If you can't beat 'em, join 'em

Hi ciara,

His leg is still bothering him, but it's hard to stop him from jumping and wanting to walk around a lot. So it might take a long time for it to get better, and we're not even sure what's wrong. We don't like keeping him from doing the things that he likes to do.

~~ I totally understand the frustration for doggy and for you!

~~ Our cat has arthritis and he does not always take his full medicine everyday. (We need to switch on arthritis + kidney kibbles when he is done eating the leftover ones he has) And yet he still climbs, runs, jumps down from things, cries when he hurts himself, and keeps running and climbing and jumping anyway! Silly cat...

~~ Hoping doggy gets better soon! It's not fun seeing our fur babies being hurt!

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Theia

I'm very sorry about your dog. It is so hard to see them suffering.

Thanks, Theia and Iain and Evan.

It's hard because we don't know what's wrong and whether or not it's really something that will get worse if he uses it and heal if he doesn't. We don't want to keep him from doing things he likes if that won't really make it worse. We're going to talk to the vet on Monday.
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In other news, we seem to be mending the rupture with the T that's been going on since late October. Some of us are very skeptical, though, because it involves him changing things that seem to be who he is as a person. He says that he can change his actions, and he's just so f*cking optimistic about things being possible that we don't think are possible.

But on the plus side, he really cares a lot, and we can see how much he's sorry for hurting us. So, anyway, we're going to keep trying for now and see if he can be consistent and careful, without being distant.

hay claire n uther gang peeple

how your dog dooin? betr i hopn

david hoos 5 n uther md peepl
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oops i seein he a lil betr

i hopn he gets mor beter

david hoos 5

Hi david hoos 5 and others,

Thanks for asking. We figured out that our dog probably has pain in his hips that he's had for awhile, and we only noticed it when it got bad enough that he couldn't hide it. (No thanks to the vet, though, who seemed to just be guessing that he had a leg injury, which he doesn't.)

Also, a guy who walks our dog sometimes helped us plan how we would just walk our dog a little bit and get him to rest a lot. The vet was no help with that. And we started him on stuff to help his hips feel better. Our dog really likes treats, so he's happy that he gets lots of them now, but now he doesn't like his regular food as much.

We also met someone nice when we walked our dog yesterday--he said that his dog felt better after a month of taking something for her joints.
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We haven't felt like writing about what's happening with our T--we really can't tell if what we're going through is part of the process and is helping us, or is just related to really not being a good fit with this T's style beyond the caring and attachment stuff.

There's just a deep despair and hopelessness and disappointment, but we really can't tell if anyone would be disappointing because what we're expecting them to be able to do is unrealistic, or if this T's way of parsing words intellectually and not really knowing how to talk to young littles is getting in the way of us being able to really trust him.

Here are a couple of examples:

1) When our really young protector is outraged and hurt about something, they might say something like, "Why did you DO THAT???!!" Which to us is basically a rhetorical question meaning something like "we trusted you and you did something that hurt us!" And what we need as a first response is something like, "I'm sorry--I can see that you were upset by that."

We're not literally asking for the T's thought process that caused him to arrive at the action or statement that ended up being a misunderstanding, but our T repeatedly seems baffled that we get more upset when he launches into an explanation of why he did or said such-and-such that caused that reaction. To us, that's just compounding the misunderstanding.

2) The recent rupture with the T, that happened in late October and that we're still dealing with, had to do with us telling him that something he was saying was hurting us and we needed him to stop. That it was doing the opposite of what he intended it to do. We recently sent him an email with questions from the young protector, and one of them was basically asking how it could happen that we were telling him, "stop, that really hurts," but he would keep saying the thing that was hurtful "over and over."

And one of his responses was, "I thought that you were saying "stop, that really hurts" because you didn't like hearing what I was saying."

If that makes sense to anyone reading this, I would like to hear what you think it means. We were telling him "It hurts us when you say that." and "It makes us feel more alone when you say that." and "please don't say that." I don't know how we could have been more clear. And why is it ok to continue to say something that the other person doesn't like hearing?

I can imagine a situation where someone needed to say something they didn't think the other person would want to hear, but that would be prefaced with "You may not want to hear this," or "You may not like what I'm about to say," or something like that. Or they could ask the other person what they mean when they say it really hurts them instead of assuming what they mean.

I CANNOT HELP WITH THE THERAPIST BECAUSE I AM LITTLE. BUT FOR THE DOG I KNOW! OUR CAT TAKES SOMETHING FOR OLD JOINTS. THE PACKAGE SAYS "LOCOX" WITH PICTURES OF CAT AND DOG. I THINK IT WORKS ON DOGS TOO. I HOPE IT HELPS.

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PRIDE

Thank you Iain and PRIDE!

We're giving our dog fish oil, and something called Cosequin that has stuff in it for his joints. It's a lot like Locox. We're also giving him two kinds of medicine for the pain, and these little chews with CBD oil in them because that might help, too.

Thanks to any littles who are worried about our dog. We were worried about him last night because he was panting and breathing fast while he was lying down, but then we got him up and he drank water and wanted to play, so he was actually fine.
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We just saw our T this morning. He was nice and he said that he's going to keep trying to understand what we need from him and to respond the way we need him to. He thinks he can do it.