It Has Been Eventful

Between the earthquake and the “hurricane” (we just got a much needed soaking) last week was full enough. However we had more going on than that for us.

The really concerning one was the Hound poisoning herself.

She’s a bit of a throwback and we know she hates being fed any foods that are “prepared” in any way. Even pre-killed. However, we don’t live somewhere we can set lose chickens or goats in the yard for her to attack and kill like the T-Rex in Jurassic Park. I know for a fact we’d be in trouble for animal cruelty. So she frequently hunts wild things on her own in the yard or, before her knees went bad, escaped to hunt and then comes home. We offer her food she won’t eat and this is just the way being her caretakers goes.

She’s also had problems lately on and off with organ function testing showing up as horrible. And then 2 weeks to a month later showing up perfectly fine. The vet at the clinic we were using insisted that she was on a downhill track if we didn’t get her on certain meds right away. I couldn’t swallow that since if we simply waited a short time, the problem seemed to go away. Organ failure just doesn’t undo itself all on it’s own. And doesn’t remain asymptomatic for over a year.

The vet I love has now opened her own clinic so I had the girls go in and voila. The Hound’s blood test shows up craptastic again. But the vet I love is the vet I love for a reason. She knows our hound well and knew she’d demolished a nest of mice that morning. She put in for a tox screen too. Apparently one of our neighbors is using poison to keep the vermin population down on their property and those mice, rabbits, etc. cross our borders just fine and every so often the Hound eats one. This is all accidental and makes me wish people would go back to using lard-soaked cork and barn cats to get rid of their mice.

So we are treating the poisoning, changing her diet back to raw, and putting her on some supplements to help boost her general health in case it happens again. So far, she seems pretty good but we need to accept that this will likely happen again and she is probably going to kill herself one of these days.

The less concerning issue is my layoff notice.

I got one alerting me that I am to be laid off the day I return from maternity leave. Rather than a horror show, I’m finding it to be merely an example of extremely questionable management decisions and annoying timing. I have no trouble finding work. In fact, I simply updated my resume online and have had 3 different interviews and a job offer I had to turn down because I cannot start next week. I will have something by the time I need to and it may even be better paying. We can manage the current daycare arrangements because the Husband can do it on the way to his new job no matter where I go—it just won’t be as convenient. And with that new inconvenience it may be worth it to at least consider a different arrangement—meaning further work and inconvenience for me. And all this: job hunting, daycare logistics, etc is in addition to the necessary consideration on whether my rights are being trampled. So this is really just a huge irritant that will take my maternity leave away as a time to recover and turn it into something it shouldn’t be.