hit the ground running and have barely slowed since. The entire trip to Ontario felt like that, in fact… I thought I’d be all relaxed and well-rested from not having to take a puppy out to pee in the middle of the night, but there was so much visiting to do. Oats and I shared at least one meal with both my sets of parents, both of my sisters, one of my stepbrothers plus his wife and two kids, my older sister’s partner, my older sister’s roommate, two friends of mine from high school, Oats’ parents, Oats’ grandparents, Oats’ long-time family friend, and Oats’ brother plus his wife and two kids. Twenty-four people in eight days. Fun, and exhausting. Upon our return, our landlady asked how the weather was and I said that I didn’t have a clue.
It’s good to be back.
Mo went to the vet tonight for his 2nd round of shots. It was a different doctor than the one we saw before, and she wasn’t quite as friendly. Among other things, she told us that he’s underweight, because his ribs are visible. We told her that her coworker had noted Mo’s skinny hips and long legs, and guessed that he’s part whippet, in which case he is naturally very thin. At this point, he barely weighs 10 lbs, and yet we’ve been feeding him the designated amount of kibble for that size of dog since we got him 4 weeks ago! We’re going to increase it now, but still… I think he’s just a bony sort of animal.
Whatever.
I’m cranky, and need to sleep now. I’m just glad to have such a good pup as Mo, and that he’s generally healthy and a pleasure to all he meets.
Mo at 13 weeks of age, sitting pretty in the special bed his Auntie has made for him in her kitchen, so that he can be part of the action and yet also comfortable (and fashionable).
mo’s sister is staying with us for the next 5 days. her name is a word that is most often used to refer to the end of the world, but we’ll call her po for short.
the theory is that two puppies will keep each other busy and tire one another out, resulting is better dogs. in practice, it’s been quite noisy and rather violent. the brief hours since she has been chez nous, they have fought so much that po has a neat scrap of fur missing from her left shoulder, though no skin was broken.
usually, mo roughhouses for a good 1/2 hour, then crashes on the closest lap in a deep sleep for the same amount of time. not so with these two pups together: they chased (terrorized?) one another for over an hour and a half, barking and growling and bouncing off the walls. now they’re sleeping, but only because oats and i have each held one of them firmly in our arms until they calmed down.
i’m damned glad we have the puppy room, originally a walk-in closet coming off the bedroom. when i first moved in here over a year ago, i took down half the shelving in the closet to hang my bicycles, and used the rest of the space for clothing and milk crates of art supplies/tools. once oats and i moved back here together and we knew that mo was coming to live with us, oats spent an evening re-purposing a wooden book shelf by making it into a beautiful gate on a hinge with a big brass latch, spanning the closet doorway. the floor is the same fake wood laminate as the rest of the apartment, which is easy to mop: voila, a puppy-den was born! even as they play rough with one another, mo and po can be safely contained. unfortunately, it doesn’t stop their noise from carrying.
a very sleepy puppy, wondering why the hell i’m interrupting his nap
mo came home to live with us yesterday evening, about 3.5 weeks before we expected: a happy surprise, though not without its share of difficulties. such as, i’ve never had a puppy before this, and hadn’t yet read any books on how-to-raise-the-best-dog-in-the-world. but hey! guess what? puppies are just like human babies!
yes, he cried.
a lot.
i suppose i would too, if i were suddenly expected to sleep alone after living my entire (9 weeks of) life surrounded by siblings and other dogs. still though, the crying was hard. it reminded me very much of my younger sister’s days as an infant, when we shared a bedroom. my dad and stepmom believed in letting her “cry it out”, which really sucked. following that theory of child-rearing, it’s probably my fault that she’s become a lovely but rather self-centered young woman with a big sense of entitlement, because i used to break the rules by responding to her wailing. (then again, maybe she’s just a regular 19-year-old and i don’t have enough distance from that age to appreciate it!)
anyway. last night we discovered that since my days of baby-comforting almost 20 years ago, i have developed a great capacity to sleep through the crying of any young creature. oats is a more attentive parent, getting up a few times in the night and then letting mo slumber on her chest while she stretched out on the livingroom couch, unable to return to sleep herself and unwilling to let mo wake up the rest of the house with the fit he’d pull if he were returned to his crate. i know: she’s a jewel, and i’m damn lucky.
here he is last night, snuggling into the neck of his newly-met aunty s.u.m.
today we went to visit with our soon-to-be new family member, aka the cutest little puppy in the world. he’s about 8 weeks old now, and has doubled in size since we last saw him 4 weeks ago. we took him out for a few hours, showing him off to friends and strangers, and walking around the neighbourhood. i write “walking” but really we were the ones who did most of that, with him being carried: the collar we’d bought for him is too big, he has no concept of what a leash is, and frankly he’s still so small that it’d be ridiculous to expect him to keep up with us.
in picking him up from his current home, we finally met the woman who owns the momma dog, aka MD. to say she was not what we’d pictured is an understatement, mostly due to her age: i’d be shocked if she’s more than twenty years old. as we’d told her we would, we gave her $40 to cover some of the costs of puppy food and supplies. once we’d left her apartment and had a chance to confer, we decided that we’d best give her that again sometime soon. it puts all the other sketchiness about the puppy dealing in perspective, and now i’m wondering if she might have *needed* to sell the pups, simply for some cash.
we’ve chosen a name that is slightly similar to the one he was given at birth, but different enough that it’s part of our new life together. i’m debating over what to call him here on the blog: i could keep calling him “mono” (the birth name), or i could come up with something new.
i once knew someone who named their dog “theory”, which made me laugh because dogs are very much the opposite of theoretical discourse. in fact, they are excellent reminder of the importance of action. so, oats suggested that we continue with the joke by naming our pup “practice”. this could be fitting, not only because of how he will keep us in the now, but also because of the frequent comment we’ve been hearing from friends: “you’re getting a puppy as practice for a baby!”
while we were out, oats’ coworker came by our place and dropped off a couple bushels of pears from her tree. it was a lovely gesture, especially because she only wants a few jars of jam in exchange. however, they’re still sitting out there, right where she left them, because the fridge is full of peppers, the zucchinis are on the floor in the corner of the kitchen, there’s bread and butter pickles cooking on the stove, and i’ve got 24 jars of spicy peach chutney cooling on the counter. i feel satisfied, but on the verge of being overwhelmed. it’s a fine line, and those pears aren’t entering the house until i know i can cope with them.
PD just called: the little black puppy is ours!
according to him, MD had just put that ad online “as a safeguard” in case people flaked out on adopting the pups… to which we say BULLSHIT! as oats pointed out, what happened to the other two puppies that she’d already sold? but anyway, if that’s what PD chooses to believe in order to preserve his friendship with MD, more power to him. rock on. whatever. all i care about is that they both agree that the puppy is OURS!!!
(and we don’t have to pay $300 for him.)
earlier today, we’d visited the SPCA and even went so far as walking a lovely 8 month old dog who might have been perfect if it weren’t for the fact that we’re moving this weekend. really, it’s not fair for us to bring home a dog until things are settled, in another month or so… which is right when mono will be coming to live with us!
fuck, i’m so happy.
yesterday’s weepy messiness continued through the afternoon, culminating with me accidentally slicing my fingertip on a knife while washing dishes. the ensuing blood and loud swearing made me feel a bit better, as did the event that immediate followed: i got a call from the local college, saying that they’d had a student drop out of the electrical foundation program, and asking if i’d like the spot.
YES.
it starts the first week of august: less than a month from now. holy fuck.
to be clear, i’m elated: while the program doesn’t guarantee me a career as an electrician, it’s a great introduction and also an opportunity to find out if i’d like to pursue the whole apprenticeship-to-journey-ticket adventure. when my spot on the waitlist was confirmed back in may, i was told that it would likely be 8 to 12 months before there’d be room for me. still i was hopeful, because when oats and i attended the college info session back in february, they’d mentioned that there’s often a burst of intakes at the start of august and december, simply because fewer students are ready at those times of year. against the odds, hope wins!
i’m also feeling a mixed sort of sadness. this time last year, on my birthday, i’d made it to the top of the waitlist of canada’s most prestigious urban planning masters program and was awaiting a phone call similar to the one i got yesterday, telling me that i had to get myself packed up and moved to vancouver so that i could begin my new life as a graduate student. that phone call never came. now, i’m very glad that it didn’t because if i’d left i’d never have gotten together with oats, and i wouldn’t have gone to australia, and i wouldn’t have done a lot of other rad stuff that made my 27th year absolutely excellent. aside from that, my professor and mentor at the local university told me that i’d have been eaten alive in that masters program, because they have little room for politics such as mine.
so, really, it all worked out for the best.
and yet it’s a goodbye of sorts, or at least a see-ya-later: to my academic life, to the vision of myself as a future university professor, to the classist notions that have surrounded me as a kid growing up among the intelligentsia. even this morning, when my mom called to say happy birthday and i told her the good news, she made a joke about how this’ll be great because someday i’ll be able to wire my own office at the university where i’ll be a professor. that hurt a bit, because she’s usually the most supportive of any of my parents.
still, i get it: for my parents, going to university was the way out of the working class, and they have worked hard to surround themselves with the accoutrements of a cultured life. they raised me to value books, travel, gardens, art and liberal social justice, and they taught me that it’s more important to work with my brain instead of my body. they have their own baggage around this, as three of them are the first (and only) people in their families to ever have education beyond high school. also, being educational professionals themselves (3 teachers, 1 librarian) and of older generation(s), they have a different idea about what my bachelor’s degree in geography (and indigenous studies!) means: shouldn’t i be able to make a career from that??? i think they honestly don’t understand my reality.
and it probably offends them a little, even though they may never admit it outright.
what i need to work on now is admitting to my own internalized classism. what’s wrong with being an electrician? nothing at all, except that capitalism says it’s not as socially valuable as being a university professor. or a corporate CEO. or a politician. which is stupid. right?
the crazy thing that i’m only just starting to dismantle is that due to my class privilege, i could feasibly be any or all of these things. i have the social cues down pat, can assimilate the vocabulary easily, and can move into these spheres simply based on my physical/cultural resemblance to the status quo. i would be granted permission by the gatekeepers, because i am white and educated and confident.
in a way, me choosing trade school is not a rejection of the privilege my parents provide for me, but a continued acceptance and manipulation of it. i can make this choice easily, because i have so many other options. even as i write this, i’m wary of denying agency and autonomy to working class tradespeople, which isn’t my intention (though… there it is!). i need to understand how my privilege affects my choice to enter the trades, because it can seem almost offensive: i took a graduate level course last fall, and it was incredibly challenging and exhilarating but the critical analysis and deleuzian theory were overwhelming, so i’m going to become an electrician right now, then will likely go to graduate school in another 10 or 20 years. just like that :: snaps fingers ::.
anyway. these are the thoughts that fill my head, and even as they are complicated, i’m happy that they are percolating because it’s giving me a chance to see where i fit in the world.
now, i’ve got to get a million and one things ready for tonight’s birthday party. we had a bad scare last night as oats’ cat plummeted from a 10 foot high ledge and seemed quite injured – an emergency trip to the vet proved otherwise, but i’m glad we made sure even though it shot our evening plans for bbq preparations… that really would have made yesterday more messy than i can handle.
- this is the most important clarification that i need to make: though i used the singular personal pronoun “i” in my last post with regards to planning for a future with kids, i’m actually talking about a “we”. which is to say, i was researching options, but the execution of said options will also involve the thoughts, feelings, and energies of my beloved, oats. she’s an equal collaborator in this whole venture. as well, i suppose it’s worth mentioning that we’re also considering adopting older kids, in which case their opinions would be damn important too!
- when i say that i’m estimating $2000 per attempt, that’s specifically for intrauterine insemination with donor sperm at a clinic in my home city. it includes a mandatory counseling session, ovulation-prediction equipment, purchase of sperm from a sperm bank, shipping of sperm to the local lab, preparation of the sperm, insemination by a fertility specialist, and some paperwork fees. we could do it cheaper, definitely, but the chance of success may not be as high. on the other hand, it could be higher, because there’d be less stress. who knows? for now, i’m thinking of investing in a quality ovulation prediction machine, because part of the key here will be timing and i can use all the practice i can get. besides which, i’m a nerd: i love playing with gadgets and making graphs.
- i’m fairly certain that after we’ve been successful with the donor sperm and the child is born, we’ll need to go to court for oats to adopt the baby in order to be legally considered a parent, at an approximate additional cost of $800. which seems crazy. of course, now i can’t remember where i read this, and so i realize i might be completely wrong. i’ll go look for that info right now.
