A difficult decision to make has been made.

So I’ve made a very hard decision. I can’t cope with Drago and he’s going to have to go back to the Dogs Trust. My Bipolar symptoms have been getting steadily worse since we picked him up and I can feel myself beginning to spiral downwards in a way that is frightening for me. I just can’t leave the room for five minutes without him toileting or chewing something and the stress of it is making my anxiety levels rocket. My normal solution – to go upstairs and lie down quietly for a bit – is out of the question as this just makes him worse!! I know over time he will improve but I don’t think my sanity can wait that long, in fact I think another week of this would be really bad news for my mental health.

Ian phoned the Dogs Trust number when he got home from work, but the Kenilworth centre that Drago came from was already closed so someone is going to phone me tomorrow to discuss it. I’m dreading this, as I know they will judge me and I hate using the phone anyway, but when we took Drago on he was a quiet, shy, nervous dog and nothing at all like the Tasmanian devil he has turned into whenever we leave him. Even at night-time he won’t settle, and Ian has even slept on the sofa a couple of nights to keep him happy

Maybe the last picture of Drago and Frodo together…

!! The toilet training isn’t going well either after a promising start. Now he refuses to go in the garden and then goes within five minutes of being back in the house. I’ve lost count of the amount of cleaning up I’ve done. The frustrating thing is that I’m sure all of these behaviour problems are solvable, but we just don’t have the time to wait before I lose my mind completely. It looks like my vision of having another dog improving my Bipolar and getting me out and about more was wrong after all. A hard lesson to learn. A very hard lesson indeed.

Dr Dray is in the house!!

He’s home!! We finally picked up our funny, loveable lurcher Drago from Dogs Trust yesterday. We’d taken Frodo along for a final ‘getting to know you’ session which went fine again, and then after a fair bit of paperwork he was actually legal ours!!

I’m home!!

I was a bit worried that Drago would be nervous in the car. We put Frodo on the back seat and had Drago in the boot where they could see each other and Drago was completely chilled out! I sat in the back with Fro so I could keep an eye on them and Drago was resting his head on my shoulder and he even lay down and had a rest a few times when he wasn’t nosing out of the window. Overall a complete success 🙂

When we get home Drago was nervous to actually come into the house; we think he must have been shut in somewhere because he hates going from outside through a doorway into a building. Poor pooch, I hate to think what he’s been through 😦 Once inside though he was really good, having a nice sniff around and accustoming himself to his surroundings and once Frodo had stopped trying to hump him he lay himself down on the rug and sprawled out!! We couldn’t believe it!! Either he has come on in leaps and bounds at Dogs Trust since we first saw him or these Adaptil products really work!!

What’s that spotty one up to behind me?

Toilet training is going slowly so far, we were advised that Drago had been having diarrhoea over the last couple of days (great!!) and was on a special diet, but he didn’t toilet any of the times we took him out during the afternoon, evening and before bed. Instead he saved it for when we’d gone to bed. He obviously missed us and was scratching at the door so Ian went down to settle him and discovered ‘Poomageddon’. A huge, splattered mess on the carpet by the door to the stairs. I’m not sure if it was nerves that caused it, maybe separation anxiety was the trigger, but it took a hell of a lot of cleaning up that’s for sure!! A bit later in the night we could hear strange noises and after going down to investigate Ian discovered Drago had reached high up onto the back of one of the work surfaces, grabbed the box of dog treats, taken it into the lounge and both he and Frodo were tucking in to a midnight feast!! Naughty hounds!! All was quiet for the rest of the night though so I think we got off quite lightly there.

This morning I was again greeted by ‘Poomageddon’, in a similar place, so I think separation is a big factor with this. It isn’t helped by the fact that as Drago is a Lurcher and can jump for England he has to be either tethered to his long-line or on the lead in the garden, which makes toilet training more complicated. Frodo isn’t helping either, I was hoping he’d show him the ropes but it’s pouring with rain so Frodo took one look outside and gave me a look which suggested he was thinking ‘You’re having a laugh!!’. As well as the diarrhoea splat I found that somehow the naughty pair had got hold of a box of Dentastix and scoffed 3 out of 4 packets. And this was after we thought we’d moved everything out of reach!! Rascals!!

Right now I’ve got Frodo curled up on the sofa next to me and Drago is sprawling across his favourite rug. A perfect scene. Although today I am doing something I never thought I’d do, buying carpet protectors from Argos. I’ve always mocked them but after clearing up two massive piles from the carpet in less than 6 hours my pride is losing out to practicality. Well, just until Drago gets rid of the runs and becomes better house-trained 🙂

A better day.

Well after Monday’s shocker Tuesday was an improvement. My better half stayed off work to look after me and make sure I didn’t get up to any ‘mischief’ and thank goodness that he did. Having him here with me was so reassuring and I knew I was safe despite having nasty thoughts and images again. We did some yoga together which was really nice and I had a soak in the bath so I was quite chilled out for once!! I’ve been really tired all of the time recently and I needed my eyes tested so I went along and hey presto, I need stronger glasses. What a surprise!! Hopefully having the correct lenses will stop my eyes from feeling so tired all of the time anyway! I haven’t even begun to think about new frames yet though, that’s far too stressful for at the moment. After the trauma of the eye test (I hate being in enclosed spaces with people I don’t know) we chilled out at home and I was just so grateful that my OH was able to spend the day with me so I wasn’t alone.

Yesterday was better still. I still woke up really early but was productive and did some ironing while watching ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’, one of my favourite Studio Ghibli films. Ian had to go back to work so I was home alone and trying to keep busy. I finished the ironing in record time (a miracle for me) and watched the end of the film snuggled on the sofa with the spotty hound and then decided to make the button holes for the wedding.

I’d ordered loads of stuff for making the button holes, corsages, centre piece and my bouquet and some of it was coming from china so it only arrived a couple of days ago. It was so weird though, I somehow knew exactly what to do with the button holes and knocked them out as well as the corsages in no time!! It was almost as though someone was guiding my hand, although maybe I’ve just got a talent for flower arranging? Who knows? Next up was the centre piece, a ball of oasis waiting to be decorated. Again, I just went with it and it almost happened before my eyes!! I had a soak in the bath again, leaving my bouquet for another day and got ready to go out with my folks who had asked if I fancied a trip to our local craft centre/coffee shop.

After being picked by my parents we drove to the centre and had a walk around the gardens. There is a sculpture/art show starting tomorrow so there were already lots of works of art around to look at. I also found ‘Tufty’, my favourite duck out of the hundred or so who live on the ponds there. He’s so cute!! I wish I could pinch him but as we’re getting a lurcher soon it probably wouldn’t end well if I did!…

My Favourite duck in the world!!

I had to be home and ready for when Ian got back from work as today was they day of our second dog/people mix with Drago. It went incredibly well again, with Drago coming up to us and he and Frodo got on fine again. Sunday should be the day he comes home with us, providing our final mix goes well. How exciting!! I can’t wait to show him all of the love he deserves and teach him that people are nice and kind and not scary. I’m off to the local pet shop later to get an Adaptil plug-in diffuser to help with the settling process. He already has an Adaptil collar but I want to do everything I can to make him feel safe and also I’m hoping it will help Frodo adjust to the change and having Drago at home. He’s been top dog a looooong time!!

Drago

Having a sniff

Today I’m hoping will be a good day. I’m going for a walk in the woods with my cousin and her dog and then back to the craft centre/coffee shop for tea and cake! (They cater brilliantly for vegans and coeliacs) So keep everything crossed there won’t be any meltdowns and if there is I’m seeing my GP at 5:30 so she can deal with them 🙂

To dog or not to dog?

So today was the scheduled meet for Callie and Frodo at the Dogs Trust centre. I had no aprehension at all, presuming naively that they would get along and everything would go swimmingly. This was not the case. Frodo was fine, trying to greet Callie and being friendly, but her behaviour showed she was trying everything she could to avoid him and we could tell that if we let them off the leads together Callie would immediately attack Frodo as a form of defence mechanism. Whether it was Frodo’s size, some past trauma or just the fact that she doesn’t like other dogs that was causing the behaviour one thing was perfectly clear, it wasn’t going to be the blossoming friendship we had hoped for and we were back at square one.

The staff at the trust came through for us though and went off to see whether they had anything else that met our criteria. And this is where Drago comes into the equation. A one year old Lurcher who is terrified of his own shadow and is going to need some serious rehab when it comes to trusting people. Dogs are another story though and he and Frodo got on like a house on fire. In fact Frodo seemed to think he’s got himself a tomboy the way his ‘humpy-bum’ was going!!! Poor old Drago was so scared he wouldn’t even approach me but he did get more confident as time went on, coming up to the other half and letting him walk him on the lead and even stroke his head. No, of course I wasn’t jealous. At all. I did get a stroke in the end and we have decided to go for it despite the fact that we know it’s going to be a difficult journey for Drago and for us, especially in the beginning. I can’t even begin to imagine what horrors he has experienced in the space of his short life for him to be so petrified but it makes me so sad and angry that people can treat any animal in such a way that it ends up like this. We are going to see Drago two or three more times with Frodo so he can get used to us a bit before we bring him home and then the fun really begins.