a perfect gentleman

re: need a foster for an 8 year old PERFECT lab in Baton Rouge
This fellow came from the Baton Rouge shelter.  He is housetrained and gets along with all dogs.  He is incredibly sweet and has perfect house manners.  He is ½ thru his heartworm treatment.  He is easy to keep calm.  His foster mom is pregnant and getting close to her due date.  Can any one  foster him for 3 weeks????


That was the email I responded to when I agreed to foster Bach.  It was March 7, and he came to me on March 12.  My 3 week, easy fostering assignment has turned into a 7-weeks-and-counting mission to save a dog's life.

Bach is the sweet, good-mannered boy described in the email.  He's clearly lived a rough life.  His elbows and heels are heavily calloused, and his teeth are worn down to nubs, probably from chewing on rocks out of sheer boredom.  He hates to be outside without a human, and he loves tennis balls with an obsessive joy.  He climbs on the couch to snuggle, and he flops over on his back to wriggle and scratch at least four times a day.  He really is a wonderful dog.

There's no telling how he ended up in a shelter at his age, but it's clear that he wasn't valued by the people tasked with caring for him.  He had not been neutered, and he tested positive for heartworms, a preventable and potentially fatal parasitic infection.  He was saved by the rescue organization and neutered.  He was then treated for the heartworms, a risky and potentially fatal procedure on its own.  And then, I realized that he was occasionally dripping urine.  
 
Combined with the fact that he had some weakness in his hind end, we guessed that he had some sort of nerve damage.  The rescue coordinator was advised by one veterinarian to euthanize Bach, because he was "unadoptable" as he was.  I urged her to at least have him examined by another vet to determine what the cause might be and whether there might be any medical options available.  I let her know that I was committed to his care and wanted to give him every chance possible.  I bought him custom made belly bands, and I cut up blue pads to use as "panty liners."  I made special beds for him in his favorite spots (right next to me) that could be washed easily and kept the floors protected.  I started giving him homeopathic drops.

As suspected, an X-ray showed that two of the sacral vertebrae are closer together than they should be, indicating that the disc between them is likely bulging or ruptured and pressing on the spinal column.  This explained both the urinary incontinence and the difficulty getting up in his hind end.  We added steroids to his daily regimen of an NSAID, glucosamine, and chondroitin.  I ordered two more belly bands.  Bach continues to be a happy guy, unaware of any problems.  He sometimes goes for days without dripping, and then he sometimes drips all day. 

I urged the rescue coordinator to put out an emotional plea for Bach, and we both shared it far and wide.  I hoped for an immediate response from someone with a big heart and a patient soul who wanted to give him the retirement home that he deserves.  No such offer has yet come in, but we have been contacted by a chiropractor who would like to help.  She has offered to treat Bach without charge.  Again, I become hopeful.

I believe in a forever home for Bach.  I know that he didn't survive his rough life, his time in the shelter, and his heartworm disease and treatment only to be "put to sleep" over some dripping pee.  I'm sure that there's someone out there for him.  I imagine him leaving my house to have his happily ever after, and I'm doing everything I can to get him ready.  He's learned to take treats nicely and gently.  He knows how to sit now, and he sits for his food and treats.  He has become acquainted with cats, and he's learned that they exist on level somewhere above even the humans in the home.  He walks well on a leash, rides well in a car, and (sort of) understands what "go potty" means.  He's an old man with some medical needs and some routine maintenance requirements, but, other than that, he's absolutely perfect.

Bach's Petfinder profile can be viewed at: http://search.petfinder.com/petdetail/25746894.

Update!  
Bach was adopted and is a much loved family member living in the Bronx, NY.  The day after meeting him, his new parents wrote:

"Yesterday morning we went up to Exit 14 in Spring Valley arriving at 8:30.  A large van was in the parking lot giving a family a dog.  The driver said that he was going off to Danbury, Connecticut and that another van would soon arrive.  About 10 other cars arrived with children and adults  At 9:00 a.m. the second van arrived.  Each family stood in a row holding a leash.  The driver asked, "What's the name of your dog?"  Then the driver went into the van returning with their dog.  There were yellow and black Labs and an assortment of other dogs.  They were all wagging their tails and all the families had smiles on their faces and were joyful.  The driver came over to Val and asked her dog's name.  "Bach" she said.  The driver went into the van and walked back with Bach, the king of all the dogs who was wagging his tail.

We brought him home and he played catch most of the day.  His tail never stopped wagging.  We love him and he loves us!  We gave him his pills and his dinner at 6:00 p.m.  He is loving, beautiful and friendly--we feel he has adopted us.  Bach is a great dog.

Thank you for all you do for Labs and for bringing Bach into our lives."





 

cyberstalker or just the natural result of 10 days without television?

I cyberstalked you today.  OK, well, not you, but several other people.  People from my past to be more exact.

I don't know why I do it, but today definitely wasn't the first time and most decidedly will not be the last.  It almost always starts out the same way....looking for a former friend.  This friend, whom I will call Rachel, and I were very close once upon a time.  We even lived together for a short, ill-fated period, which makes her the only roommate that I ever had outside of school, live-in boyfriends, and my sister when we were kids.  Rachel and I had a very abrupt, very public, and very contentious break up.  I would have to say that it rivaled my divorce and may have, in fact, been worse.  We haven't spoken in over 10 years.  Yet, every so often, I try to find her on the Internet.

I'm not really sure what I want to know about her.  Where does she live?  Did she ever get married?  Have kids?  What is her career?  Maybe.  I think, though, what I really want to know is why.  Why?  And how?  And have you done it to others?  I want to see how someone can be so mean and evil, yet still carry on.  Actually, that's not really true, either.  I don't think she's evil.  I do think that she treated me meanly and acted cruelly towards me.  But, I don't think she's evil.  I've been advised that others do and that I should, but I don't.  After all, she was my best friend for many years.  If she were evil, what would that say about me?

So, I look for her.  And I've found hints of her around the Web.  Something on MyLife.  A maybe on Zabasearch.  I think I even found a Facebook page once, but it has since been blocked or deleted.  I would never contact her....but still I look.

Looking for Rachel often evolves into looking for other people.  Usually my ex-boyfriends are next on the list.  I find them on Facebook or in the Whitepages.  Facebook is best, because a lot of people don't lock down their sites like they should.  I look at their walls, see who they're friends with.  I look at their pictures, and I imagine the lives they've gone on to live since knowing me.  I gauge whether their wives are prettier than me and if their kids look more like him or like her.  The kids are the weirdest part, really.  First, as a childless person, I think it's odd that people with children post so many pictures of them.  The ratio of child to self represented in photograph form for these people is like 20:1.  I know I post a lot of pictures of my pets, for instance, but I still post pictures of myself.  My identity outside of my pets is still intact.  I wonder about these parents when it comes to that.  Plus, doesn't anyone think about their children's online safety???  OK, on a tangent.  What really is weird about the kids is this--if this guy and I hadn't broken up, if he hadn't then gone on to meet his wife, those kids wouldn't exist.  That is kind of creepy to think about.  Of course, you could say that looking up your ex-boyfriends on Facebook is creepy.  I know.  I know.

There's really no rhyme or reason to the people I look up.  Sometimes, someone just pops into my mind and I wonder what they're up to.  The main thread that they commonly hold is that they probably don't want to hear from me.  In a few cases that may not be accurate, but in those few, I have decided that it is in the best interest of all that they don't hear from me.  Maybe it is the fact the these people have scorned me, have left me behind and still somehow prospered that bothers me.  Maybe I do want to see them wallowing in regret and begging to have me back in their lives.  Maybe I just wonder what it is that these people saw that made them decide that I was bad news.  And, maybe I'm afraid that everyone else will eventually see the same thing.

There have been a few searches of people with whom my bridges had not yet been burned.  I have found some former friends and co-workers and reached out to them.  I am Facebook friends with my first serious boyfriend, as well as with one of my last.  I'm not all the bad to all that many people.  Some searches turn out good, some turn up nothing, and some do not have happy endings.

Once, I found an old jar of homemade, home canned spaghetti sauce that an ex of mine had made.  I actually thought, "I should find him and ask him how long this stuff is good for."  So, I started searching.  He was never one to be on Facebook or to use email, so I figured I would be lucky to find an old phone number for him.  I found him.  And pretty quickly.  Unfortunately, it was in the obituaries.  My old friend, it turned out, had been murdered a few years earlier.  Even though it had been many years since we spoke, I cried like a baby.  I was angry, and I felt cheated.  He was a good man, and he didn't deserve to die the way that he did.  He had been one of the few men in my life who didn't use me and who would have done anything to help me.  He was the last man I spent time with before moving away from Indiana, and he had encouraged me to spread my wings and to find myself, even though it meant him losing me.



Forget-me-not



I just took a break from writing this and searched for Rachel again.  (I am truly sick!  Send help!)  This time, I found her mother's obituary.  I had always contemplated contacting her mother, with whom I had a good relationship, to tell her my side of our break up.  I never did, and now it's too late.  Maybe, I was giving Rachel some leeway and not putting her mother in a spot where she didn't have to say anything bad about her.  Her mother had actually warned against us moving in together.  Rachel, she argued, doesn't get along with roommates, and if we wanted to remain friends, we should never live together.  How right she was!  I just always wondered what she would have said after the fact.  I didn't go there.  I decided that that was the better thing to do. 

But, now I'm sad that I never got a chance to tell her what I wish I had.  I would have said, "Thank you" for all the times she filled in as a mother to me, including me in family Christmases and Thanksgivings.  I would have told her that I was sorry if what had happened between me and Rachel hurt her in any way.  I would have said that she was right, that I should have heeded her advice, and that I did all that I could to keep our friendship in tact, but that I couldn't take the way that Rachel treated me towards the end.  I would tell her that I'm happy today.  That I married the man that Rachel got jealous over, said mean things about, and never liked, simply because he liked me.  That she was a good mom.  That she wasn't to blame for Rachel's behaviors as an adult.  That it had nothing to do with her divorce from Rachel's father, or the fact that Rachel was adopted.  These were all beliefs that I knew Rachel harbored and held over her mother's head.  Her mother had been a victim of Rachel's meanness before I had.  Maybe that was why she had warned me.

I guess I'm done cyberstalking today.  Finding an obituary usually does that to me.  It feels so final, at least as far as the searching goes.  It reminds me that if I ever do decide that I want to contact Rachel, my time to do so could always be cut short.  I still don't think that I'm ready to open that can of worms, but I will probably keep peeking around the corner at it.

So, there it is.  My deep, dark secret.  My big confession.  I'm a cyberstalker.  I know I'm not the only one who does it, though.  I may be the only one here admitting to it, but that's OK.  I'll wear the badge of shame for the rest of you.  I will come out of the shadowy corner of the Internet to say that I peep into the online windows of my former friends and lovers.  I do.  And, I would imagine that someone has done the same thing to me...maybe even one of my own subjects.  It's human nature to wonder.  It's only natural to want to repair broken connections, especially when they, at one time, were the most important ones in your life.  There are far worse things I could do and far worse attributes I could have.  My motivation, at its core, is really just a desire to be liked, to be accepted, and to be a part of someone else's life.  What doesn't feel normal is the sting of rejection, the pain of reproof, and the loneliness of isolation.  That's what's weird, not me.

pink tuxedos and dented quarter panels

I don't know if it's because of the New Year, the way that Facebook reconnects you with your past, or the fact that I will turn 40 later this year, but I've been thinking a lot lately about how my life may have been different had I made different relationship choices along the way. I used to say that I lived my life with no regrets, that every choice had led me to where I was now and and played a part in making me the person I had become. While I still believe that my past choices and actions have played an important role in me becoming the person I am, I can no longer say that I wouldn't change some of them if I had the chance. I think back on my romantic relationships, and I wonder what (and who) I could have avoided had I made different decisions.

One of my first serious boyfriends went to another high school. He was a nice guy and was older than me. He asked me to his junior prom. I remember shopping for the perfect dress and learning all about strapless bras and full skirts. I was all set to have my first prom experience with this nice guy when I met a "bad boy" who planted the seeds of doubt in my mind and heart. Just one day after the prom, I broke up with the nice guy and started to see the bad boy.

Now, those who knew me during my high school years know exactly who this bad boy was. We dated for nearly two and half years. We had some really good times together, but I would have to say that most were bad. He was controlling, possessive, and jealous. I was insecure and made excuses for his behavior. My friends could see that the relationship was unhealthy, but I was too headstrong (or too helpless) to get out. In college in upstate New York, surrounded by new friends, and excited about my future, I was able to end the relationship weeks into my freshman year. Sadly, I gave him a chance to "just be friends" a couple of years later and paid for that decision with bruises and a vandalized car.

From that point, I seem to have entered into a pattern of dating a good guy, becoming bored, leaving him for a bad boy, getting sick of said bad boy, and going back to dating a good guy. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. The details of each relationship matter little, though I used to analyze the hell out of them, trying to figure out what went wrong, why I couldn't foresee their demise, and wondering when and where I would finally find "the one."

I thought I had found "the one" for a long time. He was the last (and perhaps baddest) of all the bad boys. He was that special mix of bad boy on the outside with the soul of an injured, little boy on the inside. You know the type. He's in all the movies. He's the rebel with a cause, the boy from the wrong side of the tracks, the starving artist, the tortured soul. He's unbelievably good looking, deeply passionate, and even more deeply flawed. You're drawn to him like a moth to a flame, knowing that he will most likely completely consume you, destroy you, kill you, but you can't help yourself.

We met when we were fairly young--21 and 22. And we officially dated twice, though we tried to get something going at least four other times. I knew that things would never work between us, but it was hard to give up on the dream, to let go of the "what if." Though my official answer had something to do with turning 30 and wanting to go back to the South, he was largely to blame for my decision to leave Fort Wayne. We were "talking" again just before I made up my mind to go. I knew that I would have to physically distance myself from him if I ever hoped to emotionally and spiritually separate from him and from what he represented for me.

Of course, you all know that I stepped off the dating merry-go-round over 9 years ago. And, happily, I ended up with a good guy. He was patient and strong enough to wait it out while I healed from the wounds of the past, and he's never once let me down. The boredom that used to play games with my mind is a distant memory. He's my intellectual equal and my best friend. We laugh at the same stupid stuff, and we accept each other as we are. And, yes, while he is "the one" for me, I now realize that the problem with my past relationships wasn't actually who I was dating, but was who I was.

I see now that what changed had a lot less to do with whether a good guy could keep my interest or whether a bad boy could change his ways and a lot more to do with how well I knew myself and what was important to me. Instead of constantly trying to adapt myself to the situation or the guy, I needed to figure out who I was and find someone who actually liked that person. I only wish that I could have figured all this out sooner than I did. Don't get me wrong. I'm happy to have found my current partner and don't wish that I could have found this clarity and made it work with someone from my past. I only wish that fewer people could have been hurt along the well--the good guys who deserved better, the bad boys who had feelings despite their rough exteriors, and me.

And, in case you were wondering. The first guy (my prom date)...he's married, has five kids, and is one of my Facebook friends.