There are all kinds of moms out there: moms who have lost children, moms whose children are on their way.  There are moms to one, two, even twenty children.  There are step-moms, co-moms and foster-moms. There are moms with no children who still nurture others wholeheartedly. There are male moms. There are dog moms, cat moms, horse moms and guinea pig moms.  Some mom roles are harder than others.  But at the end of the day,  no matter how messy or glorious it was, all that matters is loving well.  Loving your children, loving yourself, loving your own unique life.

I believe that moms are the glue.

Happy Mother’s Day to you!  To lovely, magnificent, oh-so-incredible you!

A few months back, I got a request from our buddy Anthony over at Istrico Productions. (Stop what you are doing now and go over and like their page cause they are beyond like- worthy and crazy talented!)  So anywho… Anthony wanted to know if Melvin would be free to cameo in a Public Service Announcement (commercial) for the government (Selective Services).  This is what I heard:  “Can Melvin be the STAR of a commercial that has nothing to do with dogs and subsequently win an Academy Award?”.  Hell to the yes!  I was meant to be a stage mom, all of our dreams were coming true at once!

So we went to the shoot and we got crazy enjoyment worked really hard.  Anthony was there, as was his oh-so-incredible team including Nora and J$ (aka: J-money, aka: Jared). Jake even came along.  Jake’s primary responsibility was to love on Nora, real hard.  He took his job very seriously.

Melvin did great!!!  I mean I know the spot has a main message that is serious and very important… but when I watch it, all I get is ‘whoa, what an adorable dog, where can I get me one of those!?’!  Also, I appreciate that the government is an equal-opportunity-employer who openly accepted my tail-less wonder!

Thank you to all things Istrico, including but not limited to Anthony, Nora, J$ and one awesome mother-in-law!  Also our thanks go to the actor (he was so wonderful!!!) and the fabulous director!

Without further delay, I give you Melvin’s motion picture PSA debut!

Even though Jake now polices the hood in his buggy, the boy still gets his run on. In grass is where most of the magic happens. You see, in the grass, he can run while knuckling, no harm done!.  In grass, he can drag his legs behind him when he gets tired, no bloody stumps, just some grass stains. When Jake is on asphalt or concrete or brick (the patio) he’s wobbly and you can tell that each step hurts.  But in the grass, in the grass he is free!  It’s like his version of Cocoon.

So I give you in video, Jake running.  Sure, as the day wears on, the less he can do.  Some days, his legs don’t work much at all.  But if he is having uptime, I get him outside to run, run, run!

Also, if Melvin’s dopey run with floppy ears does not make you laugh, you may want to check your pulse! — and you can tell by this video that Melvin is on the mend!  The Doxy is killing all that nasty tick venom and my boy is BACK!!!! Wohooooooo!

This is Melvin’s current morning pill count.  Tick born disease is NO JOKE!

Jake’s hind leg issues follow him into the night.  Sometimes, he wakes up and he’s… pottied.  This is less about his broken pooper (it is what it is) and more about the solution which was for me to nurture my obsession with buying dog beds to buy a few extra beds so that if one had to go into the laundry in the middle of the night, another one was ready to go for his condo.

I would say he wakes me up three times a week to perform middle of the night housekeeping.  Once alerted, I let him out of the condo, collect the dirty bedding, put it in the washer, get the bleach wipes, clean the condo and then put fresh bedding in.  Then I return Jake (who has usually already fallen back to sleep next to me) back inside. I’ve got it down to about five minutes. Not too shabby.

The clean beds are currently just stacked in the spare bedroom.  This seems to confuse Jake who will go into the spare room, stare at the beds, then go into our bedroom and over to his condo and look inside.  When he see’s there is a bed in the condo also, he will go back to the pile of beds.  This is apparently very exhausting for him, so he will climb the pile of beds and take a nap.

I am certain Jake didn’t have comfortable beds in his former life.  In fact, the rescue group sent his lifelong bed with Jake.  There was nothing comfortable about this bed, I didn’t even want to take it but I did just in case he needed something familiar during his first days with us.  So now, I love seeing him on his pile of beds — in fact it often makes me sing…”movin on up, to the top…’!

Stay tuned for the newest of the beds.  I’ll post about them later this week!

The first few months with Melvin, no words were said more than….

Oh Melvin.

They were (unfortunately) often said with a negative tone, with disappointment, sometimes followed by an exclamation point. There were plenty of times they were sad with laughter, probably suggesting that madness had finally set in. Always following him doing something he most certainly should not have done. Oh Melvin.  Oh Melvin.  Oh Melvin! I had to break the cycle.  His name being said should be positive, joyful, loving.  Especially since Melvin was the name that I gave him, he shouldn’t learn his name while being corrected.

One night when I was laying with him, the following song came out (you will note that I didn’t go into lyric writing as a profession for a reason) and I now sing it to him regularly. It was the moment ‘Oh Melvin’ changed course to be positive, optimistic and eventually, the name of the blog.

Oh Melvin, into my life you came.Oh Melvin, no day is ever the same.  Oh Melvin, Max is our angel up above.  Oh Melvin, to you I give my love.

I sing this to him (my singing voice happens to be better than my mad lyric skillz) almost nightly.  And I celebrate who he was back then as much as I’m thankful for who he is now.  There couldn’t be one without the other.

We get a lot of emails from our readers of ideas for footwear for Jake.  Can I just say that we have the best readers!  It means so much that you would take time out of your day to think about solutions for Jake’s wonky leg issues. LOVE.

We’ve pretty much tried everything.  I even ordered some boots from China.  Of course they didn’t fit and sending them back would cost more than the boots themselves.

Either he couldn’t walk in them (the heavier shoes/boots) because he just doesn’t have the hind leg strength or they were impossible to get on (the red Pawz) or too big (the blue Pawz) or they ripped right away (the disposable booties) or they wore down too soon due to his dragging (the hand-made booties — hand-made by his awesome dog walker!). Then there were the socks, which are adorable but useless.  Humans don’t go for walks in socks, it was impractical to think dogs could.

So now, Jake has a closet full of shoes he never wears.  It’s almost like he’s a woman.

1. He is literally kneeling.
2. You get a good sense of how solid he is and how he can in fact weigh 33 lbs!

Jake likes to burrow and burrito himself.  I try to help him, I buy him nester beds and I cover him with blankets.  He likes to do it himself.  He (obviously) doesn’t have hands and his hind legs give out during the process so sometimes it takes him several minutes to get it just right.  But he does it, and it’s pretty inspiring.

Each of these were preceded by a lot of noise, grunting and maneuvering. Notice how Melvin doesn’t flinch, he’s totally used to it.

Melvin had a crappy weekend/week.  He couldn’t get his body up, he couldn’t get his body down. Steps were a challenge. Sunday night he moaned and whimpered.  I somehow managed to get him in bed with me.  While i think it was a painful move for him, he fell right to sleep once with me. Come Monday morning, we were off to the vet.

X-rays showed spinal arthritis and hip dysplasia — both moderate. X-ray also showed an enlarged spleen. Back into the car (getting him in and out of the car was torture on him and he cried due to pain) to go get an ultrasound.  Since he was in such discomfort, they gave him a shot of pain medication before doing the ultrasound.

When they called me back to give me the results, they put us in the room with the candles and the rug — uh, no thank you!  I would rather be given the results in the parking lot.

Kidneys, bladder, gallbladder and stomach looked ok. They couldn’t get a view of the liver (which would have been preferred but oh well).  His spleen is big, way too big.  You can see it sticking out on outside of his belly. There goes Melvin, and his side-car spleen.  Although there were no signs of tumor (this made me feel better about being put in ‘the room’) there was lack of any definition between the spleen and his stomach.  They are looking into what that could be about.

While his spinal arthritis and hips could have caused some discomfort, it is unlikely it would come on so sudden and be as severe.  So, we decided to rule in tick born disease (not hoping for – just ruling it in over something even more serious).  This is not the first time tick disease has been suspected in Melvin but it is the first time since the US has started experiencing a shortage of Doxycycline.  That means I had to make a lot of phone calls and had to trade-in my car to pay for it!

The pain shot they gave him made him high as a flippen kite.  No, wait, higher, it made him Jupiter.  He didn’t like it one bit. He would just stand there confused and then his hind legs would start dropping and he’d panic and start walking and bump into stuff. He was dizzy.  He wouldn’t even take a treat, I’m not sure he could even see the treat.  Jake was mesmerized by this version of Melvin and apparently, high Melvin smells even more delicious. Video below.

Jake stood guard over his brother. 

Jupiter. 

I think they were trying to spell something!

It seems like Melvin is improving on the Doxy so we are going to continue it.  I will update on Monday once we know for sure!  Happy weekend!!!!

We have had a rough ride (nothing to do with the stroller!) this week.  Melvin man has seemly gone from 9 to 89 in one week.  We’ve been at the vet every day and are trying a round of Doxy to see if it is a flare-up of his mysterious tick born disease that struck-him-down similarly about two years ago.

So this week, as we try to get Melvin back to his actual age, I’m re-posting two popular entries that I get asked about a lot.  Both have to do with Melvin man!

First, the post about my Grandfather’s dog, Prissy, and what it taught me about dog love. This post happens to be our most clicked on post. HERE.

And then, the post about Melvin’s aging and how I try to always embrace each day of it. HERE.

Go ahead, click and throw-back with us!

This weekend, Jake went on the best walk he’s had in six-months! He hopped right into his Maserati stroller buggy and rode around like a boss.  Melvin didn’t even flinch, it was like he’d been walking next to wheels his whole life. Best part…every walk since has been even better (most of that having to do with the driver getting better about pushing one dog and walking the other!)!

True to who I am, I left a full-page of written notes for anyone who clips Jake into the buggy.  He get’s attached to his harness within/to the buggy then he gets clipped to the leash on his harness AND his collar.  Safety first people, safety first!  The buggy does not change the fact that we are still walking Jake the hunter.

Every night I put Jake in his condo and I drop his blanket in.  I try to cover him with it but he usually throws the blanket off because apparently, I don’t do it right. So during the night, and I have no idea how, he cocoons himself.

I tried to get video of how he emerges from condo, with his bridal train blanket trailing him, but Melvin almost trampled him so I had to play crossing guard.  Video of him seeing the light of day…

Happy weekend!!!

This week, a few fosters we know that had gone to forever homes found out that it was not forever just yet and came back to their foster families. It got me thinking about my first moments with Melvin.

When I adopted Melvin, I vowed to champion his health issues.  I pumped myself up and knew that we would overcome.  I, for lack of a better way of putting it, would fix him.   The first hour he was in my home and we were alone, I thought ‘crap, what have I done’.  There was zero doubt that Max was going to leave me soon and extreme guilt set in that I had brought his (as it seemed) replacement home as if to say ‘we’re good, you can go now’.  I looked in the mirror and saw a terrible person. I was certain Max would die that very first night, of sadness.

Also, all his health issues aside, Melvin was the canine version of Sid Vicious.  I’m not joking, he was beyond energetic, for all I knew he could have been on crack. I thought he was deaf since he refused to listen to me, he didn’t know a single command. He chewed everything in sight, he rammed the glass doors trying to charge squirrels.  He refused to sleep and if put in the crate would bark and howl and if let to be out of the crate at night, would leap on and off the bed, non stop. He apparently did none of these things in foster care. Walking him gave me panic attacks, when it was time to take him out,  I would hide in the bathroom and cry.   I said the words ‘I can’t do this’, 1,000 times.  While I may never have gotten to the point of saying ‘he has to go’, I came very close.  I was overwhelmed, I was in over my head, I was  only human.   Knowing that I had to lose Max, I didn’t feel very empowered to tame a wild beast.

There were many failures, many, so many, countless.  Max died and weeks went by where I can’t say Melvin and I made very much progress.  But in the same sense we were not making huge advancements, I had to admit, we’d at least persevered.  He may not have sat when told or been easy to leash or walk but he’d learned to count on me.  He knew I’d come home, he knew I’d feed him.  I was there when he (finally) fell asleep and I was there when he woke up. That was more than he’d likely ever had.  And I had gotten to know him too.  Part of the reason he didn’t sit still was because he was so itchy.  Walking on leash, well 1. he’d never been on a leash before and it was likely scary for him and 2. I was at the other end of that leash, giving off a nervous energy. It’s no wonder he lashed out every time.  Also, I was in grief stage-one, the ugly, snotty, inconsolable phase. Melvin didn’t get the best of me at first. Max was gone, but Melvin was there.  And slowly, as it was supposed to be, that became ok.

I was not the same person back then.  In fact, Melvin is the dog that made me understand what commitment looks like.  Max was easy.  Melvin, he and I have ‘grown-up’ together.

I could have called the rescue and said take him back.  I didn’t do it, but I could have.  Some dogs and owners, from the very first moment, it’s magic (or it’s at least pretty ok) and that’s great!  Thank God for those matches.  Some first moments are heavy and scary –for dog and human and it takes a while to realize it’s good, right, meant to be.  Some people need to hand off and take a deep breath and take a step back. Some of them find composure and come back.  Some don’t.  The ones that don’t, well I have to believe that is for the better.  If they can’t be there in the beginning, they are likely not going to be there at the end.

We can’t control it all but we can applaud foster families and rescue groups and shelters whose doors are always open.  Thank you to all of you who provide that interim forever. Thank you from the dog mom of a one-time-wildebeest-rescue-turned-soulful-bundle-of-love-and-joy.

And to those just embarking on the wonderful ride of dog ownership — we send you off with the words ‘forever home’ and it is forever and that is how you should approach it.  But you should also realize that we have all been there and every forever begins with the first minute and then the second minute.  Next thing you know you’ve gotten through a day.  Then tonight will be better than the last few nights.  Next thing you know, a few weeks have gone by, then a few holidays.  Forever was not built in a day.  But forever is awesome, so we are all hoping you get you there.

My forever…

Jake’s legs are not doing great.  The biggest challenge isn’t even the downtime, it’s how to keep him moving (specifically on walks) but still protect his feet.  When he walks (outdoors), even on good days, he drags and knuckles and that results in scrapes and bleeding.  You don’t realize how much he drags on one walk until you put socks or Pawz on him and when you come home, there are holes.  I have bought 4 different varieties of socks, they all failed. I even tried doubling them up.  Two different sizes of Pawz (small = too tight and impossible to get on and Med = too big and he has a hard time walking in them).  I bought boots AND shoes, both a no go because they are just too heavy for legs that are already struggling to stay upright.  Our most awesome dog walker has even taken to sewing him custom-made booties (taking into account all the things that don’t work above and trying to create something worthy of the little monkey)! Seriously, how amazing is she!

I want him to go on all the walks, I don’t want a life where we leave the house for some walks and he can’t go with us.  But going on walks that get cut short due to sock failure is not working out great either.  Melvin needs a few good walks a day.

I thought about getting him his wheelchair now, for use only on walks. The neurologist is pretty adamant that we don’t rely too much on the wheelchair YET, that we keep him working on getting around on his own.  We’d still have him on legs at home and in the yard (he does great in grass).  The challenge with getting him up and running (pun intended) on the wheelchair now is that Jake can barely stand still outside in the summer without overheating, in fact, during warm months, heat exhaustion for him begins at the thought of going outside.  Strapping him to a wheelchair during the summer would be like setting him on fire in a field of straw and yelling ‘good luck little buddy’.

So I am now considering two things that I honestly never saw myself needing to contemplate:  getting him a carrier (like I would wear him) or getting a pet stroller.  Neither of those options feels right to me but they seem pretty right for Jake.  I know plenty of people who stroll their dogs around, I just never thought it would be necessary for us.  So this is probably a moment where I need to be realistic about Jake’s future. Leaving him home, sad-faced and feeling like we only take fulling-functioning-legged-creatures on walks is not an option. We are an equal opportunity household.   So now,  there are currently 10 different pet strollers, two wagons and a few carriers in my Amazon cart.

I’ll keep you posted.  I wouldn’t count on the carrier option happening… Jake is 32 pounds and I’m not sure how I could ‘carry’ him and still be able to pick up after Melvin.  That seems dangerous, for everyone.  And, he’d probably pee on me.

 
After I taint your clean towel, please put me in a papoose and carry me.  

Jake spent the entire weekend stalking trying to bond with his brother.  He smelled Melvin 50+ times (so much that I started to worry he smelled sickness or something) and he constantly tried to inch closer to him, even at times just in order to hover over him.  If Melvin got uneasy and moved, Jake had a very dejected look on his face.

Video of his 47th sniffing session…

Standing watch over sleeping beauty…

Sneaking onto the couch and burrowing into Melvin…

Methodically backing his booty up until it trailer hitched onto Melvin’s booty….

The windows in the house are fairly low to the ground but Jake is even more low to the ground so he can’t see out of them.  Usually, him not seeing out of the windows is a good thing since he is almost always hunting prey (dogs, cats, people, wind).  In the past, if he wanted to see out of a window, he’d put his front paws up on the window sill and stare out.  Now, with his wonky legs, that is not always an option.  When his front paws go up, his heiny hits the ground.

So, I got him a bean bag.  A modern bean bag that looks good but that still functions as a perch for him.  The bean bag part is so he can easily climb up and down but still be high enough for him to see out the window.  Yes, clearly I gave the solution a lot of thought.

Here he is on his throne perch (unfortunately it was at night thus he is facing into the room).   

And here is Melvin, who promptly got up on the bean bag the next day as Jake was trying to climb it.  Brotherhood at its finest. 

You can tell by the different cars and inspection stickers that he’s been driving me for years!

During the last six-months of Max’s life, he needed to wear diapers.  He didn’t have great control of his bladder towards the end so he wore a belly-band and that was that.  After we said good-by to him, I can’t say I missed that part.  I would have continued doing it with no complaint, but I don’t think many people whose dogs need diapers will tell you that it’s the highlight of their day.

Meet Jake.  

This is Jake’s bum.

On bad-legs-days, Jake’s bum has trouble ‘holding it’.  All of ‘it’.  Especially at night.  Unfortunately, he does not give me (or himself) any indication that he needs to go out so I wake up to him panicking or crying and by then it’s too late. While I’m happy to clean his crate EVERY NIGHT at 3am, I feel like that hour is better suited for sleeping so this weekend I got him some diapers.  Of course he has to get the girl kind due to the fact that he can’t hold any of ‘it’ and since he doesn’t have a tail, I have to sew the tail hole shut.  I got the denim variety so at least he could feel somewhat manly. Nothing says macho like little denim hot shorts.  I’m sure he appreciates this.

“So I wear diapers now?” 

“Please don’t tell anyone, okay.” 

I hope if I ever need diapers, no one blogs about it!