Sleep, Interrupted

My brother is going through some difficult times.  Suffice it to say some choices he has made have left him with little options and he's been forced to make some changes in his life.  One of these changes is that he move into a place that does not allow pets.  In the interest of charity and generosity, we offered to keep his dog for him while he gets things under control.

This is Missy*.  She is a 4 year old English Springer Spaniel who has only lived with one person most of her life and no other animals since she was a pup.  She's a fairly high energy little thing, but we hoped she would adjust to all of us.

Missy came to stay on October 18.  My cats weren't impressed.  For a couple days both cats hid, hissed, and were very puffy.  The third cat wouldn't even come inside. Our dog Chance, who is the sweetest, most good natured dog on the planet, was thrown for a loop.  Now she was sharing beds, water, the yard, attention.  But she was adjusting.  Missy, on the other hand, did not take kindly to the sharing and last week decided to take a bite out of poor Chance's ear.  While the wound bled quite a bit, it seemed fairly superficial.  Until a few days later when we noticed that her ear was filled with either blood or puss.  There really weren't any signs on the outside of trauma, but clearly she needed medical attention.
 
Here is Chance*.  Is that not the most pitiful thing you've ever seen?  Not only is she going to be wearing the "cone of shame" for 21 days, she has a piece of pliable yet stiff plastic stapled to her right ear.  Basically they had to cut her ear open, fix the problem, then sew and staple it back together.  The plastic will keep her ear from "curling" as it heals.

And all for the low low price of $599.98!

Missy's future in our home was coming into question.  She had also tried to go after Chance on Saturday night, but luckily we were right there and could break it up.  She has one cat attack on record from her days of roaming free outside at my brother's place, but she was pretty good at leaving the cats alone, thankfully.  However, give her a toy and she'd growl at you for looking at her sometimes.  Our good deed was seeming more and more like a bad idea.  I so wanted to be able to help my brother out, but we can't have a dog in our house that can't be trusted, you know.  So we made a difficult decision and asked my parents to take her in, and Missy's stay at our house ended yesterday. 

So, last night after dealing with all that stress during the day, I was lucky enough to make it to bed by 8:45.  My husband came too.  He fell asleep before his head touched the pillow while I was wide awake listening to him snore and the dog wimper.  She would not lay down and she would not be quiet.  I can't blame her, of course, she's wearing a lamp shade and has about 10 metal staples in her ear!  I offered her water, she wouldn't drink it.  I gave her part of a milkbone which she did eat, but that didn't seem to help her go to sleep.  I spent two hours telling her to be quiet, waking my husband up to deal with her, and listening to him huff and puff over my audacity.  But finally, around 11:30 I was finally able to sleep.

Only to wake up several times; once because the dog was making noise, once because I was hot, and another time for no apparent reason. Except no apparent reason turned into me laying there in the dark thinking about poor Missy, poor my brother, poor my parents, and poor Chance.  The whole situation just isn't fair to anyone, and I could not turn off my brain enough to settle back into slumber until around 4:30 this morning.

Needless to say there was no morning workout today.  I woke up feeling more exhausted than when I went to bed.

Happy Veteren's Day!  I'm at work today, is anyone else?

*Sorry for the picture quality; cell phone pics.