The whole thing started as a short time-out due to a new member complaining about my usual terse style and it was deemed by the powers that be that it would be best if I stayed away for a short while. No biggie and no hard feelings. It happens. People are more used to the kindergarten style of most birdsites and are, sometimes, shocked by my high school manner - and before anybody takes offense to this, is not a comment on anybody's maturity or level of knowledge but of approach. In kindergarten, everybody gets a gold star even if they color outside the lines, the same way that everybody gets a 'you are a good parront'' in birdsites regardless of their husbandry while, in high school, you get a: 'A) is wrong, the right answer is B) and you need to study more' which is what I tend to do
. Not very tactful, I agree. Wolf is much better than me at 'niceness'. I do try but, sometimes, I forget to make the effort. To me, any argument is a debate, nothing personal about it, just opposite positions but I do realize that this is not the way some people regard been contradicted and, often, they feel offended and personally attacked when somebody tells them or implies they are wrong. Different folks, different strokes. I tend to treat people the way I want people to treat me and, when it comes to my animals care, I would much rather somebody told me straight off that I am doing something wrong than not say anything just not to hurt my feelings. And this goes for people that might not even be right, mind you! Because things change so much and so fast when it comes to parrot husbandry that I would rather explore every single lead, even the dead-end ones, than risk continue doing something I thought was right and it's now found to be wrong. So, feel free to argue with me and don't worry about the style or language because I won't take offense. Anyway, the time-out started out great! I found out that my husband had nothing scheduled for an entire week, something I don't even remember when it happened last because he works in media which means no holidays, birthdays, weekends, etc and, because he works for ESPN in Connecticut and we live in NJ, he usually stays overnight so it's rare the week that we have two entire days together, much less an entire week! Actually, it ended up not been the entire week because they called him to work on Sunday and, as he is one of the lucky ones that due to his versatility has a clause that states that if he works more than the number of shows stated on his annual contract, he gets paid all the extra ones in a lump sum at the end of the year -and with the mortgages for the house here and the one back home and the 'super-size me' human and animal family we have, extra money is always welcome!- so he went. But we still had days and days to do projects around the house and, because one of our sons confirmed the following day that he had bought the tickets for a visit in March for his entire family, there were plenty of those! You all know how we, housewives, like to redecorate and do improvements
and I am no exception!Some projects were done, some were started but not finished and some were put in the back burner because my old dog, Mikey, took a turn for the worse. It started with him not sitting up to eat his dinner one night. He used to skip a meal or two in the past and, although he had not done it in a while, I did not think too much about it. But, the following day, he would not sit up again, not even to drink water, and I did not like the way he was breathing or acting (I think he might have had a mild stroke). I fed him in his mouth stuff I knew he could not resist (ham, meatballs, hamburgers, roasted chicken, etc) and he ate some but not enough of it; and I was giving him water and his medicines with a syringe in his mouth. And he was barking too often... Ever since he became incontinent and bed-ridden, he would bark whenever he 'messed' himself up so I would come, clean him up and change his bedding but now he was barking for company. He simply did not want to be alone so the last two nights I had to get up 4 and 5 times during the night to move him to another position, talk to him and pet him until he fell asleep again... and he was, obviously, not getting better so, on the third day, I made an appointment to put him down the following day. I called my husband who was back to work by then and he drove in the middle of the night so he could be here in the am to help me with him -Mikey weighted a bit over 90 lbs at the time of his death from the 115 lb he was in his prime so there was no way I could've managed him on my own. Early in the am, I gave him his usual sponge bath as well as a double dosage of pain killer and an oral tranquilizer to make things easier on him and, when it was time, we carried him out the back door (my husband drove the SUV into the backyard) in a large sling made out of two quilts. The people at the clinic had been advised to wait for us with a stretcher so they unloaded him out of the back (I rode with him there), placed him on exam table along with his quilts so he was quite comfortable. He got an intramuscular strong tranquilizer first, then a large dose of propofol through a catheter in his leg and, once he was completely asleep, the drug that would stop his heart.
His death was not, in any way, unexpected because life expectancy for a dog his size is 8 to 10 years and he was almost 18 but just because I had time to get used to it emotionally, it doesn't mean that it was not hard on me to put him down or that I did not grieve for him. 17 + years is a long time - sheesh, most marriages don't last that long!- and he was not only my alpha male and a GREAT dog, he was also one of the very few dogs we have adopted as a pup (he was 6 months old) plus, his care in the last two years took so much time and effort that to find myself not having to do it kind of threw me off... But my mind and body have a way of dealing with grief on their own way and the way it works is that I am a regular biatch while it's happening (I am never depressed or in a bad mood and, even when I am angry, I am never mean - except at these times when I get mean, mean, mean -thankfully, my husband knows how it goes and doesn't take it personally), then, the first 24 hours are pretty much passed in a daze. My brain seems to stop working and things I do all the time take twice as much time, I can't remember things, I don't understand the plot of the movie, I have to read the same paragraph three times before it registers - that kind of thing. Then my body starts to ache - and I do mean my entire body! It takes me about three days to be back in a functioning mode and then I have to catch up with all the stuff I left undone... And that's why I took so long to come back.
But now I am here and I have a couple of subjects I have been thinking about to share with you, guys, so everything is back to normal.
Again, thank you for your concern! It helps a lot to know there is people who care...
