i hear the voices when I'm dreaming

February is sucking so hard, so far.

Sunday night: aide called in sick. I got her shifts covered.

Monday: *deep breath* lessee. A different aide let me know she can't do Thursday nights any more. I had the *stupidest ever* appointment that required an hour total of driving, and fifteen minutes of waiting, just so that they could confirm that my cpap machine, which has been giving "motor life exceeded" errors, had in fact exceeded the recommended motor life. (It's normally replaced every five years, and I'm 9 months short of that, but I'm in bed 14-16 hours most days, and the cpap is running the whole time.) They didn't replace it (this was one step in the process of getting an early replacement) but it was complete BS.

And then there's the Chess saga, wherein he had to go in for surgery for intestinal blockage that turned out to be a *foot long stick* wtf I can't even fathom how he got that down. And while they were doing the surgery they discovered that it had rotated in a bad direction and punctured his stomach. So ... not good. He stayed in ICU overnight, and will be in the hospital a few more days, but full recovery will take longer. He IS doing better now, eating and wagging his tail and rolling over for belly rubs and generally charming everyone there.

(The trainer feels horrible about this, which on the one hand I can completely understand, and puppies will puppy and things happen and she didn't do this on purpose, but there's also a part of me that's like "(grumpycat) GOOD", because augh. SHE BROKE MY DOG, only not really, and he IS healing and it will be okay, but... yeah. And of course this is not going to be cheap (per the contract, she covers basic vet stuff and wellness checks and shots, but we cover any emergency issues) but more I'm just ... flaaaaail.

And Monkey has a UTI and has to get oral antibiotics, which means she's spending lots of time in impossible-to-reach places; and Yahtzee has something going on with his eye that needs him to go to an animal ophthalmologist. Both of which are technically January things but they're affecting February. And the ophthalmology guy my vet recommended had an appointment at 9:30 Friday morning, and is otherwise booked for a month out (the Friday thing was a cancellation), but he's half an hour away WITHOUT factoring in traffic, so I'm going to have to get up hella early compared to my usual.

Today: Got an email from Netflix that was all "we have changed your email as requested; you will no longer be able to use (email) to sign in. If you didn’t request this, click here to contact us". Felt very phishing-y, so I didn’t click on anything in the email. But I did go to sign in just to make sure I still could. And ... "we couldn't find an account with that email address". So I had to call them (still not clicking the email link because paranoid, but found their contact info a different way) and after confirming the last 4 digits of credit card to prove it was me, they changed my email back and sent me a reset-password link. Did that and also linked up my phone as a secondary source of authentication. But fuck, have no idea how someone got into my Netflix account...

...

I ... may be consuming rather a lot of sugar and carbs, the last few days. Stress eating. Not good for my body probably, but good for my mental health.

I'd really like things to *stop sucking*.

Okay, so. As you may or may not know, I got my current service dog, Yahtzee, in 2011. (See tag "dog adventures of 2011" for more details as desired.) He is now ten, and while he is still quite puppyish sometimes, he is showing his age a bit. Napping a lot, and sometimes being reluctant to go places.

I've been low-key trying for the past year or two to figure out how (and when) to get a replacement service dog. The when is hard because ideally the replacement would be ready when Y is ready to retire, but I can make educated guesses. The how is significantly harder. I couldn't get a dog from the same place as Y because they require a two week stay in Santa Rosa, and while I could (barely) manage that eight years ago, I can't travel now. Many other agencies require the client to come to them. Plus, there's the timing thing: even once I was accepted at the place I got Y from, had done all the interviews and screening, and was on the "to get a dog" list, it took five years.

The other option was getting a dog (probably a puppy) and hiring someone to train it up as a service dog. Sort of like an owner-trained service dog (which is a Thing) except I can't do any training really. Up side is I'd be involved with the training from the beginning, so it could be trained exactly to my needs, and the timing would be more obvious. Down side is it's more expensive (many agencies don't charge the full cost to clients, using donations to supplement) and there's no backup if the dog doesn't work out.

Anyway. About two months ago, one of my very good RL friends, L, mentioned that she had a friend who bred service dogs, that happened to just have a litter (of 11 puppies, yikes!). I said, half jokingly, "I don't suppose she has any openings".

She didn't, but I was first on the waiting list.

And then someone cancelled. So one of the boys could be mine.

(!!!)

Now, me being able to take the puppy was entirely dependent on being able to find someone to raise/train him. Seemed impossible, especially on short notice. But the breeder was willing to be patient and keep me on maybe status. And ... I'm not sure if it was L who had the contacts, or L's breeder friend, but L and I got some suggestions, and one of them was available, and interested. And slowly, over the course of a few weeks, it went from "this will never work" to "this might work" to "holy shit this might actually be happening".

...it was of course absolute torture for me not being able to tell everyone and their cousin, because OMG SERVICE PUPPY, but I didn't want to jinx anything. And I didn't want to get people all excited for me and then have it not work. And so I had to stay utterly silent until it was about 99% probable.

(It is at this point 100% happening. ::hyperventilates a bit::)

Someone related to the breeder has been posting puppy pictures on social media -- goldenvillage_retrievers and nala.goldenvillage -- which is just chock full of adorableness. The dogs are cream-colored English golden retrievers, of a lineage with lots of service dogs; the mom (Willow) and grandma (Nala) are both quite pretty. The pups are too puppyish to be pretty, but omg the cute!

I also got to go visit at around six weeks. This was Dec 1 -- for those of you that read the health saga, this was the thing a week after I got sick and about four hours before I spiked the high fever -- and it was also raining somewhat but I was not going to miss the visit for the world.

A couple pics below the cut:

( Read more... )

Unexpected benefit of doing the puppy-plus-trainer route: I got to pick a forever name for him! For the first six weeks they were identified by "collar" color, e.g. Mr. Red, Ms. Lavender, Sherbert for the orange collar. My little dude was Mr. Paws, because the ribbon was black with gold paw prints. I am probably going to keep Mr. Paws as at least a nickname for him. However, I decided on Chess as his main name. It keeps the game theme (Yahtzee), it's short and easy, it's got a good feel as a command-name ... plus, now I'll have a black dog and a white dog, so quite suitable for Chess! ;)

The puppies are going to their new homes this week. Chess' adventure is tomorrow; the trainer will be going to get him from the breeder, and then coming to my place to introduce him to Yahtzee and to see me again and to let him see the environment he will eventually be living in. (I can't deal with puppy full time, of course, so he'll be living with the trainer for the next 12-18 months, but with *at least* two visits a month, probably more like once a week, so that he gets a chance to know me and work with me.)

There will, of course, be pictures :D

Now for the awkward bit: you know how I mentioned that the puppy-plus-private-trainer route costs more? Total cost is approximately $20,000. Which is a) a lot of money, b) especially since my benefits are dependent on me having less than $2000 total assets. (Medical equipment doesn't count so *owning* the dog is fine, but I can't exactly save up.)

Because of this, and because I have a lot of friends elsesite that expressed interest in helping out with the financial aspect, I set up a GoFundMe. I do not want anyone to feel obligated to help, but if you have any interest in donating, I will be forever grateful. Every little bit helps! (And yes, I know GFM has fees, but the alternative sites I investigated had higher fees.) Or if you have Facebook, sharing Yahtzee's post so it (and the gfm link) reach wider audiences? Also helpful, and doesn't even cost anything :)

(Annoyingly, because my dad is handling the financial backend of the gfm -- necessary because benefits -- it says that I'm raising money for him. That's not the situation, but gfm support was not very helpful. Sigh.)

Okay, enough begging-for-monies. Hopefully I will have cute-as-fuck pics and anecdotes after tomorrow!