Yikes!

So yesterday was only the second day of NaNo and I'm already falling behind. I think I wrote something like 100 words yesterday so I have...er around 3,000 to write today if I don't want to fall further behind. So...YIKES!

I'm going to warn you now there is a kind of, but not really, icky picture a bit further down of my dog's cyst. It isn't really graphic, but I just figured I'd warn you.

I was also going to try to post some about the Regency dress because I've finished the patterned pieces (not patterning the 60 inch by 40 inch skirt piece and then 60 by whatever back skirt), but I am off to the vet later this morning with my poor little elderly Australian shepherd dog. She has had a cyst the size of a large grapefruit on her side for somewhere close to two months now and it is pretty large. The problem is we have had it drained around 5-6 times by now and it just keeps filling back up so we have to keep going back. It isn't bothering her as far as we can tell, but then you run into the possibility of it bursting (when just makes me gag to think about). Apparently it is common for older dogs to get cysts and they can be caused by just falling and hitting something kind of hard. We are starting to get to the point where we have three choices: keep draining it which there is a risk of infection every time we have it done, surgery to put in a drainage tub (again gagging over here) or surgery to try removing the cyst pocket. So when we take her in this morning we are going to discuss it with the vet.

Cyst (on the left) from above

Slightly hard to see, but you can kind of see the lump of the cyst

Rita, my dog, has been through so much this summer and it is just kind of sad that she has. We almost had to put her down earlier this summer, but she is one strong little girl. I thing Rita's personality was switched with a cat a birth because she is terrified of water, even if it is just sprinkling she will go and hide under the grill cover to avoid getting wet. Well, that makes bath time rather hard. We generally take her to a self serve dog wash place since they have the raised tubs and the dog fur dryer things. She has always tried to escape the water so we go in pairs to wash her so there is a backup person to help keep her in the tub, but in early June/late May the only time in a long time my dad went without me she managed to twist away from his grip while he was switching back to Rita's collar and she jumped out. She slipped and hit her head and didn't get up, even for a treat. Heck she didn't even or rather  couldn't even wag her tail. She was paralyzed from her neck down. So my dad rushed her to the vet. They did x-rays and ran tests, but nothing was very conclusive. We were told that there was the chance that she would recover, but they couldn't tell us to what extent. So we took her home and I sleep in the utility room on the floor next to her so if she needed to go out I could carry her because my mom can't pick her up by herself and my dad had a really early shift at work. When I had to take her out she could move her front legs and kind of support herself on them, but her back legs still weren't moving so I had to hold her up and sort of waddle around the backyard with her. We went back to the vet the day after the accident and they were amazed by her being able to move her front legs. So again we went home, this time we had an appointment a week later that Rita walked into to the shock of all of the people working at the vet's office and us as well.

Sorry for the longwinded post, but if it wasn't this I probably wouldn't be able to post one until Friday.