Gimpy

I'll try to get pictures up as soon as I can.

Remus went to the vet yesterday because one of the vets who see Remus (there are three vets at the office) was just as concerned about Remus's funky leg as I was. The vet explained she doesn't have a lot of experience with these problems in dogs because they're rare, and more often seen in dogs like Pugs and Pekenese. That said she wanted to take some pictures and send them to some Ortho vets to see what they thought and then discuss the possibility of splinting Remus's leg. Long story short, after pictures with Remus's foot cockeyed like an over enthusiastic ballet dancer, we decided an attempt at splinting was at least worth a shot. The vet said he still walks fairly straight on it, and it's less noticible when he stands as well unless he's looking back over his R shoulder. Her educated guess is that either one side of the bone is growing faster than the other, or more likely it's ligament issues. Either way, the splint would provide extra support until it hopefully fixes itself.

Remus left the vet with a splint allowing two little toenails peeping out the bottom and wrapped all the way up to just below his shoulder. Also, he is supposed to wear the giant donut collar to keep from chewing on his splint. He wore the collar all yesterday and he looked so pathetic and miserable! It was cute and he was unintentionally amusing running into things with the collar on. To make matters worse, the vet explained the worst part of the splint is we had to keep it dry, so she gave me a few IV bags and told me to put it over his foot in wet wheather and tape it down. Well, the east coast is currently getting slammed with snow, ice, and freezing rain. This morning I dutifully taped on the IV bag with Army green duct tape like a ridiculous plastic bootie and then let Remus walk outside to do his business. He took one tentative step on the ramp and almost went sliding to the bottom. He stepped back hastily and stared at me with pathetic miserable puppy eyes. I put my shoes on and assisted my poor gimpy slipping puppy down the ice crunchy ramp to the ground below. Watching him walk with the stiff leg and extra slick bootie was much more amusing than it should've been. He would take one step with his normal leg, then a step with his wrapped up leg and slide so his nose was almost on the ground. I feel bad for him. Getting him back up onto the porch was a whole new challenge.

I finally gave in and took the collar off. I'm a sucker. I sprayed his leg thoroughly with icky stuff to deter him chewing on it and I stayed in the ktichen with him to make sure it was working. I've been checking on him every few minutes, but I'm going to have to put the collar back on if I want to stay in any other part of the house for longer than ten minutes at a time. Poor pathetic puppy. I'll post pictures as soon as I get some.

Wolfhound revelations..

So, it might've been slightly cruel of me to insist on Brian getting me Remus, I don't think he really knew what he was in for... He understood the concept of "pet" and even "puppy", and even though he was leery of any more pets after the peeing cat fiasco, he remembered with a certain fondness his childhood pet Mastiff and figured a dog would be infinitely better than a cat. Yes, well,  but he hadn't actually researched the breed-like I have-or come to terms with the responsibilities of ownership-which I was eager to embrace-or even understood the scope of understandable wear and tear that comes with a large puppy-which I shrug off as easily as the clothing which I leave all over the house.

Some days I feel worse for Brian than others, perhaps recently it's because he was gone for a week, but several things he continues to insist that Remus shouldn't do even though it is inately Wolfhound Puppy TO do kinda make me go "awwww" in a "it'll be alright dear" sort of way.  For example...

1. Brian goes to pet Remus, Remus enthusiastically licks Brian's hand. "Don't lick me dog!" ....right, but thats how dogs show affection.... it's a losing battle.
2. Brian walks into kitchen, Remus sniffs at everything he can reach, meaning cold wet nose against skin. "Stop sniffing stupid!" ...again, this is normal everyday dog behavior that isn't going to change anytime soon...
3. Remus barks, at the dark, at trash cans, at strangers, at funny looking bushes...Normal dog behavior...
4. Remus whines when he wants to be played with....normal dog behavior.
5. Remus jumps around when excited and inadvertantly lands on bare feet with puppy toenails....normal dog behavior compounded by wolfhound size.
6. Related, when we're in the kitchen Remus happily lays at our feet, almost knocking us over when his weight slides down the back of our legs unexpectedly and he stays entirely in the way (easy feat, he's almost half the size of the kitchen floor)....normal dog, especially family loyal -and large- wolfhound, behavior.

Basically, Brian doesn't like any dog behavior that is mildly inconvinient (though I think most of it is just cute, which doesnt help Brian...). He seems to expect Remus to understand this and thus not do said inconvinient dog behavior. But Remus, being a, well, dog, will continue to act as such.

Brian has not resigned himself to the chewed molding and window ledges, the stinky dog smell when it rains, the necessity for Remus to be let out regularly (even interrupting Xbox and movies), the fact that Remus wants very much for Brian to like him and will continue shoving his nose in uncomfortable places and lick barefeet, and that we are going to have said giant monster dog for hopefully 7 more years and not much is going to change...

Yes, it might've been cruel for me to insist on getting Remus, but it's also mildly entertaining.

Hot air....

I'm very excited about being Emma's favorite Aunt (pronounced "Aunt" not "Ant") or at least, one of her favorites, so I was very eager to have a hand in painting her baby room. Rebecca opted for a hot air balloon theme complete with wall mural. That shouldn't be too bad for my first attempt at painting a wall mural right? A whole bunch of elongated circle type objects with basic geometric designs. Geometry, simple. Very basic color scheme too, predominately green and yellow with accents of purple and white. Nothing too complicated, I even managed to chalk in a pattern that looked reasonably promising and not too ambitious or overwhelming. We bought the paint with a heightened sense of anticipation, Rebecca seemed just as thrilled as I was. Our first foray into clouds was an unequivicable success. The "special" paint we got at Lowes was translucent white with a shimmery sheen to it, add an elephant ear sponge for swirly texture and our clouds came straight out of dream worlds. Feeling confident with the clouds and the chalk, I opened up the first can of paint and eagerly plunged in my brush.

Two paint sessions later I'm feeling remarkably disgruntled, although Rebecca still thinks it looks great. The problem is, I went into painting the walls wanting to reproduce THIS....

And instead, after struggling with getting enough paint to cover up the blue underneath, trying to make clean curved lines, wrestling with painting on an upright surface I can't spin around to make it easier on my wrist, and painting while on a rolling office chair to get the tops of the balloons, I produced something very similar to THIS.

Buh.


If I can step back enough to look at it objectively, it perhaps does look better than my computer Paint rendition, but because I was aiming for something else it stil makes me slightly grumpy. I think it'll turn out well, I'm pretty sure people will at least know what I was aiming for and parts of it are going to be entirely too much fun (two balloons have actual baskets coming out of the wall). Rebecca and Nick seem to like it which is the most important part.

I'm not fishing for compliments on artwork with this post, I'm halfway laughing at myself because I think this is why I don't paint as much as I want. I get these great ideas for pictures, but it never looks in paint like it does in my head. Some of my paintings I think actually turned out pretty decent, I'm rather fond of the wolf painting Brian has in his man cave for instance, but I still see all of the flaws and imperfections and things I missed or did wrong that makes me itch to take it out of the frame and try and fix it up.

In other actual wolfhound relavant news, Remus chews on the Vincent house, barks at everything, and whines like a two year old in a candy shop every time I bring him over. I got him home, he was very excited and wriggly tail wagging prancy, and he has yet to whine, has only chewed on his bone, and very obediently went to his crate to lie down. Oy. I wish he'd take his good behavior with him when we travel...