Ever think it's all going pear-shaped?

It's been one of those weeks. Our little terminator Sassy, a Shih Tzu who is even more curmudgeonly than I am, has had a serious lung issue for awhile. COPD best describes it, and I told her to quit smoking 30 packs a day, but.... Anyway, the other day she took a serious turn for the worse and our greatest fear is that she will contract pneumonia or bronchitis, which could kill her. So what does she decide to do? Why yes, starting with a horrifying cough which escalated into serious breathing issues, she clearly is in deep distress.

Because of COVID-19 our dearly beloved vet no longer takes emergencies and is booked solid every day. Off to the emergency vet we go, where you call from the parking lot and they whisk your baby inside and you cool your heels in your car. Two conversations later, we convince the vet there to let us take her home with a boatload of antibiotics and a cough medicine that apparently is on the controlled substances list. You guessed it -- bad idea. Within an hour of giving her 2 of the seemingly hundreds of meds we had for her, she upchucked all over the place and went from bad to worse. Back to the vet, where we surrendered her for the night, knowing that she would a) be wildly unhappy and b) be given nebulizer treatments that would open her lungs in addition to intravenous antibiotics and fluids that would get her over the critical hump. A day and a half later, we're told we can take her home. I think they just wanted her cranky, barky self out the door (they mentioned the crankiness a couple of times).

More medications, and home we go. She clearly was giving us the stink eye about being left, and we thought it was just a matter of giving her a good dinner and all would be forgiven. Not so. This is a dog who, round as she is, and incapable of drawing anything but shallow breaths, would run the length of a football field to get to a cookie crumb. I would've expected her to at least put her nose in the air in utter disdain before refusing food out of pique. So it shocked and alarmed us when she not only refused to eat, but she simply laid down and promptly fell asleep.

That was last night. Today she slept non-stop and calls to the vet were not satisfactory. Tonight a sliver of promise: she has lifted her head, gone outside to do her important business, and has managed to eat one tiny morsel of chicken. We just keep coaxing and crossing our fingers and willing her into health. We can only wait to see what tomorrow brings.

In Ninja news:

Ninja has settled into a routine of sorts that is very promising, but of course, because I could, I've upset the apple cart. (I warned you everything was going pear-shaped did I not? Sorry to mix fruits!).

Ninja spends most of her time completely destroying my back garden, which already has me re-thinking how to fluff up some areas to make them chicken scratch-proof. That aside, she then makes a graceful hop onto the back gate and swoops down to the back of beyond to do what only a chicken of her wiliness does (and we STILL can't figure out what or why). She has also stopped laying eggs in the beautifully hidden nest she created in the side yard, so I set about to find out if she had a new lair.

Knowing she likes very tight, heavily lush areas, I scrutinized every conceivable spot in the back of beyond, slowly made my way around the perimeter of the backyard she spends most of her time in, and then, drawn to the bromeliads in the old bath tub, decided to check that. My mistake was not doing it when she was visible because, you guessed it, she was there and hoo boy, was she one super pissed off chicken when I discovered her. You have never been cursed out in your life if you haven't been on the receiving end of a chicken's ire. To show her disdain for my meddling even further, she promptly went back to the thicket in the front yard and cursed at me the entire time I was watering.

So here's her new nest (until she decides to move again):