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I can finally start walking my dog again!

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I’ve been starting wonder if I’m still a blogger. It sure doesn’t seem like it lately. I have a number of blogs and so far this month I’ve written very few posts in each of the blogs. Well … I can blame it on my Crohn’s disease this time. I’ve been very sick for most of this month, and I just haven’t really felt up to writing.

Hopefully I’ll get back in gear soon and start posting at my usual rate.

I’ve had one positive area this month. I can finally walk my dog. Well … I’m not feeling that great, so the walks from me are hit and miss, but it’s progress.

Midnight is only a year old, but she’s so strong! She’s a Lab and she’s really hyper outside, especially if we encounter other people or people walking dogs. Tug, tug, pull pull … I don’t know how many times she’s almost pulled Chris or I off are feet and there’s been a few times when she has actually made us fall.

We finally gave in last Monday. We went to PetSmart to look for a new harness for her. We’d been using the Comfort Wrap harness since June and it helped, but obviously she was still pulling much too hard on our walks. She’d also started to outgrow her current harness so we were trying to get her a larger one.

When we didn’t find a larger harness (she was already wearing a large) we decided to talk with one of the PetSmart clerks. The person who helped us was a very small woman, maybe 5 feet tall if that. She told us that the only way she could walk her big dog (species unknown sorry) was with a prong collar. She said it made a huge difference.

Neither Chris nor I were all that big on trying a prong collar, but we decided to try one out while we were in the store so she found one that would fit Midnight- even taking out two prongs so it would fit better and we proceeded to walk around the store with Midnight.

It was like Night and Day! What a huge difference. Suddenly we were in control. Midnight wasn’t pulling. We walked around and she tried to pull towards some people and other dogs and she wasn’t able to drag us where she wanted to go. She also didn’t jump at people as much either. There was absolutely no sign that the prong collar hurt her so we decided to buy the collar and try it out at home.

That evening Chris and I both took her for a walk and marveled out how nice it was to walk without constantly telling Midnight to walk nice, and not saying “no pull” all the time. In fact, we must have said “good girl” and “good walk” twenty or thirty times on that first walk with the new collar. No more coming home frustrated and sometimes in pain from being dragged along on a walk, and Midnight must have liked being told she was good so many times instead of hearing the frustration and sometimes anger in our voices that usually occurred on walks prior to getting the prong collar.

The next day I took Midnight out for two walks! That was the first time I’d walked her on my own in ages. She was just too strong for me, especially when I’m not feeling well. Don’t worry Chris has been walking her all along so she was getting two or three walks a day with him, but now she gets at least one and sometimes two with me.

The only time I noticed the prong collar hurting her was the other day when she tried to run up to another dog to greet it. She was super excited and just charged at the dog in glee. Unfortunately as she pulled on the leash the collar must have tightened and pinched her skin because she did make a few sounds like she was in pain, but that’s the only sign that the collar hurt her, so if we can try to control her better when she gets really excited around other dogs that shouldn’t happen again.

Have you ever tried a prong collar on your dog? Did it work? Did it ever end up hurting your dog?





What DID I do yesterday?

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On my other blog, Tricia’s Musings, I just wrote a post about my really bad day yesterday. I only slept for 2.5 hours yesterday so I spent the whole day in a complete daze.

Now I can’t even remember some of the things I did yesterday. Lack of sleep takes a terrible toll on your memory. I have things that I do each day for the many websites I run and I basically had to go back and check to see if I did some of the tasks yesterday because I simply couldn’t remember if I did them or not. I couldn’t even remember if I took all of the medications that I take each and every day either. Odd.

Have you ever been so tired that you couldn’t remember things you did a few hours before? I guess it’s kind of like drinking too much! Strange feeling.

Trying to stay up to date in the nursing field while on medical leave

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Since I’m a nurse on extended medical leave I’ve been trying to keep up to date on health news, nursing techniques and so on so about a year ago I joined a few nursing groups and I get regular weekly or monthly newsletters.

The information I receive is usually quite helpful. It ranges from how to deal with grieving relatives and friends to new ways to treat chronic health problems like diabetes.

I came across one article today that talked about a new way to treat acne. It’s with acne pills. Now I knew that there were some prescription pills out there to treat acne, many in the form of antibiotics, but this is something different. They are antioxidant pills. It makes sense, but it was news to me.

Do you join internet based groups or sign up for newsletters related to your career so that you can stay up to date as well?

My Crohn’s is so bad that I don’t know if I’ll ever resume my nursing career, but just in case I do get healthy enough to go back to work I’d like to stay up to date as to what’s happening in my field.

Maintaining multiple blogs is getting harder and harder

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If you are a regular reader of this blog you probably already know that I maintain several blogs. Lately I’ve been feeling like I’m just spinning my wheels. You know, working all day on different things, but still feeling like I haven’t made much progress at all. I know … all those little things I’m doing usually pay off down the road, but when you have a number of sites all the tasks to maintain and promote them can become overwhelming.

I’ve been feeling this way for several months. I think part of the problem is that my routine isn’t as organized as it used to be. I used to write posts in advance and save them as drafts or set them to publish on future dates. If I had enough of them set up that way for a number of sites it left me free to do things like comment on other blogs, network, add site listings to directories or write articles to publish on article sites to help promote the sites and gain traffic.

I think I’ve slowly been becoming more and more disorganized because I simply don’t sleep much anymore. I’m in chronic pain due to Crohns so I’m achy when I get up in the morning and if I didn’t get enough sleep it takes a while to get on a role with my writing. Then by the time my husband is going to bed at night I start to feel like I’m getting work done, feel like I’m on a role … but I’m starting to get tired so it’s harder to get things done.

I’m going to revamp my whole routine. I’m going to start getting up by 8 am – even if I didn’t sleep well or didn’t fall asleep until 5 am! Then I’ll try to do some exercise – take the dog for a walk, work out on the elliptical – whichever as long as it’s about an hour of physical activity. That will help me get in gear for the day and hopefully help me lose a few of the extra pounds I’ve put on as my routine began to fall apart ( no fat burners for me! not yet anyway!).

Then after getting the basics out of the way like eating and showering I’ll spend a few hours writing for all the blogs and then an hour or two promoting the sites and or networking. It’s important that I get the writing done during the day when there’s less distractions. The promoting and networking can go into the evening if they must.

Now the last and hardest part for me will be getting to bed by a decent time. I can’t see myself going to bed any earlier than 11 pm as I’ve always been a night owl. 2 am is probably more likely! either way if I can make myself get 6 to 9 hours of solid sleep each night I think everything else will fall back in place for me again.

Do you work at home or do you maintain multiple blogs? What’s your routine like? Are you organized or are you finding it harder and harder to keep up?

Achy joints

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I’m so achy these days. I think all the rain we had this summer is getting to my joints. I have Crohn’s disease and that can affect the joints as well, so the combination of a wet season and an autoimmune disorder attacking my body is wrecking havoc!

I’ve been talking more calcium and tablets to help with the joint ache, but I’ve been wondering if wearing a magnetic bracelet might help. I’m at the point where it’s probably worth a try … especially since it’s getting cooler outside and it won’t be long before winter hits. I’m sure I’ll be even more achy come winter.

If you have achy joints, maybe caused by arthritis, what works for you as far as managing joint pain?

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