My pup is feeling a lot better, we’ve added a little bit of play to her feeding times*… both to help with her boredom while getting better, but also a bit of physical therapy (exercise as fun doesn’t feel like exercise).

*We put her kibble underneath the tennis balls, which are on a silicone muffin pan. The muffin pan is dishwasher safe. Did you know you can wash tennis balls in the washing machine and then put them in the dryer? Yep, you can. 😀

She is allowing me a bit more sleep, not quite sleeping through the night yet… even if I try to get bedtime early she still needs a trip to the balcony around 10pm and she wakes me at 4am… I’ve been limiting her food/water intake to 7am-6pm… but I’m thinking I might need to change that to 5pm so that I can go to bed earlier. But that might make the 4am wakeup call even earlier. We’ll just have to tweak it and see. Most nights I can sleep that 6ish hours, but last night she woke me nearly every hour again, I would put my hand on her and she would get quiet and then wake me up about an hour later… I finally gave in at 4, but then I couldn’t get back to sleep… so I’ve been up since 5am and she’s been sleeping. I think this really is like having a newborn infant. Ugh. I keep telling myself that at least she asks and we get to the balcony (most of the time) without having an accident in the house, and that she is improving. Her front shoulders seem to no longer hurt… her back leg is still crazy and when she is really tired, after 10pm, she is harder to help navigate – which is why I was trying to just have her go back to sleep until sunrise… she seems to be solar powered and has more leg control during the day.

We’ve been carrying her downstairs once a day and having her walk a bit… we also have a red wagon that she is now willing to accept when she’s gotten too tired. I’m sure we look like crazy people pulling a basset hound behind us in a wagon, but at least she gets some sunshine and gets to smell new smells… then she naps… which is far better than a pup who is bored and roaming the house. I keep hoping that “tonight we’ll all get to have a full night’s sleep”… it’ll come soon, I think.

All this sleeplessness is making it harder to concentrate, obviously. But I have on occasion been able to draw or read, but mostly I feel like the last three to four weeks I have been a bit of a zombie.

Until next time…
~nic