That time of the….every few months?

So one day before I was due to fly to Porto (which has obviously been cancelled due to virus stuff) and once again just before I thought I may go and visit my parents (getting away from the city would be a nice back-up holiday plan) Shadow comes on heat. She first came on heat very close to her turning six month, by which I mean I came downstairs one day and when she flopped onto her back for belly scratches I saw drops of blood on her privates, that was all. Easy, I thought, not sure why people are so dramatic about this coming into heat business. I was mostly upset because I had been planning to return to my parents’ and quarantine up there for a couple of weeks and then had to change my plans because Shadow’s parents live with my parents and I didn’t want her dad getting any incestuous thoughts (I don’t really think he would have but always better safe than sorry!).

The day she came on heat the first time, she looks how I feel when my period arrives.

So this time, when I came downstairs one morning a couple of weeks ago and found blood drops once again between her legs I wasn’t worried. Last time she seemed to clean up any blood from herself before I even saw her in the morning, and her behaviour changed very little apart from a slight increase in neediness. It appears though that her first heat was just a warm up heat, this one must be real. Now when I go downstairs there’s lots of blood drops, or blood smears on my floor (lovely white floors, very dramatic), she jumps up incessantly when greeting (which I keep reminding myself she’d almost stopped doing), she can no longer be trusted to return to me if a male dog walks by and shows an interest (I’d taken for granted her basic obedience to me), and her genitals, which last time looked exactly as they always did, are now huge and swollen and seem somehow in your face when she lies on her back (my friend says they look like balls, I can’t help but agree, and I’m not a fan).

“Please distract me from this blood-filled hell” – Shadow, probably

It’s been about two weeks now and there are still blood drops on my floor, but less of them each day. I’m not sure if she’ll move into the next phase of heat after they stop or if she’s in that now. For now I have bought a heavy duty extendable lead for use in the park and I’m trying to mostly take her to secluded places where she can be off-lead without risk of any male dogs finding their way to her. I’m looking at options of spaying her, I don’t want to breed her myself but I also don’t want to spay her too early and affect her growth or behaviour before she’s fully grown. So I’m unsure whether to wait until she’s two years old and get her spayed traditionally, or look for a vet offering an “ovary sparing spay” before then. In an ovary sparing spay the ovaries are (surprise surprise) spared and left intact, this means that all the hormones needed for healthy growth and development are still able to be released when needed, it also means though that she would continue having the symptoms of going into heat alone with her regular cycle. She wouldn’t be able to get pregnant, so I wouldn’t need to worry quite as much about other dogs, but she would think she was in heat like any other bitch and the behavioural changes, the jumpiness, the clinginess, the risk of ignoring my recall commands, would all remain. As would the swollen “balls” she loves parading around the place. Is it stupid to base decisions of your dog’s future on you not wanting to see an inflated vulva? Probably. Luckily there are other things to decide, so it’s not just based on that, it may be a factor though. I’m not sure if anyone even offers OSS around my area, or how much more it would cost than the traditional operation, but it’s still something I’m looking into. That or wait another year and a bit, I guess I’ll see when she next comes on heat and how bad it is, and I’ll do some more research into the possible side effects of both procedures into dogs in general and German shepherd specifically if I can find any (any reading recommendations/experiences gratefully received!).

So far her prey drive still outweighs her sex drive, so it’s not too hard to distract her from other dogs by simply picking up a stick or stone from the floor. So far.

New home

I guess I should write about my new house.

I started looking for a house to buy in summer of last year, stepping up my search in September as I decided I wanted to be in my new place by Halloween so I could decorate it all spooky like. I did not make it in by Halloween. I thought people were overexaggerating when they spoke of the frustrations and delays with house buying, but no.

First of all my mortgage was approved for a certain amount, and I found a lovely home just slightly outside my search area and slightly over my budget. No matter, my mortgage could stretch to most of it, and my parents could loan me some more, and I could pick up extra hours at work to offset the need for a larger deposit in the near future. However then my mortgage suppliers got back in touch and said they could actually offer me £7k less than they’d initially said based on my more recent wage slips bringing my average earnings down. Balls. So no dream house for me it seems. I tried to scheme some more and asked the sellers if they’d drop the price, no luck.

So I started looking again, this time with the added pressure of not withdrawing my offer from the first house, still hoping I could think of something. Somewhat frustrated by my taking so long my mum and one of my sisters decided to travel to the city to help me look. So I went about setting up some viewings, two new houses that were in budget, and a look around the one i had my heart set on, I thought if they could just see it they’d understand why I needed it so badly and help me think of some way to attain it.

The first house we looked at was nice enough, although for the price it was a bit scruffy, there was various bits and bobs of work to be done that would push up the initial costs sonewhat. There was also no shower. I dislike baths so having to quickly find and fit a shower or risk washing in discomfort put me off somewhat.

The second house became my mum’s instant favourite, it was a five minute walk from where I was currently living, very close to a bus stop, a corner shop, a bridge onto the canal, about a ten minute walk from three large supermarkets, a 15 minute bus ride into town where I worked instead of the 30 minute ride that would’ve been from the first house I fell for. Inside the house was very nice. It had recently been redecorated, a nice pale grey wooden floor, the walls decorated in different shades of greys and whites, decent sized living room, large kitchen, bedrooms big enough for what I needed from them, and the bathroom was lovely, a big walk in shower at the end of the long room. And it was much more affordable.

I showed my family members around the house I’d already been attempting to buy and they were indeed suitably impressed. It was perfectly decorated, ready to live in, two large living rooms downstairs and two large bedrooms upstairs. My mum however remained set upon the previous house, saying that it felt much more like a first home and that the original one was “too nice for a first home”. I guess I agreed, the previous house did seem more ready for me to make it my own instead of me moving into someone else’s home.

Around this time my parents’ German shepherd gave birth to her first litter. If I was going to have a puppy like I’d hoped I had only a few weeks to get the process of buying underway.

She was known as White-Toe, pretty self explanatory.

What followed was weeks of my solicitors dragging their feet about various things, my applying for surveys and updating my mortgage advisor on my changing mind. On the 19th of December I finally was allowed to go and pick up the keys.

I had made a new friend at the end of the summer too, just around the time I had really starting to seriously go through the searches and applications required. We’d spent most of our mutual days off hanging out, so it was fairly logical that she’d been there for all of my updates and mind changing and incoming emails about whatever was going on at the time. Also logical then that I would ask her to come and collect the keys with me. It was midwinter and a grey, drizzly day in the city, we walked first 20 minutes one way to the estate agents and then 30 minutes back the other way to get to my new house (eek!), stopping along the way to collect a few items that I wanted to be my first inhabitants of my new home.

My first memory of my home is the two of us sitting in the empty back bedroom with a single candle, shivering, able to see our breaths in the cold, damp house that was now my home.

First tasks were cleaning tasks, and we arranged another mutual day off when we could come and set aside a few hours to scrub the mould away from the kitchen walls. After a lot of scrubbing and some homely additions brought by my mum as early Christmas gifts it started to look more like my own place.

Next task was my moving all of my stuff from the room I’d been renting previously to the new house. For such a tiny room it did have a lot of stuff in it, this process took weeks, mainly due to my laziness. My “lot of stuff” seemed lost in the space of my house.

This was after buying the sofa and mattress, before that I just had various cushions and blankets dotted around the place

Meanwhile White-Toe looked like this and my mum was asking when I’d be ready to take her home:

I moved in by mid January. White-Toe was dropped off a few days after I’d started sleeping there and renamed Shadow, she was the perfect company and distraction to suddenly being in house of my own and no longer having any human housemates for the first time in my life.

A few Ikea trips and charity shop raids later the place started to feel more and more like my home. My friend offered to watch my puppy while I worked some days in return for me babysitting her 5 year old. I’d pick up her daughter from school, take her to mine while her mother worked, take her and the puppy for a walk, feed them both and put them to bed. My friend would travel to mine after a late shift at work, stay over, and give the kids breakfast and an early walk the next day while I worked the early morning shift. It worked nicely and it made my house feel more lived in, there were more coats and shoes littering the living room, toys on the bedroom floor, jigsaw puzzles and childish drawings scattered across my living room. The best way to make a house feel lived in is to add children, even if they do bring a large degree of chaos to the situation. After being put on lockdown and having my friend and child move in full time for a few weeks my house feels more like home than ever.

Still need a bed, and a few shelves here and there, but it’s coming along nicely enough

I’ve been looking forward to living in my own place for years. My friends will move back to their own home after the summer, and while sad to see them go, I’m also grateful that they’ve been with me and Shadow for the first few months as this place has moved from an empty house I’d somehow acquired to an actual home that I can live a life in.

Lockdown life

There seems to be no chronological logic to what I post and when, but since my whole life right now is the way it is due to Covid 19 it seems like a good time to talk about it.

I was furloughed about mid-March and the government is paying me 80% of my average wage to stay home and not spread the virus. Lovely. Obviously with a young, energetic dog in the house I am unable to to literally stay home, but it’s a good excuse to avoid getting on buses or straying too close to the city centre. Instead Shadow and I have been exploring more and more around our town. It turns out that when you have the time to stop and check out that overgrown looking path, or step over that broken bit of fence you can find so many new beautiful places to spend time in!

She spends most of her time on walks just behind me, until I want to take a photograph and then she always seems to be in front of the lens somehow

Just before the pandemic kicked off I had been feeling stressed and overworked, I was getting up early, trying to make sure Shadow was properly exercised before I carted her off to whichever of my friends had kindly agreed to hang out with her while I was at work, rushing home to be able to fit in a nice, long walk before dinner, and trying to squeeze in some all important training sessions before bed. In the early days of having her it felt like maybe I wasn’t cut out to be a dog parent, it felt like I never had the chance to get to know her, like I spent more time stressing over who would look after her the next day than enjoying the time we were together. I guess it’s similar to how many single parents feel about their children. The last three months have definitely been a godsend in giving us that bonding time and I’ve learnt so much more about her and she’s become so much more responsive to me.

She’s actually learned that when I throw a stick it’s more fun to keep hold of it in case I might want to throw it again than just leaving it where it falls

It’s also helped that my friend has been staying with us the last few weeks as well with her 5 year old daughter. Shadow met this girl on the very first day she came to the city and they’ve been great friends ever since. Whenever I’m busy or tired or for whatever reason don’t want to play tug of war for the thousandth time, she has a playmate who’s always ready to test her pulling power against another kid. They’re about the same weight as well, so they’re a good match. She’s been meeting more dogs as well lately, some successfully, some unsuccessfully (teenage gsd rebellion phase strikes again!), so we’re working on how to say hello politely and not bound up straight into somebody’s face without ever a sniff hello first. It’s strange that it’s been during a lockdown that she’s probably been more social than ever. I guess the early days of only being allowed outside to exercise/walk your dog really payed off for all the dogs who now get to spend hours a day walking around parks with their owners.

As the Covid situation starts to wind down I’m wondering what our next adventures will be. Certainly now we can hope to start travelling more we can go to visit the Peak District, the Lake District, fells and moors slightly further afield than our town’s borders. But I’m also thinking of getting her a pet passport and looking into visiting mainland Europe for a trip. I’m trying to plan a train ride across countries with my friend who’s staying, but the logistics of rabies vaccinations and vet appointments all seem a bit uncertain right now. It’s something fun to scheme about though, much nicer than the plots and plans about when I could go to work and who would be on puppy duty while I did so that made up my pre-lockdown life.

The lockdown will end, and normal life will resume, but I feel a lot more ready for it now. I guess sometimes you need to be forced off work to really remember that there’s more to life sometimes.