Candor Creek

Current training spot. I'm experiencing the closest thing I've had to a proper outdoor autumn in four years thanks to a recent increase in meds, so I figured it was worth sharing. No geocaching or solitary hikes, of course, but I've at least been able to tolerate outdoor training with my dog underneath a pretty tree - as long as it's on a steroid day and immediately followed by a shower. No pics of Summer; she was highly stressed today and I do not believe in taking pics of stressed dogs unless it is for educational purposes. You'd think I'd be more self-conscious sitting in the middle of my apartment's courtyard with the possibility of all those neighbor eyes on me, but the goal of getting Summer comfortable is far too important to let that sort of thing slow me down. The job obliterates the paranoia. It always has.

We're starting to look like a team here. <3 I am currently in a dose adjustment for one of my mood stabilizers. This makes me oddly groggy and loopy, and sometimes by brain lurches and I drop phones or erase sections I've written - so the current entry likely is not composed to the point I wish it to be. It was a great assessment moment, though, and one I wanted to share. After becoming slightly more concerned by her continually present and fluctuating anxiety outdoors I did some further assessment and found that Summer's fits and starts of anxiousness and the trembling preceeding leaving the apartment are all actually just connected signs of sustained, chronic insecurity and fear and some lack of confidence in the management in the big, scary outdoors (the last bit is not surprising given we've only just hit the four month mark; my home is also very different from and much quieter than her others, and I am but one person in the face of Bad Things). The be...

Old friend. Something to celebrate, 13 years in the making. I've only publically alluded to this recently, but my first grad program (not the awesome one yall know about. I seldom talk about the other one) was genuinely traumatizing, to the point where there is a Sarah before that 9-month period and a Sarah after it. Sarah's already-established mental illness became genuinely crippling afterwards, affecting many things - including my performance in my next program, which still haunts me and likely always will. Among the many things affected was my ability to read. I'm not going to describe the experiences or anguish here today, but do know it was bad enough where I could not and have not read a book from cover to cover since 2005, academic or otherwise, and was seldom able to make it past the first few pages. As you'd imagine this made academics quite impossible; I left grad school after four years of rabid headbutting against the inside of my own skull due to mo...

Walk stress giving way to homecoming relief. Here's a long post for the Summer/canine behavior fan club. I cannot overstate how much I enjoy working a dog like Summer. Unpacking baggage and refolding everything with a dog is such a wonderful process - and it's so much more amazing and enriching when they're your own. Guiding them to their potential is magic. She threw me an interesting curveball this week: as soon as the weather changed a few days ago she became a fearful, trembling, disorganized mess anytime she was outdoors or we were getting ready to go out. We're back to crouching and zigzagging and sudden surges and cutting me off and refusing to go to the bathroom. It's a pretty spectacular reaction, and worrisome for her well-being. She comes from a comparable climate, so that alone should not be an issue. She now seems to be particularly scared of one area along our walk that we only cross into half the time, and the only possible oddity I can thin...

My writing partner, from above, in a favorite position. I'm getting better at one-handed writing. Health post, but a more positive tone for those that can't handle my usual depressive bullshit. Summer cuteness for your troubles. Ah, yes, the "halfway to anaphylaxis" epipen. Rare, and opting out of it is usually a poor choice that has led to ER runs and large flares in the past. Doesn't stop me from wrestling with taking it every time, though. I was smart (?) just now and gave in to the likely inevitability of at least one Epipen in the next day or so. The reasons finally stacked up high enough: mold spike two days ago, corresponding reactivity/pre-anaphylaxis all day yesterday despite it being a steroid day and staying home (extra trips up and down the steps though), and I've now progressed to pre-anaphylaxis after eating anything or getting up off the couch to do something after a sleep cycle. Further complication: I won't have the steroid as a buf...