Day 47 (Updated)

As many know, the last time I had a litter was a bit of a puppy palooza (understatement alert). Claire had failed to get pregnant twice, and so I tried one last time. I was not at all hopeful and so I also bred Daisy. They each got pregnant — with ten puppies. The litters were a week apart.

I kid you not. There were 10 + 10 puppies.

By the end of puppy palooza, my resting pulse was up to 90 (from the normal 69 - 70) and I had lost 20 pounds.

Four puppies is easy. A walk in the park. The perfect antidote to my puppy palooza PTSD.

And yet my resting pulse is once again informing me that I am doing that duck thing 🦆

This is normal for where we are in the life of a litter but it is made worse by whatever is happening with Topaz.

I am his throughline. It is my job to marshal, sort, and access resources for his benefit. It is also my job to ensure we do not do too much and burden this young puppy with testing and interventions just because we can.

The just right amount of veterinary intervention is hard to know. Actually, it is impossible to know right now. That is what is so stressful.

When my entire reality blew up in the spectacular explosion of The Gaslighter, I learned something really helpful: Just do the next right thing. Sounds simple but it is really useful in all kinds of situations, big and small.

We get ourselves into a tangled, overwhelmed mess when we try to transport into future problems. The future is unavailable right now, and so how can we solve future problems when we are not exactly sure what they are? That doesn’t work.

Further, spending our internal resources — aka 100 Little Soldiers — to try and solve future problems that do not exist except in our imagination is a waste of present-day capacity. That doesn’t mean we ignore potential consequences for present-day actions, but we need to do it wisely and gently.

Anyway, all that is to say that I am focused on the next right thing for Topaz. What that looks like is delaying the follow-up veterinary appointment to later this week, and having a conversation with the local veterinarian, Dr. B. That has happened already.

Dr. B reached out to contacts over the weekend and so between us, we have more puzzle pieces but no clear picture. What we have is a plan.

Topaz will continue warm water therapy. Dr. B agrees that we should not give any pain medication unless he is in significant distress. We have an appointment with her on Thursday. I will bring a clean catch urine sample from Topaz and a littermate (for comparison). Bloodwork will be done. I will bring all the siblings to the appointment for the purpose of comparing apples to apples on physical exam, and one brave puppy will have blood drawn to send off Titer #1 to the CAVIDS lab.