Just animals

Tarin doesn't seem to be in much pain.  He runs around like an idiot but when he calms down, he limps a little.  I put plastic bags over his feet when he goes outside to keep his foot dry.  Tonight, I went out with him because he keeps getting them off.  I turned my head for half a second and no longer heard the swish swish of his bags.  He got them off in record time.  And of course, when I got him inside, he was bleeding.  He had torn off that dead skin that was over the cut.  There was still some hanging on and based off what just happened, I knew it would just get stuck on something and tear again.  I laid him on the floor and had Jasmine get me some kleenex for the bleeding and I grabbed a pair of wire cutters.  (cringing yet?)  I cleaned him up and then went to cut off the remaining skin.  Jasmine freaked.  I thought I was going to have a two year old pass out on me.  I explained to her that the skin was like a fingernail and he couldn't feel it anymore.  After reassuring her a few times, I cut it off.  She took the wire cutters away from me, put them on the counter and said you leave those alone mommy.  ;)  Tarin actually seems to limp less now.  It was interesting to look at part of his pad close up.  There's tons of tiny skin fibers that look like a centipedes legs and the further into the skin you get, the thicker they get.  Dogs pads are actually really soft when they haven't been calloused.  Tarin is a bit of a pretty boy so his are always fairly soft, probably why it cut open so bad in the first place.  Nurse Mia oversaw the entire procedure.  She is my husband's border collie and is always concerned when there is an injury.  She is in puppy love with Tarin so she was even more concerned.  (she will care for any dog, even if she cannot stand it)  She stood over me the entire time and then licked him when I would move out of the way.  This is the same dog that if I had been paying attention, would've alerted me to the fact that I had a severe infection in my uterus while pregnant with my daughter.  This is the same infection that almost took my life.  This dog would NOT get off my bed no matter how much trouble she go into.  And she kept her head on my stomach the entire week before I went to the hospital.  After I found out what was going on, there wasn't a doubt in my mind that she was trying to tell me.

I still have the Doodle girl.  I was willing to approve the application (I'm leaving it more up to them with apps. on my fosters as I could be too biased) when suddenly, everyone decided that she deserved a better home with kids and maybe a dog.  ;)  I think the kicker was that they wouldn't be home for at least 8 hours a day and Doodle gets finicky around that time to go potty.  So today I got her washed up and ready for this weekend's adoption event as I will be taking her on Saturday.  This is her first event so it should be interesting to see how she reacts.  There is always a ton of dogs and people at this petsmart and it can be overwhelming to the best behaved dogs.  In a way it's good to know that others have seen what a great dog she is and that she deserves the best possible home but I hope they don't become so picky as to allow a good home to be passed up.  I would love to keep her but I can't and the longer we have her, the harder it will be to give her up.  This is a test on my part.  If I can handle giving up Doodle, I can handle fostering any dog.  If this is too hard on myself and Jasmine, then I won't foster again.  I'm not going to put myself through extreme heartbreak every few months and I definitely won't do that to my child.