Great Birthday and Crappy Birthday

My birthday started great and went down hill from there.

The hubby planned a morning in Albuquerque. We live almost 2 hours away. He finally broke down and told me why we were going to Abq. There was a huge pet adoption day and the Basset rescue was going to be there. We had discussed it and figured bassets are more mellow so if we could find a smaller one, we could adopt one.

So we drove to Abq and went to the Petsmart. It was crazy!!! Every shelter and rescue in the northern half of New Mexico had dogs there! The sound was horrendous, but the atmosphere was lively. We met 4 bassets. 3 were too big and the one who was small enough was young and had too much energy. As you may remember, we had to give up the pup we got about a month ago because our yard was too small for a pup of her size and energy level.

So we were torn. The bassets seemed too big. What to do now. So we walked around to look at all the other dogs. The hubby wanted to look at a little guy that they said was a daschund mix. I gave in and we took him for a walk. I had my heart set on a hound. But once we took the little guy on a walk, I was sold. He is so sweet and loving. Plus he only weighs 16lbs. We took him into Petsmart and walked him by the cats. He sniffed the cats, but as soon as they hissed, he balked off. Good sign. He was fine around other dogs and other people. So we adopted him.

He was fine riding in the car. He even came with us to Lowe's. We ran into a man with a chihuahua who started yapping like mad. Our little pup just looked at it and walked away without making a sound. Point for him!

He latched onto us immediately. If one of us walked out of his view at the store, he ran around looking for where we had gone.

We stopped and got some toys and a doggy bed. He rode in the dog bed on my lap the whole way home. Another point for him! A dog that can travel with us will be a GREAT find. We drive up to Boulder to visit the hubby's grandparents and down to Alamogordo to visit his sister a couple of times a year. We can bring a dog to both houses, so it will save us the cost of boarding or pet sitting if he can go with us.

So we took him home to meet the cats. We named him Branigan (after Zap Branigan from Futurama-yes I know we are nerds). He and the cats seemed to be fine with each other. He was a bit needy, but thats understandable in a new place. We hung out watching movies and eating cheese cake.

Half way through the cheese cake (neither of us has will power so we only get stuff like that for special occasions) we noticed a spot on the floor. When I wiped it up, I could tell that it was blood. We knew that Branigan had recently been fixed, but we were not given any special instructions so we figured it was long enough ago that it wasn't a big deal. (I will add at this point that I am rather ashamed of myself for not asking more questions when we adopted him. I know better. We saw that his boy parts were swollen and bruised, but the lady there said he had been fixed and was fine.)

We lifted him up and saw that his incision was bleeding quite heavily. It filled up a paper towel very quickly. So we called the animal hospital (in a town an hour away) and they said to bring him right in. So off we go. Luckily Branigan is super mellow and just laid there in hubby's lap with a paper towel pressed to his boy parts for the whole over an hour drive. The hospital had of course moved since we had last been there so we went to the wrong place. It was a stressful drive.

They took him in right away and we waited. For 5 hours!!! They came out to talk to us a couple of times during the 5 hours, but it was still a long time (made longer by the least comfortable benches in the history of the world). By the time we got home it was almost 2:30am. Our poor pup needed to have fluid drained from his scrotum. Luckily it wasn't infected. They gave him an anti-inflamitory injection which helped with swelling. So now we mostly have to keep him from running and jumping. The vet there wanted to do surgery and all sorts of crazy stuff. We said we would take him to our vet this morning.

The hubby took him to the regular vet this morning. They said to just keep an eye on it. They said its mostly bruised. So keep the cone on him and don't let him run around. Glad we didn't go with the surgery option!

So now the fun task of keeping a dog still. I hate having him in a kennel. He will have to be in one while we are at work, but he cries all night if we leave him in over night. So for now he has his dog bed in the middle of our bed and we both have a hand on him all night. It has worked well for the past two nights. Hopefully soon he will be able to move around more.

So that why my birthday was half great and half crappy. And tomorrow I will put up a pic of the pup.