One of those days

Today was just difficult. Why don't we start at the end and work our way backwards...

The people two doors down invited us, kids and all, to their holiday party. We haven't gotten to know our neighbors very well since our time is dominated by other concerns (known as Thing 1 and Thing 2), so we were pleased to be invited and were excited to get to know them better. Since I didn't shave this morning because I decided to take the day off from work, I shaved just before we were going to leave. And managed to give myself an odd little nick on the nose (or as Margaret would call it, Noe-sss) which bled profusely and just wouldn't stop (a common occurrence with shaving wounds, but this was severe even though the cut itself wasn't.) Completely annoying - I couldn't go over to the party with blood dripping off my nose. Conveniently, Teddy decided to scream. So there I was running around with tissue paper attached to my nose while Teddy screamed, Abby tried to get ready to go, and Margaret messed around looking to get into trouble. In the end, I stayed home with a screaming Teddy and bloody nose while Margaret and Abby went to the party for 20 minutes or so, but boy was that a great end to the day.

Then earlier in the day, an "underemployed" friend of ours parked his car in our garage. His car isn't properly registered or inspected, so he needed some place to park it where the traffic cops wouldn't have access to it. In a fit of silly generosity, I offered to let him use our garage a few weeks ago, but he didn't take us up on it at the time, so we thought it might pass. But then he called up today and asked if the offer was still open. I told him that it had to be out by early January when Abby goes back to work so she won't have to look for parking at night when coming home, and he agreed, but it's still a pain to lose use of our garage for a few weeks, especially since the garage is great for loading the kids. This is one of those times when you ask yourself why you decided to be so generous.

Just before he called, I paid a visit to the DMV to get our car registration renewed. The DC DMV is a place unlike any other for the uniform (and wholly predictable) unpleasantness of the experience of going there. This time, the primary difficulty was that I had to document our new address in addition to getting the registration renewed. Although I took a stack of papers to try to verify our new address, I apparently didn't have the key document to show that we lived where we live. For example, our lease wasn't signed by our landlord since she happens to live in Italy. So that didn't count, although I could've "signed" her name to the document and they never would've known. Alternatively, I could've kept all of the registration listed for our old address and it wouldn't have mattered. But try to be an upstanding citizen and keep everything current and what happens? You get turned away by surly employees at the DC DMV. But I should have expected that outcome since it took four trips to the DMV to register our car the first time around. As Richard, our friend whose car is in our garage, said when I told him about what happened, "Of course you didn't have the right documents. What did you expect?"

Sometimes this city just gets annoying. A few days ago, Abby had to pick up a package from the post office that required a signature, but was addressed to Margaret. Now the signature verification requirement is a good idea in general since, damn this city, packages seem to disappear from our front porch. For example, the neighbors who were throwing the party tonight apparently dropped off a gift for Teddy shortly after he was born. Very nice of them, but we didn't get it (and we feel very bad for them that that happened.) Instead, someone else is using a towel with a monogram "Theodore." I hope they're enjoying it. And that they think about little Teddy every time they use it.

But back to the post office story, it seems that Abby could not pick up the package since she wasn't actually Margaret. "But she's my daughter and, in any case, she's only 1 1/2 years old so she couldn't sign her name anyway," Abby tried to point out. "But she's not you," was the response. "Where is she?" "In daycare!" The woman that Abby was dealing with almost sent the package back to the sender before a more reasonable USPS employee stepped in to sort things out. In hindsight, Abby should have just claimed that the kid in the Baby Bjorn was Margaret since who was going to check? Again, all of this just encourages us to lie. (My friends who live in Northern Virginia like to point out that government services are much more pleasant and efficient there than they are in DC. And no one ever steals a package off your front porch.)

Returning to events of the current day, this morning, Maddie and I visited the vet for a check-up. A few things have been going on in Maddie's life that have given us cause for concern. First, she gets very nervous when the kids cry, something that I've been meaning to write about for a while. This is problematic since, to be honest, the kids tend to cry and fuss a lot. Which is unpleasant for everyone, but especially, it seems, for Maddie. It's gotten to the point where Maddie doesn't seem to like to hang out with the rest of us and, when she does, will creep away when the inevitable crying starts. I actually thought about sending Maddie to get some R&R (relatively speaking) with the relatives in Philly for a few weeks. They're past the extreme fussing stage, so I thought that she might enjoy getting away from the "menace" known as Margaret (and, to a lesser extent, Teddy.)

The second development is that Maddie's vision has been deteriorating a bit. Nothing serious, but it's noticeable, especially when we play ball in the evening at the park. She has more trouble picking up the ball from a distance, and we invariably lose at least one ball since when she can't find it in the dark, neither can I. And when Abby is walking to meet us in the park and I ask "Where's Abby?," it takes Maddie a while to pick her up whereas, in the past, she would have taken off like a shot directly towards Abby (often before I even asked.)

I wanted to ask the vet if he had any suggestions about how to deal with these problems. For the first, he suggested that we try "Reconcile" which is basically Prozac for dogs and is primarily used to treat separation anxiety, although as he pointed out, it can be helpful for any type of anxiety. Now, I'm not too keen on dosing my dog with drugs just as I'm not a big fan of dosing people with drugs to deal with these types of problems. But it's gotten so depressing to watch Maddie that I figured we'd give it a shot for a month or so just to see if it helps.

Sigh. One of the things about Maddie is that when she and I go for walks alone in the evening, she's just like the puppy that she was years ago, prancing along and jumping up on things while inviting me to play. But toss Margaret into the mix (and to a lesser extent, Teddy) and Maddie becomes a much more tentative and obviously unhappy dog. Perhaps the real solution is to send Margaret to the Philly relatives for a few weeks so that Maddie can get some real R&R.

For the vision issues, the vet checked her eyes and said that he thinks that she's suffering from Progressive Retinal Atrophy (PRA). This is an untreatable genetic condition that, for dogs of Maddie's age, leads to progressive deterioration of vision with the end result of blindness. This is a very depressing diagnosis although as the link above describes, dogs with this condition don't experience physical pain and don't experience the same psychic trauma that people do when faced with a similar condition especially since the progression of the condition is sufficiently slow that the dog learns to adapt to it over time.

However, there is still a lot of uncertainty associated with this diagnosis. First, does she actually have PRA? Many of the websites that I found suggest that it's very rare in Border Collies and can often be misdiagnosed (which still leaves open the issue of what might be wrong with her vision and how that condition might proceed.) Second, how fast will it progress? Some resources suggest that it can proceed so slowly that things don't get much worse at all or, at least, the dog won't outlive the progression of the condition. To get more info about these issues, we might consult a pet opthamologist. Does she have PRA and, if not, what eye problems is she experiencing? How far along is she in the process and how might things proceed and at what rate?

In any case, any eye problems don't seem to be affecting Maddie very much at this point except for the nighttime rounds of ball. Her main issue at this point is how to deal with the kids, so we'll see if the doggie Prozac helps out on that front. And regardless of how things go with her vision, we'll deal with them. I was lucky that the first website that I read about the condition was the one listed above since that site has some good advice about how to deal with deterioration in vision of dogs, but if anyone wants to get us a depressing, but potentially useful book for Xmas, you could consider the one cited on that page. At the end of the day, this might turn out to be a boon for Maddie since the dog with eye problems is likely to get more sympathy than the petulant little kid.

Our day began with another depressing event. On our way back from buying diapers and Xmas tree lights at CVS (it seems that our Xmas tree lights only last a year and, lord knows, diapers don't last very long in our household), Abby spotted an elderly woman on her patio outside of her house. She had fallen and appeared to be completely disoriented. I went to help her, asking her whether she needed an ambulance. She wanted to get back into her house, but I wasn't strong enough to pick her up myself. We got a contractor from across the street to help me, and together we managed to get her inside the house. We asked whether she had someone to call or needed us to call someone, but she didn't want us to do so. She was still disoriented, but was thankful for our help and didn't seem to want any more. And to top it all off, I got a whiff of wine which the contractor apparently got in a greater dose. A completely troubling situation - we may check in on her tomorrow to see if she's ok and to make sure that she's not suffering from dementia or something like that.

The start of what turned out to be a very interesting day.