Sweden

We had a crazy, record-breaking cold January. Temperatures below freezing for multiple nights in a row, which is quite unusual in Phoenix! On one of these ridiculously cold days, I saw a loose dog near the park by my house while I was driving home from work. It was a pit bull mix and I could tell she was wearing a collar.

As soon as I saw her, I slowed down. She watched me. I turned the car around to park. She watched me. I got out of the car. She watched me. I opened the back door and asked if she wanted to go for a ride. She watched me. I got out a leash and some treats. She watched me. I crossed the street, walking toward her. She watched me. I got closer. She backed away, still watching me. I got out my treats and threw one towards her. She ate it, still watching me. She was very wary but also interested in befriending me.

After about 15 minutes freezing my ass off and going through almost a full bag of treats, I was able to grab her collar and slip the leash on her. As soon as the leash was on, she was immediately trusting of me like we had been friends forever. We walked around the neighborhood going door-to-door asking the neighbors if they knew her. No one knew her but I was told that she had been loose in the area for two days. This means that she was out overnight with the temperatures below freezing!! Poor little girl! No wonder she was so willing to let me catch her!

I took her to the park and asked the families there if they knew her. No luck. I took her to the EAC to have them scan for a chip. No luck. So I took her home. It took quite a bit of maneuvering to get my dogs in and out and fed, and her in and out and fed without them meeting. She seemed friendly but Frankie is sometimes sketchy and Mo doesn't always like big dogs so I didn't want to introduce them without Pat being there to hold one of the leashes. Also, it was dark out now and she was a black dog so I wouldn't really be able to see her body language when she was being introduced. So, I tied her up to the boat for a bit and I left her in the car for a bit while I moved everyone around. She was completely patient though it all. Every time I came back to her, she wagged and wiggled like crazy!

Finally I brought her into the house and to the guest room. She plopped right up onto the bed and stretched out. She almost immediately fell asleep. She must have been completely worn out from being out in the cold for all that time!

I did everything I could to find her owners. She was so well-behaved and she had on a brand new sparkly pink collar so she had to belong to someone! I searched all the websites for lost dog posts. I posted on Craigslist and PetHarbor. I posted her on my facebook wall and on a bunch of other facebook pages. I posted signs all over the neighborhood on my way to work the next day. It was 28 degrees out! My fingers were about to fall off! I emailed my neighbors. So many people pitched in to help spread the word. One of my neighbor friends emailed our Neighborhood Watch Captain and he sent her picture out to the whole area. People forwarded that email and people forwarded that. I knew it was working when I was a recipient of one of the emails! The facebook picture was shared 657 times! I posted more signs at the shelters. I posted new ads on Craigslist. And after a week...still nothing! :(

Over that week, my stray pit bull mix proved to be one of the most well-behaved, most friendly dogs ever! She liked my dogs. She ignored the cat. We had the Chocolate Chihuahua at the same time and she completely ignored the Little Shit's aggressive demeanor. She was a bit afraid of Pat at first, and other men who visited, but never showed any signs of fear-aggression and she warmed up quickly. She loved to cuddle and loved hugs. She never chewed on anything other than the bones we gave her. She was house trained. We called her Sweetie, which didn't seem like a "real" name so I changed it to Sweden. A dog named Sweden should have blond hair and blue eyes, right? Ha, not this one!  Tail wagging:

She didn't know any commands when I found her, but she learned sit in a matter of 10 minutes. She quickly learned she had to sit/stay before I would dole out her dinner. She was a smart cookie!

She was the exact same size as Mo, but weighed 10 pounds more. Yet, she still thought she fit in this dog bed:

With all the emails and all the facebook photo shares going around, I had five people contact me to say they were interested in her! So awesome! I did three family visits. One family didn't work out because they were looking for a dog to wrestle and play with their black lab. Sweden and the lab got along just fine but Sweden wasn't interested in playing. She is much more interested in hanging out with her people than playing with dogs. Another guy didn't work out because his rescue pit/border collie mix (who looked a lot like Sweden!) did not like her at all. She was scared of him and hid behind me. In the end, Sweden went to a family in Glendale who used to have a Rottie (he died of old age) and felt they were ready for another dog. They have no other pets and the mom fell in love with Sweden at first sight!

Sweden's name is now Lilly. She was a wonderful house guest and I hope she has a long and happy life with her new family!!

A Chocolate Chihuahua

We fostered this little guy for two weeks in January while he recovered from kennel cough. 

His real name was Ringo but we never called him that. It was always either The Chocolate Chihuahua or Little Shit.

If I wasn't so diplomatic when filling out his kennel card information, it would have read like this:

Here we have a little shit of a dog. He is a pain in the ass, not very affectionate and not very smart. He is aloof and stand-offish, which appears to be more of a personality trait than an outcome of being fearful or previous bad treatment. He will tolerate cuddling when it's cold but that's only because he's seeking your warmth. He will run out any open door and will not come when called nor will he chase you if you turn around and run the other way. He is scared of cats. He will tolerate dogs that you introduce him to while he's too sick to care, but after that, any big dogs he meets will be greeted with growls and lip curls as he has a big case of Little Man Complex.  He isn't very cute with those permanently red-rimmed eyes. His only redeeming traits are that he is 100% house trained, walks well on a leash, and he likes to burrow under the blankets which is moderately entertaining. If you choose to adopt this little shit, we hope you have a good sense of humor and a strong sense of self so you won't feel bad when your dog doesn't like you.

His kennel card ended up just saying generic stuff like he likes to go for walks. :) He was adopted in 3 days. I hope his new people are a better match for him than I was! I've been looking at the website for the past few weeks and the Chocolate Chihuahua has not showed up again, so I guess his new family have decided to keep him and he hasn't run away yet!

How Not To Get On TV

How many times have I applied to be on the Amazing Race? At least 15, maybe more. How many times have I made it to the interview stage? Exactly zero. Apparently I suck at application videos. Or maybe I'm just dull.

It's not that I want to be on TV actually -  I just really want to compete in this type of competition!!!  And this type of competition only happens on TV.  When I heard a new adventure show was casting teams of two, I got excited! It's a Bear Grylls survival show which isn't exactly what I'm looking for since I don't really want to eat gross things. But I'm attracted to anything that bills itself as an "Adventure Show" so I knew I would have to apply. Instead of making yet another sucky application video, I roped Irene into spending a full day in line with a million other people at a casting call.

I figured that with a million other people who are pretty similar to us, the casting people would have their eyes glazed over by the time they saw us. We'd be just another boring couple. They were doing group interviews too, so with only 1/5 of the allotted interview time we had even less of a chance to stand out. I thought maybe we needed something to get their attention.

We walked into the interview room with 4 other teams. There was a long table with 10 chairs around the outside. They asked us all to sit down. Instead of sitting down, Irene said, "We have something prepared". The casting girl looked surprised and Irene hit play on her ipod...and then we did this:



Bare Necessities. Get it? Bear Grylls. Bare Necessities. Ah, so clever, right?! Our hands say "PICK US". We have on our matchy-matchy adventure race team shirts. Pretty awesome, huh?!

The casting girl looked a little shocked and said, "No one has ever done THAT before."  And then she went on with the group interview.

We didn't get a call back.

Sprained Ankles Suck

I'm 41 years old and I've never been injured, unless you count the time I fell off the Fire Engine bars in the playground in 3rd grade and split my chin open.

I've been playing soccer for over 10 years and I've never been injured. Don't get me wrong, I've gotten hurt a lot. As you know, I have a tendency to take a ball to the face at least once a season. I also get knocked down a lot. Many times I've thought that I was injured only to find that there was very little pain left when the adrenaline of the hit/fall/kick wore off. I have a very low pain tolerance so any little hit hurts like the dickens. But never has any of my hurts equaled a full blown injury. Until now.  :(

I sprained my ankle playing soccer on November 11th. I was running next to a guy who was taking the ball toward our goal. He's really, really good with a very strong shot. I stuck my foot out in front of the shot to block it. I blocked it alright! My foot wasn't quite on the ground as the ball hit it and the force of the ball turned my foot inward causing me to land on my ankle instead of my foot. I heard a loud 'pop' as I went down and I knew I was done for. No one noticed that I was injured, not even the guy who shot the ball or Jace (the goalie) who saw it all, because there was no contact on the play. Play continued until I got Jace's attention for some help to get me off the field.

When I finally got to the bench, the other players determined that it wasn't broken since I could wiggle my toes. (Is this even true?) That sounded good to me because that meant it was just sprained and being uninitiated into the world of sports injuries, I was sure that a sprain was much better than a break.

I wish.

The next two days I couldn't put any weight on my ankle at all. I was on crutches for most of the time, though I have to admit that they slowed me down way too much so around the house I either hopped or crawled. It was faster!

This is how swollen it was initially. Finding shoes to wear to work was a problem! 

I limped for the next month. It was ridiculous. A friend at work loaned me a boot to stabilize it but it was too big and the rubbing on my calves was so painful that I stopped using it.

It was taking forever to heal. After 6 weeks the swelling had barely gone down. I finally went to Urgent Care ($140 after insurance). They did an x-ray and verified that it wasn't broken. They gave me prescriptions for two pain meds even though I told them the pain wasn't that bad at all, I was just worried because it wasn't healing. The next week I went to an orthopedist ($74 after insurance). I was in his office for a total of 3 minutes! 30 seconds of that time was taking off my shoe and sock. He felt around my ankle, declared it sprained, told me I didn't need physical therapy and there was no need to ice it and to resume regular activity. I told him my regular activity was soccer and hiking. He got annoyed and said "regular activity within reason" and left. 

A week later I had an appointment for a check-up with a potential new doctor (my regular doctor quit practicing to become a full-time instructor). This doctor was awesome. She was incredulous that an orthopedist didn't give me any follow-up care guidelines or any instructions at all. She gave me a list of exercises to do to regain range of motion and to strengthen it. She told me to take ibuprofen and to ice it after activity.  She recommended two braces to wear, one for regular day-to-day and one for soccer/hiking/running.

For almost three months I've done nothing active. Well, I did limp my way through Rugged Maniac because it's such a fun race and since it was the week after the injury I figured it hadn't healed enough to be causing any regression. After that, though, I didn't do anything. I didn't walk the dogs since they have a tendency to pull when they see a cat or smell a good smell or even just when they have to pee, and my ankle wasn't strong enough even to take that. I didn't play soccer (obviously) but I did go to almost every game and stand on the field so that the teams wouldn't forfeit. I wasn't able to hike. I wasn't able to run. I wasn't able to do anything. It was very frustrating! I gained 10 pounds in less than 3 months. That is sad. I packed away my skinny clothes and dug under the bed for the storage box of my fat clothes. I'm glad I saved them or I'd have nothing to wear for work!

In the last two weeks, I have started being able to run with my brace on. It's a limping run with only about 2/3 of my usual stride, but it's something. I've gone hiking a few times but I've only done flat hikes; I don't think I'm quite ready for climbing any summits. The ankle still hurts. I have a limited range of motion. But, it's slowly getting better. I'm looking forward to the day when I can jump again!

Sprained ankles suck.

A Goal for 2013

This one isn't a resolution like the ones listed in the last post; this one is a goal. I have no idea what the functional difference between a resolution and a goal is, but I'm calling this one a goal anyway.

My goal is to be able to do this again:


Back in the fall when I was working out after soccer games, I saw some volleyball girls doing box jumps at the gym. I was totally jealous of how high they could jump. One day when they weren't there, I gave it a go. I was very, very surprised and very, very happy to find out that I could jump just as high as those girls! (Even in soccer cleats!) Woo hoo!  I was so excited that I made Julie videotape me.

It was kind of scary so the highest I dared to do was 36". I wanted to jump higher so I decided that I was going to work on box jumps every time I was at the gym! This video was taken on Thursday, November 8th. The next time I was at the Castle was Sunday, November 11. I fully intended to work on my jumps after my soccer games.

but then...

Gr! In my second game I sprained my ankle really, really bad. I was carried off the field and was on crutches for the next few days. So much for working on box jumps. :(  So much for doing ANYTHING, for that matter. :(  Boo.

So the goal now is to get my ankle strong enough to be able to jump 36" again. Or higher!