EMERGENCY VET AND THE IMPORTANCE OF BATH TIME

Last week we had a major scare with Bowser. One evening I noticed that Bowser's left temple seemed to be sunken in- it was scary looking. I immediately said we needed to go to the emergency vet, which I have said several times in the past, only to have Jordan disagree and have everything turn out fine. This time though, Jordan didn't disagree and I knew he felt just as scared as me. So, at about 6pm, we loaded Adelaide up, grabbed her bedtime bottle and went off. First of all, isn't the emergency vet for emergencies? And shouldn't emergencies be dealt with quickly? We stood in the waiting room for a good 15 minutes while the receptionist had someone else filling out paperwork and collecting the fee for a pup who was in for a scheduled overnight stay. I'm not saying that they didn't have something that needed to be dealt with, but it wasn't an emergency, and as far as we knew, Bowser could've been dying. Well, really long (about 2 hour) story short, we found out that yes, there was something wrong, but no, he wasn't dying that night. We were told to get him to his regular vet the following day, which is where we found out that Bowser probably has a weird disease/disorder called MMM where his body starts attacking certain muscles in his head, which has caused them to start to atrophy. We're still watching to see how things go, but luckily it doesn't seem to be life threatening. Scary though, for sure.

And on to the importance of bathtime. The night of the emergency vet, we were gone from about 6pm until around 8:30pm. Adelaide usually takes a bath at about 7pm, bottle right after that and then bed. Well, needless to say, we had to feed her while we were gone. Of course once we left the vet at about 8pm, she was out cold in her carseat rather quickly. So, we get home, she's sound asleep and we have to make a call. Wake her up and give her a bath, then bed? Or, quickly change her diaper and straight to bed? We (maybe mostly I) figured she knew it was already time for her night sleep and that waking her totally up for a bath would be unnecessary and maybe even a bad idea. So diaper change and to bed it was. She fussed a bit, but was sound asleep again almost as soon as her head hit the mattress. SUCCESS! For about 45 minutes that is. That was when she woke up crying for the first time. That went on off and on for the next hour. It really started feeling like she was confused as hell, waking up from what she thought was a nap, but feeling too tired to be waking up. After a few failed attempts at getting her back to sleep, into the bath she went. At 10:15! Then a  mini-bottle to mimic her normal nighttime routine and guess what? She slept without a peep for the rest of the night. So yeah, we now know the importance of bathtime. And we won't be testing it again any time soon.

On to some pictures now... In honor of Valentine's week, here are some favorites from our makeshift Valentine's Day photo shoot last week.