Tomorrow is Another Day

So yesterday was kind of a disaster. Nothing major went wrong, it was just small annoyance after small annoyance that added up to me not even having a chance to sit down at my work until around 5 PM.

SB had to leave the house super early to catch a train, and then the power went out for several hours, which made it impossible for me to charge my phone, computer, anything. Usually, that would be fine (after all, I can write on a piece of paper) but I had planned to do some editing yesterday, which required my computer and printer. Gah. To add insult to injury, TempDog2 has taken to crawling under the deck at every opportunity, which, given the storm yesterday, meant that she went from a white dog to a black dog in no time flat, then proceeded to shake all over every wall of my house. (I think i mentioned this yesterday.)

Later, I went to take the dogs for a walk, and TempDog2, bless her monstrously large soul, pulled me off my feet twice. The second time I went down hard in the mud and rocks and scraped myself up pretty badly. Suffice it to say, I was pretty frustrated with her by the time I got home. I pulled into the garage, opened up the door, and she bolted!

Directly for the busy street at the end of my block.

Rio, under the vastly mistaken impression this was all some kind of game, ran after her. I called them. Rio, bless her well-trained heart, stopped and trotted back to me, at which point I snatched her up and threw her over the fence into my backyard, because two loose dogs were way more than I could handle. Then I turned around to look for TempDog2.

Gone. Completely nowhere to be seen.

Cue half an hour of desperate searching, and a profound understanding of just how important recall is for a dog. TempDog2 is a lovely animal, and has a sweet personality, but is not trained. We’ve only had her two weeks, and in that time, she’s gotten down “No” “Leave it” “Kennel Up” and “Sit” — but recall and down are problems. In the house or the backyard, she’ll come, but apparently once she senses the call of the wild, she’s off like a shot.

Well, I finally cornered her in a backyard, and at this point, she’s not very high on my list of favorite people, so I marched her home and threw her directly into her crate w

hile we both cooled off for a bit (and some of that mud speckling her snowy white flanks dried and fell off. Rio looked at me like I was nuts and I repeated the mantra about what a rewarding experience fostering was, because right now — hoo boy.

Don’t they look cute and innocent? Lies, I tell you. All lies.

So I change my clothes and after about forty five minutes or so I look in TD2’s kennel to discover that her eye is cherry red and leaking pea-sized globs of green goop. Call the vet. Vet says I can come in but I’ll have to wait, since I don’t have an appointment.

Yesterday might have been the worst day to visit the vet’s office. I saw three animals being brought in to be put to sleep. THREE. I heard all their stories, I comforted the owners, I cried a lot. I’m really not going to tell you the gory details, but it was highly traumatic. All I wanted to do was go home and snuggle my Rio and thank God that she’s young and healthy.

Oh, and my phone died. In the middle of a conversation with my editor.

So there I am, no phone, hanging out in this horribly depressed waiting room with an increasingly nervous TempDog2 for like three hours. (on the plus side, we got a few training sessions in). But they finally see her and give me some antibiotics that I have to put in both her eyes three times a day for three weeks.

Did I mention that Rio has a 50% chance of getting the infection, too? Gah.

So then I trudge home at 5 PM, exhausted, still feeling a little muddy, and having done absolutely no work at all. And that was *my* day.

I hope today shapes up better. The one — well, I don’t want to say nice, since it’s depressing for her — thing about the infection is I have to limit her activity for a few days, which means it’s just going to be me and Rio on our walks for a bit. Rio is a joy to walk with. She’s the kind of dog that lives for tromping around the forest at my side, and whenever I walk with her, she just gives me this look of pure joy and affection.

Which is not to say that TD2 doesn’t enjoy walks. She’s just harder to walk with, since she’s not leash trained yet, and it makesthe walk both slower and shorter for all of us, since I stop every time TD2 starts pulling, and RIo can’t figure out what she’s doing wrong. I need to start looking into no-pull solutions, though.

Anyway, I’m going to get all glass is half full. It’s a gorgeous day, it’s a Friday, which means SB is going to be home all weekend and I’m going to go to Jeri Smith-Ready’s signing tomorrow, and TempDog2 is going to be FINE after her course of antibiotics, so, yay!

Anything you need to vent about? Anything cool happening that might cheer me up? Tell me in comments!