The last four and a half months

My last post was October 27, 2011. More than four months ago. I would feel guilty about that, but a lot of things happened on October 28th. Well, actually only two things happened, but those two things were like tiny cartoon snowballs that were allowed to roll down a big, snowy cartoon hill and grow bigger and bigger until they eventually enclosed tiny cartoon versions of  The Husband and me so that all was visible were our limbs, flailing about as the snow balls continued to roll down hill.

On October 28th, The Husband found out his position at work (his dream job) was in jeopardy. He also found out his wife was pregnant. SURPRISE!

And so, I decided to take a break from blogging. For one, we really weren't sure how things would shake out for The Husband. We still aren't sure. At this point, if he was to come home and tell me he had been assigned a position as a rodeo clown on a Naval ship circulating the waters of the Arctic, I wouldn't be surprised.

And then there were the trials and tribulations of the first trimester. The morning sickness, oh the morning sickness. I was familiar with the nausea from my last pregnancy, but in those first few months I found relief when I laid worship at the porcelain bowl. This time around, there was no relief. No heaving or upchucking or even gagging. It was just all-day constant nausea, accompanied by extreme lethargy. Honestly, if it hadn't been for Little Guy, it might not have been so bad. I could have laid on the couch and caught up on some TV. But, alas, there was Little Guy with all his little needs. And so, as any good stay-at-home-mom would, I bucked up, squared my shoulders...and nagged my husband until he agreed to take a few weeks off work.

Actually, I didn't have to nag him. He came home one day to find Little Guy (fed and dressed and wearing a clean diaper, I will add in my defense) crawling atop a massive pile of cloth diapers that still needed to be stuffed and put away. From two days before. It had been the only item on my "To Do" list for the last day and a half, which means The Husband had been tackling the dishes, the other piles of laundry, the sweeping and vacuuming and swiffering and all those other household chores that are required day after day. And believe me, I take that "To Do" list very seriously. It usually works through three or four drafts before the handwriting is good enough to be tacked onto the refrigerator, and then it is crossed-out in color-coded fashion and sometimes, it's so good I save it in my journal. I wish I was making that up.

And so, The Husband, wonderful man that he is, decided to take advantage of his depressing situation at work and take a few weeks off to help me through the worst of the first trimester. That brought us into a two-week "vacation" to New York for Christmas, and onto January where I spent the first few weeks recovering our household from that "vacation" and the next two after that trying to get caught up on all the small house projects I had put off during The Great First Trimester Couch Session of 2011.

Just as I was about ready to put fingers to keyboard and recommit myself to my blogging habit, the Yuppy-Hippy clan was dealt a pretty awful blow. On Thursday, February 16, Dodge bit Little Guy. Words aren't enough to describe the complex layers of guilt and shame and utter regret we are still obviously dealing with and will continue to deal with for many years to come.

The summarized version of events was that the bite happened, and we decided our responsibility was to report it to the city and surrender Dodge. This was after exhausting a few avenues of trying to get Dodge to a foster situation or a rescue group, and learning that in most cases, these groups are powerless to help an animal that has a bite history. This makes some obvious sense, although of course we hoped that our dog was the exception and that we could get him to some sort of help before resorting to a surrender. We did not feel like we could take Dodge back into our home after his 10-day quarantine (routine for any animal involved in a bite/attack), and unfortunately the groups we talked to did not have any foster homes available to him at that time either.

The outcome for Little Guy was much more hopeful. I called a nurse triage line, and was walked through the basic steps for evaluating his scratches and bruises, and determined he did not have to be seen at an ER. Even better than all that, he did not show any fear of either of the dogs when we allowed them to interact with him much later that day. Probably one of the saddest moments of my life as a parent (to both Little Guy and Dodge) was watching Dodge apologetically approach Little Guy and lick his face where the wound was, and then seeing Little Guy react with a grin. That was their final moment together, and ours together as a family, and it absolutely broke my heart.

Looking back, there was so much more we could have done for Dodge, and it will continue to eat away at me for many, many years. I will say this, at the time, we thought we were doing all the right things. We had contacted our rescue group and sought out a re-homing situation. We had welcomed an animal behavioralist to the home and worked on the tactics she suggested. We had reached out to friends and family and were honest about our situation, and in a very sad twist to this story, we were preparing Dodge for his first trial weekend with a cousin of mine the very next week.

Still, we should have pushed harder and given more resources to rehabilitating Dodge. I still am adamant that he was not an aggressive dog, but an anxious one that reacted to stress in the only way he knew how. The bite incident did not involve food or possessions, but most likely was due to excessive eye contact on Carter's part, and if I had been more cautious and observant, would never have happened.

I'm including a few pictures, even though they are obviously the most shameful part of my experiences as a mother up to this point, so that maybe someone in a similar situation might know that other parents have been through this unique type of tragedy, have had to make hard decisions relating to their four-legged family members, and have come out a little wiser in the end.

And for those parents who have an anxious (or aggressive) animal and are wondering how best to approach the situation: Please, please, please...do more than you think is necessary, and if you feel like your best option is to re-home your companion, DO NOT HESITATE. There is so much guilt and shame and embarrassment when considering this option, but if I had not been so afraid of how others might judge me (or how I might judge myself), I could have saved myself so much heartache in the end.