Week 2, Day 1: Just one of those days...

Today was one of those days in which I just want to crawl into bed and not come out for weeks. I woke up still completely exhausted despite resting all day yesterday and getting a good night's sleep last night. Hooray for chronic fatigue. Almost immediately I noticed my nose felt funny and congested, so I got a tissue and realized I had a nose bleed. That never happens to me! I have no idea why it happened, but it was just foreshadowing my day ahead. I got ready for the day, which was made slightly more difficult than usual due to my leg injury, which I'm not sure I've mentioned on this blog. Somehow I pulled a muscle in my upper right leg and it's been hurting since last Friday. It almost feels dislocated or something because my range of motion is so inhibited, but I can still walk on it. I ate a good solid breakfast, and headed off to a day of work that I was really excited about. I was spending the morning at CatWorld Headquarters and my afternoon shift at Dogtown in the run where my project dog, Pepsi, lives.

My first greeter at Cat HQ was a sweet little cat named Callie. She jumped right from her perch onto my lap and made herself at home:

She's wearing a sweater because she has some itchiness and this helps her not to hurt herself by scratching too much. I was asked to take Callie on a walk, so a volunteer took another cat and I took Callie and we all headed off in my car for Angel's Canyon. It's a beautiful park in the sanctuary where the animals can go to feel some grass under their feet and wander around as they please in a very peaceful place. First, we had to make sure no dogs would disturb our cats though, so we put up this sign:

Next, we entered Angel's Canyon and Callie was very excited to romp around!

Here she is, looking lovely in her sweater and her halter for walking:

She was doing great the whole time. That is, until she decided to play a little game on me and run under a nearby low stage of the amphitheater. No big deal, I thought. I'll just tug on her leash a little and bring her back out. After a moment, I thought she was coming out on her own because the leash felt easy to pull. Well, I pulled it out and little Houdini had escaped her halter! There was no longer a cat at the other end of my leash! Before long, she'd wiggled out of her sweater too, and was contentedly sitting just out of arm's length under the wooden platform. I couldn't believe I let a cat get loose outside! Some maintenance men nearby helped us call to Cat HQ, since my cell phone had no service, and we waited for a staff person to come. She tried to coax out Callie with me and the volunteer, but eventually we needed to call in yet another staff person. This one came armed with Callie's favorite treats and slowly she came out of hiding. What a rascal! I felt really bad, but the staff were so kind about it and said it happens to everyone at least once.

We all headed back to Cat HQ and started deep cleaning the cat runs. Now, all morning I'd been feeling a little extra tired and light-headed. But after about an hour or so of cleaning, I was getting to the point where I was having pretty bad dizzy spells. I know I have low blood pressure issues, so I sat down and drank some more water. It still wasn't helping. I asked if there was anything I could do that just required sitting. I ended up in a cat run sitting on the floor, socializing two cats who are terrified of humans. It was actually one of the most rewarding parts of my day because I was able to get one of the cats to crawl onto my lap and lick baby food off my fingers. That's huge, considering both cats bolted from me when I first entered the room.

Still feeling weak, I headed to the Village for lunch, thinking a good meal would help. Well, I did have a good meal, but it unfortunately didn't make me feel better. I was so excited to head to DogTown to see Pepsi, though, so I tried to put everything else out of my mind. Pepsi's dog run is pretty chaotic. As it turned out, he had a vet appointment at 2:00, so I ended up taking another dog to the on-site dog park. Because the dog I took is dog-aggressive, we had the entire dog park to ourselves. This dog is so sweet! If you're interested in a dog who adores people, but not so much other dogs, Sunshine Girl would be perfect for you! I loved watching her run around off-leash and she always came back to sit near me for a bit and check in:

Unfortunately, my day was not improving by leaps and bounds. I managed to get my head impaled by a dagger shaped tree branch while moving to sit down on a bench:

So that didn't really help my dizziness much! Around 2:15, I took Sunshine Girl back to her run so I could take out Pepsi. This would be my first time with him alone and I was excited and just wanted to get to know him. Unfortunately, I was dizzy, had a headache, and my range of motion in my right leg is  negligible. All that was easy to overlook, when 70 pounds of pure muscle came running my way, full of excitement and tail wags. Pepsi really is a sweetheart. He just adores other people, and people adore him. He just needs some work on his manners and his stubbornness! He's certainly a handful! We headed over to Tara's Run, which is where training takes place. It was empty, so we had it all to ourselves, and he could be off leash in this wonderful facility:

We went up and down some of the agility equipment together and he sniffed around a bit, but mostly he just wanted to snuggle. If I sat down, he sat right on top of me! He is quite sure he's a lap dog.

Well, my cardiologist did tell me that compression on my legs could help my low blood pressure, so I guess Pepsi was just helping out! All he wanted was to be close, get petted, and occasionally drown my face in sloppy kisses. His tail hardly ever stopped wagging.

Here's the sad thing about Pepsi: humans have tried to euthanize him 3 times already in his life! And it has never been for anything he did wrong! He gets a bit of a skin condition when he's stressed, so his first owner wanted to put him down due to itchy skin. Really?! He and one of his mates were sent to a shelter to get put down and a rescue group got there as quickly as possible to save them. Unfortunately, they were too late for his mate, but luckily they were able to save Pepsi in the nick of time. Pepsi was adopted out again after that and two more times his various owners wanted to euthanize him because of his skin condition. He was saved each time and eventually came to Best Friends. With the TLC that Best Friends provides, his stress-induced skin problems vanished. And now, despite people having let him down his whole life, he absolutely adores them and loves to spend time cuddling. It's almost like he's soaking up all the love he missed out on in his early years. He deserves so much love and I've already completely fallen for him. 

After leaving work, still not feeling well, but grateful that I had a pretty relaxed afternoon, I drove home. This is what my commute looks like, by the way:

Am I lucky or what?!

So that's been my day. I ate salty food and drank water when I got home to try to help the dizziness. That's when I realized I'd lost my water bottle sometime this afternoon with the dogs. Ugh. One of my pet peeves is not having water with me at all times. It's not the end of the world because I'll just get a new bottle tomorrow (or see if I can find my old one), but it just seemed like a fitting ending to a day that didn't go so well for me health-wise (and cat-wise!). 

I love it here so much. I love this internship and I love the people I'm meeting. I can't say enough good things about being here and having this opportunity. But today was the first day since I began actually working here that I started to question if my health will hold up, given that I've been dealing with chronic illness for 2 years. I want to see this through to the end so badly and it would crush me to leave, so I'm really hoping that today was just a fluke of a day and that I'll feel better the rest of the week. If, under extremely unfortunate circumstances, I do not feel better soon, I need to keep in mind what's best for me and the animals. They deserve someone who has energy and health to take care of them. I deserve to take care of myself. What good would I be to Pepsi (or anyone else) if I feel too sick to concentrate or can't stay standing? Let me tell you, if I fainted, Pepsi could drag me from here to the other end of the sanctuary and back without breaking a sweat! That boy is strong! So I'll keep an eye on things. For now, I'm continuing to fuel my body, drink lots of water, and rest. Here's hoping for a better tomorrow.