Doggie short list

Okay, I've done my research and then I did some more. I think I read the entirety of wikipedia and a couple of books I've borrowed from the library. Please see the book list on the side for the breed books that I've used. After much reading, and much compiling, and at least a little bit of confusion, here is the short list of breeds that I want to look at closer. Please note that none of these (except the rough collie) has been allergy tested against Nick.

I'm looking for a dog who has an upbeat personality, is affectionate, is attentive, and won't cost me a fortune at the groomers.

And the list is:

1. Collie (rough or smooth)

The collie still seems to be the perfect dog for me for this task. They are gentle, attentive, shed very little except when they blow their coat.

Downside: The are talky.

2. There are some ties here

Pudelpointer

Pretty much a poodle x Pointer that breeds true. He sheds very little and is willing and intelligent. But he was hard to find information on so I know very little about him. Makes me wonder if he is really rare.

Soft-coated wheaten terrier.

The only terrier to make it through. He is gentler and calmer than most of the rest. He's very affectionate.

Downside: There is a fair amount of upkeep on their coats. They need trimming at least every other month.

Curly coated retriever

He's got winning marks all over. His only one short fall is that I'm reading that they are not as long lived as dogs of the same size.

Flat coated retriever

My worry with this one is that he would be a shedding monster like a golden retriever is.

3. Some more ties

Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever

I may be falling for a pretty face. They are higher energy than the other retrievers.

Spinone Italiano

He's cute, isn't he. His hair isn't as soft as I would really like and I'm mildly worried about drool with that moustache of his.

Chesapeake Bay Retriever

Another retriever. Except this one has a naturally oily coat to help protect him from the freezing waters of Chesapeake Bay, where he was originally bred. With that, you don't want to be washing it too much because you'll wreck the coat. We want to be washing my dog often because of Nick's allergies

Samoyed

Another good one. I may rank him as a 2 actually. Nick thinks that there is a rumor that these dogs have a tendency to snap. I didn't read anything about it in my research. Maybe he's thinking of a toy breed that looks similar. I didn't research any toy breeds.

Keeshond

The smallest dog on my list. Another one that seems like he would be overall great.

Australian Shepard

Interesting tidbit: He isn't from Australia at all. I couldn't take him off my list even though I question his fit. He's a little bit higher energy than the other dogs I'm looking at.

And my runners up. They are good dogs and would be perfect except for the fact that they may run me into the ground with groomer bills. Really, if I had the extra $100 a month, I would rather get a car.

The Standard poodle

And the Portuguese Water Dog.

(All of these pictures are borrowed from other websites)

Side Effects

I'm so sick of the side effects that I'm getting from the medications I'm on. The dizziness which leads to nausea. The headaches that so easily become migraines. The lack of appetite or the tendency to binge on bad foodstuffs. The gross taste in my mouth from the sleeping pills I take when I can feel that my sleep is going off.

But right now it's the headache that I've had since last Thursday that keeps trying to morph into mini-migraines. And the dizziness that seems to be accompanying it if I'm standing still. I'm okay when I'm walking and mostly okay when I'm sitting.

We had dropped my antidepressant when I was coming down off of the manic episode to try and help bring it back to normal a little bit faster. And, as these things always seem to go, I was good for a couple of weeks and then I slipped past normal and started to get depressed. So I upped the celexa again. And then the headache started. What is the right answer? I'll yack with my doctor about it next time I see him. Maybe we need to change the antidepressant that we're using in the mix.

This is one of the reasons I want the dog. I want to be able to drop my med levels while still feeling safe. I would like to get off the antidepressants entirely. And the dog would be my great big behavioural clue. I wonder sometimes if I don't place too much hope in the dog on this topic.

Right now, I just want this headache to disappear.

Cat Training

Topic: Vacuum Cleaner

My cats have the greatest fear of the vacuum cleaner. They are typically okay when it's off although they will approach it like it's going to bite them. When it's on, they prefer to be in another room. I don't blame them; it's loud. But it's the way they exit that I'm trying to correct. They run like the devil is after them: close to the floor with the tail tucked.

Today's training exercise: When I was part way through vacuuming the house I turned it off and got out the bag of crunchies. Temptations are the treat of choice for these two. Especially Marissa, evidently. I then went and sat among the hoses and vacuum and such and waited, treat in hand, for them to approach. Yes. It's bribery. But they had to work through their fears to get there, which was the point of the exercise.

Sam approached first. He is generally the braver of the two. Marissa followed him to gain her crunchies as well. I was so proud of Sam. He got close enough to take a treat right off the vacuum. Marissa got pretty close as well. So I upped the ante: I turned the vacuum on. Both cats backed right off. But Marissa approached again. Sam wouldn't. Marissa, step by step, got right up to the vacuum and took a treat off of it while it was running. This was huge. The return air out of the machine was hitting her; it was loud; the treat was actually vibrating on the vacuum. But she took it. And then I tried to pat her. oops. She jumped right out of her skin. To try and end on a good note, I turned the vacuum cleaner off and managed to get her to take a treat off of the hose, but that was as close as she would come.

This is such a huge improvement over what it used to be. We've been working at it and hopefully it will get better. I don't need them to be in the same room as the vacuum but I need them to be more indifferent towards it.

I hide it well

Well... I'm going through depression again. Of course there is no reason. But I just want to be at home and cry. But I'm at school because there is a quiz today so I need to be here. And to make it better, I have to work tonight. I may need to increase my anti-depressant again. We decreased it slightly when I was working to get over that manic episode. Damn chemistry.

I would like to share something with all of my readers (ps. I do have my first official follower - exciting). This is off another blog that I read (Brilliant Mind Broken Body - original text can be found at http://brilliantmindbrokenbody.wordpress.com/2010/03/20/sliding-sideways/). This is an excellent description of my day to day progress but is written better than I can do so I'm including an excerpt here.

"Bipolarism is another matter altogether. Part of the trouble with it is the vigilance needed. I (and to a lesser extent, the boyfriend) have to watch for hints of mania and depression. Am I sleeping less than usual? More? Do I end up talking faster and getting excited about seemingly insignificant things? Am I…grey, with no strong feelings about anything? (sorry, it’s a state that’s hard to describe).

And then there’s when it hits. Both upswings and downswings are dangerous to my relationships. In upswings, I am easily angered and prone to snapping and fighting. I have boundless enthusiasm and am less than pleasant when others don’t go along with it. I’m thin skinned and easily hurt. There’s a lurking mild paranoia that everyone is talking about me behind my back and secretly can’t stand me (which has only been aggrivated by periods in my life where that has been mostly true). In downswings, I have such a deep inertia that it is almost impossible to get me moving, physically or emotionally. Physically, I am tired and want to sleep a lot, and I don’t really want to get out of bed. I don’t care about eating, which means I either forget to eat or eat far too much of things I find tempting. I also eat a lot of convenience food, because preparing something more wholesome is just too much work. I worry deeply about the future, and question the futility of continuing with law school constantly. I often go incommunicado, speaking only in class or when spoken to directly. I don’t sign on instant messenger or call people, and I often retreat into books. When I’m depressed, it’s incredibly hard to manage basic self-care, so things like showering tend to get farther apart than I would like, and my physical disabilities make this worse.

A lot of literature and some people talk about sliding ‘down’ into depression. For me, none of the psych issues I have feel like sliding ‘down’ or ‘up’ so much as they feel like a shift…sideways. A paradigm shift, a fundamental change in the relationship between me and the universe. Sometimes, as with a bipolar depression cycle, it’s a subtle, slow shift that can be hard to spot until I’m really far out and start getting a bit irrational. Other times, like panic attacks, it is as if the world SNAPS sideways, violently and suddenly, and the change is painful and frightening. My perspective is so altered that my former perspective is incomprehensible, or worse yet it feels like my former perspective is completely, utterly wrong.

With those more sudden shifts, I cannot actually tell that what I feel and sense is not rational processing."

I typically describe it as yesterday was normal; today is normal; tomorrow will be normal; the day after that, I'll cry for no reason. You can't really feel the shift happen so you aren't really aware of it until suddenly you have to start to fight to regain ground. It sucks. But that's life. Or at least mine.

We need to be a 2 car family

Right now we have 1. And this morning I said Nick should take it since it is technically his and I always feel so bad when I can't pick him up because I have to work before he's done class and he ends up having to bum a ride off of one of his classmates.

So I took the bus. Or I tried to. I left a little bit later than I intended to, just enough that I would have missed the bus that google maps said I wanted to get there on time. So I caught the next one, not a huge deal. But then I knew I had missed one of my connections because of that. Okay, there was another bus I could take to get to school. And then just as I get there, that one pulls away from the stop. Okay, now I was going to be 30 minutes late for class at least, depending on the temperment and timing of the next bus. And then, a car drove past me and head-to-toe-ed me in gutter water! I smell like swamp! My clean hoody that I put on today is soaked, my last pair of clean jeans is soaked (and we're not doing laundry until Sunday), my downfilled jacket is going to have to be drycleaned, and does anybody know how to clean a backpack in a way that won't wreck any of it's peices? So I turned around and came home. And I'm proud of myself that I managed to not cry until I got home. Then I lost it.

I just wanted to make sure my computer wasn't wet from being in my backpack. Since I had it open, I figured I would post this quickly. Now I'm going to go for my second bath of the day to get the swamp water out of my hair and the dirt off my skin.

Famous People

There are some famous people who are bipolar:
-The CEO of Turner Broadcasting.
-Matthew Good of the Matthew Good band.
Does anybody know any others?
Therefore, it's not a life sentence. It can be worked around. It made my day when I found that out yesterday.

I talked to Kristine yesterday. She helped me feel like getting a job isn't going to be such a problem while I have the SD. Thanks Kristine.