Back in the Swing of Things

It seems I always come here when I am needing to distract myself from hope. I guess the fact that I actually feel hopeful is a good thing.  We had taken some time off from once being VERY active in trying to conceive. For the past 9 months I’ve relaxed a bit.  It was hard at first.  Trying to have a baby for 4 years straight will do that.  But the past 3 or 4 months, I honestly had not even checked my calendar or marked any days. I’ve drank alcohol on special occasion, taken hot baths and stopped using my fertility monitor.  I lived.  And it was nice.  I mean, I still had my moments, but overall I think I’ve done a HECK of a lot of healing these past 9 months.  I’m surprised with myself.  Healing just sort of snuck up on me.  I’ve even started eating better and got back into light exercise. Thats huge because I was so down and out I honestly hadn’t cared about myself in a long long time.  I’m even getting a hair cut next week!!!

With that being said, last week was one of the hardest weeks of my life.  Last week we said goodbye to our rescue pup.  I know in my last post I was angry and upset and I mentioned being unsure whether I could ever really feel the same for them after….well, I did.  I healed.  I surprised myself.  And I began to love her with all of my heart.  She needed me, and I LOVED that about her.  But, because of the stress of the two dog’s energies, we had already made the decision to rehome her.  I dragged my feet for over a month.  Going back and forth, back and forth.  The dogs were doing great together now…. but that one fight they had, where she ended up at the emergency vet with severe puncture wounds was always in the back of my mind.  What if I decided to take a shower, or walk on the treadmill and I forget to separate them.  What if the mail lady knocks on the door and sets them off.  Something so little could escalate so quickly, and if I wasn’t nearby to stop it quick, it could be deadly.  So, inevitably we decided for her safety, that rehoming her was the best option.  I spent the days leading up to her drop off cuddling her and giving her anything she wanted.  I love her so dearly.  The day we dropped her off at her new foster home was the worst.  I was an absolute mess.  She shook in our back seat.  I think she could feel my nerves and how upset I was.  She knew, and that was the worst…..  She needed me and I was giving up on her.  I feel so much guilt about it.  I’ve been tormented by thoughts of her, and her anxieties for the past week.  I’m sure she is adjusting the best she can….its just that we were finally making some progress here.  If I had it my way I would have kept her forever.  My husband was ready to give her a new home months ago.  She was attached to me, not him.  Finally, I gave in. My biggest reasoning was her safety ( though, we do need to refocus on having a family, and that couldn’t be done under the stress of another potential dog fight…especially if it was anything like the last.)

With all that, my period was due 2-3 days ago.  I’ve had a 34 day cycle before, after a miscarriage…. but I’m assuming this kind of stress might be causing some delays.  Though, I do feel some things happening in my abdomen, my back is killing me and my breasts are not sore like they usually are during PMS. I’m just speculating here, but I do feel that all too familiar twinge of hope.  On the other hand, another loss so soon after all this pet drama and I’m not sure how I would cope!!!

 

On the bright side, we’ve been spoiling the crap out of our older dog this past week, and it is nice to have a little less stress and tension in our home.

 

 

Infertility and Animals: Pets are not a Stand In for Children

at least mine aren’t…anymore.

Actually my last two posts were about our recently rescued dog. We adopted her 4 months ago, and we’ve certainly had a rough go at getting the two of our dogs energies to mesh. Hers is a very needy nervous energy, but shes a serious bossy pants and resource guarder. Our male that we have had for 5 years is a high energy, control freak who likes to attempt to “beat up” on our new female through very rough play. We do not like the dog he has become. They have had some serious fights over things that we have tried to eliminate or correct via training.  2 weeks ago they got into a fight that landed us at the emergency vet. We had decided to get a professional trainer once her wounds were healed to give them one last chance to make things work. Well, her wounds had healed up and she had finished all of her medication on Monday.

On Wednesday we stepped out of the house for a couple of hours, like we have many many times in the past, and came home to a horrific scene.
They had killed our beloved cat.

Ultimately we should have known better, and we are 100% responsible for what happened. We shouldn’t have been so trusting with animals that we had humanized into rational beings. We had provided a safe room for the cat, that only he could get in and out of… but it wasn’t enough.

I realize that people, children, young, old, sick and healthy die horrific deaths everyday, and sometimes they don’t have anyone…and that is heartbreaking. But this cat was a family member to us, and to think of the gruesome attack and death he faced sends me into crying fits.

I’m so angry. I am angry at myself for not being able to cope with infertility and instead wanting a furry family to fill the void. I am angry at us for being so naive and not being more responsible. I am angry at us for promising to give all of our animals a safe place to live peacefully….and we failed him. I am angry at dogs for being dogs. I am angry that I had humanized them into being my “children” and loving me and each other in “human”, rational ways. I am angry that we promised to give this rescue dog a forever home, but for their safety, we honestly can not now.  Now she will be bounced at least two more times (once back into foster care and then *hopefully* into a real forever home), probably setting her way back in any progress she has made towards rehabilitation. I am angry that I got so attached to her. I am angry at our older dog for being an active participant in the kill. He had lived peacefully with our kitty without the need of a “safe room” for 5 years! I honestly don’t think I will ever be able to look at him the same way. I am angry that my two favorite rooms in our home are completely ruined by terrible graphic memories….there is no way I will get the images out of my mind. I fall to pieces thinking about what happened to him between the room where he died and the room where we found him.

needless to say, we are both completely devastated.
This has changed me profoundly. Which is weird to say because it was such a small (albeit, traumatic) act; a cat’s death, hundreds and probably thousands of which die daily. But something in me has changed. These animals that once had all of my heart, only have a little piece of it now. I have loved animals since before I could walk. I grew up with chickens, pigs, sheep, ducks, turkeys, cats, kittens, and dogs. But, I realize now, I have to relearn how to love and appreciate them for who they really are (animals with prey drives, and natural killer instincts) and not who I want them to be (children).

I know time will heal this wound (unlike my experience with infertility and RPL. Time doesn’t seem to be helping that). I just wish I could figure out what god or the universe is trying to teach me. I am trying to figure out what I am doing wrong and why I feel like I am experiencing all this grief and heartbreak at once, and over and over again- experiences that feel like my fault– am I self sabotaging??!? Should I be doing something else in my life? Is there a different direction I should be going in, or something I am not appreciating?? I just don’t know what is wanted from me. What I’ve learned is to appreciate what I have more fully than I had been. 4 months ago I had a peaceful, untarnished home, a dog who was mild tempered and obedient, a cat who loved to snuggle on winter days and a husband who hadn’t yet had to dig a tiny grave in the pouring rain. And though my heart is yearning for a real live human family, putting a “new dog” band aid on the problem didn’t fix anything…not by a long shot.

All I do know is that throughout this struggle to create a family, I always relied on the fact that I had a wonderful little furry family to dimly light the darkness that infertility and RPL has left me with. And now, that light has been switched off and everything is a little darker.

(Again, it is not the loss of a cat that has me so torn up (he was 13 and had a heart condition so I often prepared myself for his passing).  It was the way he died and the empty wake it left behind. We haven’t been successful at having children in our 4 years of trying, and now I don’t even have a happy/delusional furry family either. )

Added Stress

We have been on a mission for a very long time to focus everything we have into creating a family.  Month after month I have tried different strategies toward a successful pregnancy.  A couple of the major goals have been to remove unnecessary stress, and to find other things to focus on- which is kind of related to de-stressing.  The less I focus on getting and staying pregnant, hopefully the less stress I have.

SO, a few months back I posted about getting a second dog. If you’ve read that post you would know that I immediately thought I had made a mistake.  But, we decided that we had made a commitment to rescuing this pup and to give it our best effort to making it work.  For the past 3 months things have steadily improved.  I had been letting them play partially unsupervised outside in our fenced in yard for over a month, and we have left them alone in the house together (uncrated and not separated) for over 2 months. They get along great 95% of the time. Our new rescue pup does great unless she is stressed or scared, which is when things get a little tough.  They play a little rough, but both have loose, happy bodies and waggy tails.  They have had a few quarrels over highly valued squeaky toys or treats (which we have eliminated)-  usually these fights ended quickly themselves, or were stopped by me or Mr. Candid with authoritative commands. Though scary, and dramatic, the fights usually only left a couple of scratches and loose fur.  We recently decided that we would like to desensitize our rescue pup to our family who frequents our home (she is quite scared of strangers), while also giving our other dog some well deserved alone time.  So we took our new pup out of the house and to my parents home for the afternoon over the weekend.  She was very stressed the entire time, about 4 hours.  And when we got home our other dog was over the moon with excitement to see her.  We made the mistake of not giving our rescue pup time to wind down and destress and immediately allowed our other dog to hound her to play….this did not end well.

I feel awful because ultimately it was 100% our fault.  The fight was so terrifying and brutal we ended up spending the night cleaning up wounds, and blood. Mr. Candid and I spent the night in separate rooms with the dogs separated while I tended to the rescue pups wounds through the night.  We took her to the emergency vet the next morning where she got some pain pills and antibiotics for the dozens of puncture wounds on her legs, ears and neck.

I am riddled with guilt and stress for our thoughtlessness in the situation.  We had a lapse in judgement and it was nearly fatal.  I watched as my dog took the rescue pup’s leg in his mouth and shook her with a mission to kill.  I am so thankful that it wasn’t her neck in that moment.  I just can’t get over how one lapse in judgement could cause such damage….. can we handle that kind of responsibility?!

Here we are now.  We will be hiring a trainer to come in for a consultation and assessment. Hopefully she will give us some training strategies for both of them (1. how to get our first dog to not be so pushy/bossy and overwrought 2. how to lower the anxiety of the new pup who has clearly been abused in her past. Something that we were not privy to when we adopted….though we shouldn’t have been that naive. ).  Obviously after something like this we have to consider the safety of all the living creatures in our home, and rehoming is on the table.  I have grown so attached to the pure sweetness of this pup over the past 3 months that I am feeling so guilty and upset by the idea of putting her through finding a new home. We love her but things have become so stressful in this house.  It has affected my alone time with Mr. Candid, as well as the over all harmony and dynamic of our home. We’re constantly stressed about their rough play and the potential of it escalating- with obvious reason.  She has also been a little too interested in our very aloof kitty.  We have rearranged our home to make all these safe spaces to make sure that everyone stays safe and alive—-and well, it’s all so stressful!

While we truly love her, and rehoming will be out absolute last resort,  I can’t help but consider how much less stress we would have if we didn’t have to deal with this…..I went from looking to take some focus off of trying to have a successful pregnancy, to wondering if we will ever get pregnant again under these pressures and circumstances.  Not to mention, how could we ever think to raise children in this chaos???

I am so very confused and brokenhearted over this whole situation.  Our new pup is on the mend. her wounds have started to heal, she is good spirits, and running around just a couple of days after the fight. I am so thankful for that.

I guess I got the distraction I had wanted…I just didn’t realize at what cost.

I want to do the right thing.

New addition…with 4 paws!

2 Summers ago G promised me that we could get another dog if we were not pregnant by the following summer. (last summer).  I didn’t really press the issue.  We had always exchanged thoughts on providing a companion to our current beloved pup, but nothing ever materialized. We always hoped that we would just get pregnant (stay pregnant) and the wanting for more furry friends would subside. I even gave myself an extra year.  But, alas, here we are.

So, we went through the process of finding another 4 legged addition that would fit our current family . We’ve had her for 2 days, and I think I’m experiencing post puppy depression.  Now, she’s not a puppy.  Shes a 2 year old mix breed…probably something and a pit bull (our current pup is a pit-mix as well). But, she was rescued from the streets of Georgia as a stray in January and has since moved from shelter to foster care to our home.  SO, understandably shes new to a lot of things most 2 year old dogs understand, like using the bathroom outside.  We wanted a 2 year old or older so that we wouldn’t have to lay the labor intensive ground work of training a puppy, but I guess we didn’t consider the fact that age doesn’t matter as much as experience.  BUT, here we are, still standing (with a few more scratches and bite marks), two days later.  Shes the absolute sweetest thing. Not so sure our first pup thinks as much, but he’s hanging in there.  They play with fearsome intensity….I’m crossing my fingers and toes that this is just newness, getting-to-know-you behavior, while working out a pack order.  I’m trying not to get too attached just in case their personalities end up not being a good match a couple weeks down the line.  Most of the time they are all teeth, claws and hard body slams in what I think is play, but I have spotted them relaxing together once or twice.

With all of this I’ve had random outbursts of tears and sadness. One would think that it’s completely crazy to feel this way with such an adorable addition, but to me it’s like….It’s like taking a match and decidedly burning down your house, your home, your sanctuary, all because you want something more. Because you’re trying to make something “better”.  And then this beautiful house you built and called home is not there anymore.   That’s what it’s like.

I love my first dog  more than anything, and more than a lot of anyone’s. I’m terrified that I’ve ruined the relationship we have with him.  That with this other creature, albeit adorable, and sweet, and funny,  he’s not acting like the same dog, and that he’s not enjoying the same quality of life and attention from us.  While we got this little girl for a few selfish reasons, we very much weighed his feelings.  Does he want a companion? Will a companion make his life more rich? Will he be less lonesome when we have to leave for extended hours during the day? Does he want a playmate? All signs pointed to “yes”.  Now I’m fearful that I’ve made a big mistake. Afraid that I’ve made a commitment that I am not sure I can keep for the well being of all involved. And that makes me feel out of control, and deeply sad.

Shes wiggly, and funny, loves to give kisses, and seems so appreciative to have a home. And I’m a AWFUL person for resenting her because I didn’t have that baby like I had wanted.  I’m a terrible person for using an innocent creature as a Band Aid, that I rationally know will not work.  And I’m a terrible person for giving her hope when I’m not even sure I can follow through, especially considering all she has probably been through in these 2 years.  And I’m a troubled person for trying to fill a baby sized hole with a dog.  All of those things are giving me these ridiculous post puppy blues.

I love dogs.  But what I really want is a baby.

 

She is really sweet though.  It is only day 2, and tomorrow is another day.