Week 5, Days 4 & 5: Is it really over?!

I cannot believe the internship is over. Everyone said it would go by so fast and they were absolutely right. The final couple days were pretty tough. I spent a lot of my time outside of work working on my projects. In the end, I ended up doing research for Dr. Frank, bonding rabbits, making a pamphlet about bonding rabbits, and making a silly little video of bonding rabbits. It was definitely a rush to get it all finished in time!

On Thursday morning, I actually was quite sick, so I had to call in to work and let them know I couldn't make it. I was so disappointed because I was scheduled to work in an area that I love. I was feeling a bit better by afternoon, but mostly I felt that I just had to go in to work because it was Pepsi's last training class and I didn't want him to miss it. He was a really good boy, despite the rain and construction noise in Tara's Run. He even did his new trick (spin) with a lure. I was so proud of him. He's come so far in 5 weeks and our bond is unlike any I've had with another dog.

On Friday, I worked from home doing research for Dr. Frank. I'm really excited that I was allowed to do this through my internship because it is basically my dream job. Dr. Frank is amazing to work with and his studies are really interesting. I'm sure I'll continue to do a little more work here and there for the project just because I keep receiving e-mails about it!

The interns had a pizza lunch and I think for a lot of us it was starting to slowly hit us that this was the end. We only had one more shift left!

For my last shift, I took Pepsi on an outing. He was a bit stressed and distracted, probably due to a major change in weather. Mostly, he just wanted to sit on my lap. That was fine with me. I hugged him a lot, told him repeatedly how much I loved him, and then had the hardest time in the world bringing him back to his run. His caretaker said she'll keep me posted on his status and I really hope that my goodbye to him was not an actual goodbye, but a see you later. I miss you, Pepsi!

We ended the afternoon by gathering in the conference room and each intern presented their projects and some of their reflections and thoughts on the internship. The general consensus was that it was absolutely amazing, life changing, and tough to leave. I think we probably had the best possible group of people in our internship session and it was really hard to say goodbye to all the friends who I'd shared this amazing experience with.

I'll write some further reflections later, but I want to give it a little space as I transition back to my life in Minnesota. Plus, I'm too sad to write about it right now because I miss everything and everyone so much!

Week 3, Day 4: Dogs, Dogs, Dogs

I haven't felt very well today. I've been having a flare up all day of some of my chronic illness issues, including an upset stomach and really bad fatigue. I didn't feel too bad this morning when I started my morning shift at the Fairway in DogTown. But the first thing I did was take a little chihuahua on a walk, and I could hardly make it through the walk. Luckily, a lot of the rest of my morning was spent socializing shy dogs, so that did not require much exertion on my part. It was really rewarding to work with a couple of dogs who would not allow me anywhere near them a couple weeks ago and watch them start to make progress. Two dogs in particular got to the point where they'd take food from my hand and allow me to pet them. I could tell it was hard on them, but I'm so proud of their progress.

One dog I worked with is named Mocha. She is such a sweet dog! I have never been able to get near her. Today I sat outside with her on a leash and I tried to feed her peanut butter, just to associate being outside with me with something good. This was how she was when we first got out there: lying as far away from me as the leash would possibly allow!

She would not eat the peanut butter from me, but if I put some on the ground near her, she'd eat it when I walked away. By the end of our time together, she ate one single lick from the spoon of peanut butter in my hand. Later, I worked with her in her run. This is when we really made progress. She flinched the first time I touched her, and tucked her tail as I pet her, but slowly over time, she started to get more comfortable. After a while, she was giving me kisses!

Success! It was a really satisfying morning. Too bad I felt sick for most of it. After lunch, it was time to pick up Pepsi for training class. He was excited to see me, which was really nice. Last week's class did not go very well because he gets too excited and distracted when he's around other dogs, but this week we worked really hard on not barking and on staying focused. He did a great job! We also all worked on loose-leash walking, which he is very good at. But I found that when he was on the road with cars, and all the other dogs from class, he struggled and wanted to pull. Every time he pulled, we stopped walking. By the end of the walk, he was doing great again.

At the end of class, a lot of what we were doing was just sitting and listening to the trainer. Pepsi has trouble with this because he wants to be doing something, especially if it involves greeting the other dogs. But we sat through the whole thing and he didn't make a peep. Granted, I was feeding him a million treats, but hey, whatever it takes! He was getting so slobbery from the treats and dirty from the dirt flooring the he got himself (and me!) totally caked with slobbery muddy dirt. Look at his paws!

After class, we have the opportunity to take our dogs on outings. Pepsi gets very stressed during class, so I personally think the last thing he needs after class is more stressful stimulation. So instead, we went somewhere quiet and sat together. He was on my lap of course. This was also good for me because I really wasn't feeling well by this time.

I was hoping to go to the Blessing at Angel's Rest tonight, which is a blessing of animals who have crossed the rainbow bridge. I actually donated money in honor of my last dog, Soda, to Best Friends and had her commemorated at their Blessing last year. So it's an emotional thing for sure, but I really wanted to go. Unfortunately, I'm just not up to it. I hate when I have flare-ups of my illness and I don't even know what really caused them. All I know is that I need to rest in bed, eat the right foods, and hope my stomach doesn't start to feel even worse! Hopefully a good night of rest will make me feel better.

Oh, and to end on a positive note: I checked in with Rescue Village this morning and my first two rabbits that I helped bond spent the night unsupervised and it went really well! They were cuddling all day today and continuing to groom each other. What a success!

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.

Out and About in Kanab

I am very happy to report that I had a much better night's sleep last night. It was such an exhausting day yesterday, even though I hardly did a thing. Just dealing with altitude sickness and homesickness was almost more than I could handle. But luckily, I have some amazing people in my life that talked to me and helped me get through the day. I went to bed early last night and hardly woke up at all in the night. What a relief. Today I'm feeling a bit better. I definitely still have some altitude sickness (mostly in the form of a headache, fatigue, dizziness, and inability to do much walking around without feeling like I'm not getting enough air). So I'm going to take it easy this afternoon and go to bed early again tonight, since my internship starts tomorrow.

But since I had a little more energy this morning, I got out and about around Kanab a little bit. First, I drove to Best Friends to see how long it would take to get there and to make sure I could find my way to the Welcome Center. Have I mentioned how gorgeous it is out here? I felt like I was driving through a picture perfect postcard the entire drive to the sanctuary. The sanctuary itself is much bigger than I had imagined...and I only made it as far as the Welcome Center!

Not a bad place for horses to hang out, huh?

I have a bunch of other pretty pictures from the Welcome Center area, but for some reason they're uploading with distorted coloring, so this will have to do for now.

After checking out Best Friends, I went into town and looked at some of the local shops:

It feels so different here than anywhere I've ever been. Everyone is very friendly and I'm beginning to learn how the town is set up so that I don't get lost as much anymore. I've been to all three markets in town, including a vegetarian market called Laid Back Larry's that is awesome. I told them about a certain type of cracker that I can actually eat, but can't find anywhere around town. The woman who owns the place said she knows of them and will order them for me to arrive next week! How nice is that?!

I can't believe my first day of the internship is tomorrow. I'm excited because I've seen how beautiful Best Friends is in person now. I'm also anxious about getting my dietary needs met and also being able to keep up with a full-time job given that I'm not feeling very well with the altitude and at this point in my recovery from chronic illness. Mostly, I'm looking forward to it.

By the way, I have an adorable cat curled up sleeping under my right arm and a snuggled up dog right next to that. I adore the animals that live here. And it only took me 3 days to learn all their names!

Morning Post: Altitude and Catzilla

Good morning from Utah! It was somewhat of an eventful night, so I thought I would write a quick morning post. Do you want the good news or the not-so-good news first? We'll go with not-so-good first so that we end on a positive note.

The Not-So-Good

I was so exhausted last night that I expected to sleep really soundly. But I ended up staying awake, tossing and turning, and not feeling well. There were several times throughout the night that I literally had to just focus on breathing. I felt like I could not get air no matter what and I had a weird tightness in my lungs. My heart would race if I so much as rolled over in bed. Any movement made me feel like I was going to simultaneously have a heart attack and pass out. This lasted through the whole night. Despite all the comforts I could want (a very comfortable bed, the softest blanket ever, and a great room prepared by my gracious hosts), I could not sleep for the life of me.

Of course, this is disconcerting to me. My health is my absolute number one priority. You don't fight for your life for two years and then let something get in the way of that and damage your body. I was expecting to get altitude sickness because I actually spent a summer in Salt Lake City about 8 years ago, and I remember it was pretty bad then. But it manifested in a different way. I was just so exhausted all the time, and I couldn't walk distances without getting completely out of breath. My body was so healthy back then, and I still was miserable. But this time around, it feels different. I am at a slightly higher altitude, but I think a lot of it might be the fact that I wasn't 100% my healthiest coming into this. This time, my symptoms are much more severe, and I'm noticing things like dizziness, tripping, headaches, and even a little confusion (for a few moments this morning, I completely forgot how to make the breakfast that I make every single day for myself). I don't think I'm in an emergency situation or anything, but the fact that I'd have to drive 1.5-2 hours to get medical care is not a comfort. I've been reading up an altitude sickness this morning (Congratulations to me! I have all the symptoms!) and it basically says you should start getting better within 48 hours or else you really need to get to a lower altitude. So I will try to give myself another full day of this and see how I feel. I hope I get better, but if I don't, I'm not risking my entire health that I've worked so hard for. I will go home if I have to. Yes, it will break my heart. But I have to do what's right for my body or else I won't be able to help any animals now or in the future. Stay tuned. I'll keep you posted. Oh, and yes, I'm still drinking tons of water, as that is supposed to help the most, but I still can't get enough and all it's really doing is making me have to use the bathroom every five minutes!

The Good

So last night I shut my door to my room and turned out the lights, all set to go to sleep. I plugged in my nightlight (I'm not fond of sleeping in complete darkness) and started to attempt sleep. Well, I guess I didn't shut my door tight enough for it to latch, because not so long after I lay down, a couple smart kitties pushed my door open and started a parade of cats through my room! I was totally okay with that, but when one of the cats entered my closet, I knew I had to get up and get her out of there. My room was totally animal proofed, but my closet still had toiletries and such on the floor, and the last thing I wanted to do was be responsible for one of my hosts' cats getting sick on my first night! So I got up and  gently carried the cat, who I'll call M, out of there, shut the door tight, and put her back down on the floor. I thought that would be the end of it. But apparently our brief snuggle while I carried her made us best buds, so she jumped up on my bed, purring and wanting to snuggle. Not being one who's ever had pets allowed on furniture, this was a new experience to have one in bed with me. M was so sweet, crawled all over me, licked me, and then settled down to sleep on the pillow next to mine. It was really cute. But it wasn't over yet...

The other cats came and went. I'm pretty sure one was sleeping under my bed for most of the night. But the best part was when one went to inspect the nightlight: he/she put his/her head so close to it that if you looked up at the ceiling there was a giant shadow about 10 feet big of a cat head. Catzilla! I almost laughed out loud. 

Cats weren't my only guests last night. Since my door was wide open by this point, a darling little dog I'll call S decided to come check out my room. Her tail was wagging like crazy and I figured, I already had one animal on my bed, what's one more? So S jumped up on the bed, gave me a few kisses, and lay down literally on top of me. M, the cat, took this as a cue to also lay on top of me. I was covered from the neck down with animals! They make good blankets. Very warm! I couldn't take too much of that though, since I was already feeling odd sensations with my heart and lungs, a cat lying on my chest wasn't helping. I rolled over and they all found places to snuggle and sleep. They stayed with me all night and were so good. When I would wake up, not feeling well, they'd give me a kiss on the cheek or snuggle in closer. It was really comforting. They are also apparently quite good friends with each other, because several times in the night I caught them snuggled up together and even grooming each other. In fact, they're back on my bed right now as I type this, doing just that. I can't believe how calm all the animals here are!

A couple other cats jumped up on my bed, but only stayed for a matter of seconds. One even jumped up onto my head. I'm not sure which one that is yet, because I'm still learning the names of 9 animals. I think I have 3 of them down so far.

So that was my not-so-short morning blog. I'm going to take it easy today. I'm glad I got here early so that I could get adjusted if needed. I'm hoping I start to feel better and that I can stay and work. Wish me luck! I'm going to drink more water...