Healing?

We've made progress, The Bink and I, towards his recovery.  Daily dosages of anti-inflammatories, plus pain meds, seem to have alleviated his suffering.  We haven't one had pain yelp in the last three days. 

We have a new problem now, however: his naturally rascally nature.  The Bear is not a Bear of idleness.  Check that--he is a Bear of idleness, but not unrelieved idleness.  Eighteen hours of sleep a day--yes: that's reasonable.  Necessary even.  But twenty-two hours of sleep a day--that's too much. 

Too much, though, is what he needs.  For his body to fully heal, he has to stay calm.  Sudden jumps and lurches, yowlings, bounding--these are all actions the Bear enjoys.  But they're not good for his recovery. 

I'm trying to keep him as sedate as I can, but it's now been two weeks since he's gotten out of the house and walked in the neighborhood, and smelled the new smells.  He's becoming restless, and unhappy.  The obvious solution is to take him for walk.  That sounds fine--but walking requires a leash and that opens the possibility of reinjuring himself. 

Dark Days

Sad Bear

The Bink is suffering.  We don't know what happened, but on Saturday he woke up in pain.  When I rubbed behind his ears to comfort him he yelped--in pain.  Dogs don't yelp in pain often; in my life to this date I can count maybe ten times Bink has made that noise (usually when someone stepped on his paw by mistake).  The pain seemed to be coming from his neck and it didn't go away.  When we took him to the Hospital they gave us painkillers and anti-inflammatories but did not take XRays.  They hoped--we hope too--that after a few days it might go away.

Now it's Wednesday--four days later.  It hasn't gone away.  The wife is out of town and I'm spending all day alone in a house with a suffering animal.  It's been one of the worst (half) weeks of my life.

As anyone who's ever been around a suffering animal can tell you, they don't act like healthy animals.  They walk with their tail down.  They cower in odd places--Bink right now is huddled under an end table by our couch, pressed up against the wall.  It's as if he wants to make himself disappear, as if by taking himself out of existence he can also take his pain out of existence.

Of course we have to take him back to the Vet.  (We're waiting one more day to see if there's any improvement).  That doesn't promise to lead anything good, however.  The most likely reason Bink is suffering is so much is that he has a slipped disc, or a pinched nerve in his back.  Neither of those prognoses are good ones--neither are ones that admit to treatment.  If it's just inflammation, of a muscular-skeletal problem, it should begin to get better soon.  Let's hope it does.

Fargo's Unappealing New Season

I'm trying to get through the third season of Fargo right now.  It's pretty rough.  I guess the people who write the show must all have decided to get heavily into PCP this season, because it's been a disaster.  Poor casting choices.  Storyholes so big you could drive a semi- through them.  And a nausea-inducing reliance on curelty and shock, instead of story or dialogue, to generate interest.  The show feels like the spiritual equivalent of watching someone torture and then kill a small animal.  It is utterly unredeeming.

What a come-down this marks from the glories of last season.  The second season of Fargo was everything this season isn't.  Sharp surprising dialogue, complex memorable characters--but best of all were its villains.  Its villains were figures of complexity.  They weren't pasteboard monsters, who existed only to kill and maim, their depravities 'justified' by trite speeches about man's bestial nature--they were fully imagined human-beings.  That's all gone this season.  It's a grim, dispiriting slog, one unleavened by any notes of hope or cheerfulness.  Avoid it, I say--at all costs.