Just When We Were Getting a Handle

Our bodies were just adjusting to the little bursts of sleep we get and we were figuring out how to do our work routine while juggling Ehren and then yesterday we hit a snag.

Austin jumped up on the couch, screamed and now we have a pretty hurt puppy. The vet ended the exam with "well the good news is she isn't paralyzed" however, I watched her do her tests and Austin stopped reacting to some of them about halfway down her back. The short story is she still has reflexes in her back legs but her brain has lost control of them because of a ruptured disc around L4 in her spine. We are still hoping that she will recover with some medicine but if not we have to decide if we want to pay for surgery and the chances of the issue recurring are huge.

For now she can't walk at all and we have to carry her outside and keep her in her crate. So one of us carries a kid and the other carries a dog. We aren't outfitting her for the wagon she can roll herself around in yet but the mental image does make us giggle a little bit. Hopefully it won't come to that because I think the giggles would all disappear. For now we are just waiting to see and this is the extent of her day.

Austin vs. Ehren

Growing up I was called the dog's name more times than I was called my siblings' name. I understand the tendency but after being away from "Austin the Dog" for 3 weeks I didn't think we'd slip into it so quickly. Turns out seven years makes quite a habit.

As a matter of reference for all involved here is how we are going to tell them apart:

Austin hates baths - Ehren loves them.

Austin barks at people she doesn't know - Ehren smiles.

Austin is cool to sleep for 8 to 10 hours - Ehren is NOT.

Austin hates traveling - Ehren seems to be fitting into the Fykes world traveling quite well.

And the most obvious... Austin has white hair - Ehren has black.

Should be simple.

New Tricks

Austin (the dog) has always been very bad about asking for things. She never caught on to the concept of asking to go out. She just holds it until we let her out or she pees on the floor (to her/our credit that hasn't happened in years).

In the last 4 months we've been able to train her to tell us when she is out of water by scratching her bowl. She has it down pat and even when we are downstairs in the office we can hear her scratch her bowl above us and we fill it up for her.

In the process of learning this she now knows we are "trained" to answer her when she scratches. What does that mean? She scratches her toy when she wants to play, she scratches the rug when her ball rolls under and today she was scratching the tripod we have in the office. Why? I have no idea. I thought maybe it was in her way so I moved it. Then she just scratched it again. Maybe she is just lamenting the loss of production equipment in our basement.

I miss it too Austin, but now we have lockboxes, real estate signs, and rolls and rolls of architectural plans. Get with it! This is our new life.

And that is why we don't have a coffee table

Our dog hates getting a bath. My mom's dog loves a bath. She gets all excited and tail wagging when my mom mentions the word bath. We've been reduced to spelling out B-A-T-H so that our dog doesn't pee on the floor from fright. And now I'm pretty sure she knows how to spell it. We'll probably start calling it C-L-E-A-N time.

The most tragic part of Austin hating baths is that she has this really nice skin condition that requires her to be bathed every 5 days. Not every month like regular dogs. So at the Fykes house every 5 days we lure our dog outside so she can pee on the sidewalk instead of our hardwoods once she realizes what is about to commence. Then after the most HORRIBLE experience of her life where she is put under warm water in our bathtub she is deemed clean and then the most HYSTERICAL thing happens.

She rubs on every rug surface in our house completely oblivious of furniture. She runs full speed throwing her body on the ground, rubbing, running to the next rug, throwing her body down and repeating the process. I don't know if she is trying to get her old smell off the rug or give it her fresh clean scent but its just the funniest thing to watch her run back and forth between the rugs in the living and dining room and then all of a sudden she'll remember there is a rug in the office downstairs and off she clicks down the stairs.

Almost makes it worth having to endure her tortorous stares after we've set her in the bathtub.

Today we are finishing up our trip to Austin. The family we are staying with is a family we used to babysit for all the time in college. They are an amazing family who everyone wanted to be around and we were honored to have been their babysitters. I made them practice their piano, we played Nintendo 64, did homework and they were even in my last "short" for film school.

Unfortunately, while we were in Nashville their kids have grown up (funny how we didn't get older but they did), now the boys are over six feet and the daughter is quite a beautiful young woman.

I'm a little sad to be packing up our stuff and leaving their house because it just feels so comfortable. Thank you Walters for opening your home to college students 9 years ago and thank you for making us feel like a part of the family!

Why We Don't Have Kids

So I was bathing the dog last night and Joshua and I were talking about a weird ear thing she has going on. Although she is the chronically ill dog this ear thing is new and different so we were talking about whether to take her to the vet. We came to the consensus that if it hadn't eaten into her brain at this point we could probably wait and see what happens until Monday. Then this thought popped into my head.

We need to make sure we have it figured out before we leave for New York.  

You want to know what I thought next?

Oh Crap!  We haven't even thought about finding someone to keep her while we are gone. 

 Yeah we forgot totally about having to find a place for her to stay. I am so glad we are having this realization a week out instead of 2 days from our trip so that I have more time to craft the craigslist ad.  Free dog rental for one week. 

I mean, seriously, who can say no to this face?

Our Booty

We have a friend who did a giveaway on his blog. He said he would send a Dr. Pepper to the winner and I totally thought he was kidding. I REALLY thought he was kidding when he said that because he liked HIS answer the best he was going to send everyone who commented a DP just so we didn't think he was taking the easy way out.

But low and behold this showed up in our mailbox:

Modeled by the much too hairy Austin and after seeing this photo I am calling to make her a grooming appointment immediately. I'm really surprised she isn't bumping into more things with all that hair over her eyes.

Thanks to Nathan for the beverage and Chuck for the photo idea.

Austin's Foster Family

While we are out of the country, Austin is going to stay with the Smiths.  They agreed to keep her a few months ago as a trial for getting their own dog.  Sounds pretty smart!  I think most of us would be better off if we took baby steps before we jumped off the deep end.  We got a dog before we had kids (not pregnant-for the record), we kept my mom's dog for a while before we got our own, and we dated for 6 years before we got married (that's a little extreme I know).

Anyway, that was the plan.  However, they figured out the kind of dog they wanted, a Vizsla (pronounced VEE-SHLA) and they are rare and hard to find and sure enough last month a breeder just outside Nashville had a litter and they just couldn't resist.  They brought home there new dog on Saturday and their "trial" dog will still be coming to live with them on Tuesday.

 I thought it would be best if we tested out the dog compatibility before we left the country because I didn't want to deal with the fact that Austin had eaten their new puppy while we were in Rome. I took Austin over yesterday and things went as good as expected. Austin growled and Scout tried to play with her and Austin growled and Scout tried to play and Austin growled...you get the picture. There was one moment when Austin decided she wanted to play but she growls when she plays so Scout still felt like she was being mean to him.

I'm hoping Austin warms up to Scout and will play well with others while we are away.  Memry is hoping that Austin will teach Scout that his crate is not of the devil so he will stop screaming like he is demon possessed while he is in there.

I wanted a picture of both of them, but Austin would have nothing to do with it. So...let me introduce Scout!

Do you smell that?

That is only because we gave her a bath today. If we hadn't done that the smell would be creeping out through your keyboard and every once in a while it would just slap you in the face. You'd be 3 websites away and still smelling dog.