Last night

I have a number of posts that I want to put up including Izzy's 10 month post and one about our vacation, but first I have to tell you about last night.

You guys know that this has been a hard year what with CP traveling for work all the time. Sometimes it is not so bad and I am definitely getting used to it (although still not liking it). It's days like yesterday when it is seriously the worst.

Two days ago Buster somehow hurt his front leg paw and wouldn't put any weight on it. I happened to be working from home so at lunch I brought him over to the vet to get him checked out. I came out with pain pills for him and instructions not to let him run around for about a week. Not wanting him to have to hold his pee for 10-11 hours while I was at work yesterday, I asked his former dog walker* to just let him out in the backyard to pee in the middle of the day. 

*I'm not sure what happened between the two of them but Buster is a special snowflake and sometimes doesn't like strangers....but she was not a stranger and would come at least once a week. Most days he would be fine with her, some days he would just bark and bark at her. The dog walker's boss got nervous about the barking and decided that they didn't want to walk Buster anymore. I only called because all I needed was for her to let him out, not walk him.

Should be easy, right? Except when I checked my personal phone yesterday during an all-day work event I had 4 messages from the dog walker telling me that she had taken Buster out to the backyard to pee and he just kept barking at her, refusing to pee. There was some loud noise that must have spooked him because he took off full speed into the front yard and into the neighborhood. The dog walker jumped in her car and followed him finally catching him in a neighborhood about two miles away in someone's backyard. He was limping and tired, but the last message had him at least home (the third message pissed me off because she said that she might leave him in the backyard-WHAT?!?). 

So here I am at an important work meeting worried about Buster and what he had been through all day. Then I go to leave the meeting in the company car and fight traffic back to the office, meanwhile hoping that I could make a decent train home to make sure Buster was okay and to pick up Izzy in time. I get to the garage, show my badge and am told that because I don't have a hanging tag, security can't let me into the garage. The car hasn't needed a tag in the two years I have worked there and I take the car out pretty regularly, along with 300 other employees. I started to freak out because I was already running late for the train and wtf was I going to do?

After a stressful day at work, then feeling helpless in the Buster situation, I couldn't hold my tears in. I begged the guy to let me in but he said that he had to wait for his supervisor to come down to let me in. Finally the supervisor came and let me know that my company was given the tag this afternoon (I left that morning) and that he was sorry for the inconvenience. Ugh. If he only knew.

I made it to daycare with 5 minutes to spare but unfortunately Izzy was there for 11.5 hours yesterday. She was fussy and hungry because it was almost an hour after her usual dinner time, but otherwise okay. After making sure Buster was alive (and noticing an even-worse limp on the front right paw), I gave Izzy dinner, fed Buster and tried to figure out what was wrong with him. It was pretty obvious once I checked out his front paws- the pads were RAW. It wasn't 90 degrees out yesterday so he couldn't have burned the pads off and he is used to running 2-3 miles with me two times a week so it couldn't just be from running on pavement. WTF HAPPENED???

I decided to take him to the emergency vet as I needed to be at work today. We are there a total of two hours because there were more urgent cases in front of us. Buster got partially shaved on his legs/paws, bandaged, and prescribed antibiotics (we already had pain meds from our trip to the vet on Weds) while Izzy hung out in the Ergo in the waiting room with me, very patiently (honestly, best kid ever). She loved watching the dogs that were in the waiting list and playing on the chairs. Oddly enough, the dog trainer that we took reactive dog classes with after first moving to Chicago was in the waiting room. I talked to her about the situation and she gave me the email of someone who not only has a reactive dog herself, but has gone through training and is now walking dogs (I ended up emailing the lady last night). Fingers crossed this lady can walk Buster on the days that he is sick/injured/otherwise not able to go to daycare.

Izzy decided not to sleep until the ride home (9:30pm!) so I basically went to sleep after we got home instead of enjoying the nice chilled bottle of white wine I put in the fridge before I left, thinking that I would get to unwind and enjoy it after getting home. I will be enjoying that bottle TONIGHT and most likely cursing CP's job (especially because today is our 5 year anniversary and he is on the other side of the world).