Hello, friends! I have not fallen off the face of the earth. We have been pretty busy the last several weeks getting the new house all put together! It is so much fun to have a house! Last week was spring break for Charles, so he had the whole week off. I took the week off as well, originally with the intent of going on a trip for our 1 year anniversary, but in the end we just stayed here and put the house in order. There are still a few little things left to be done, but for the most part we are all settled in. Can I just say how excited I am about the fact that I don't know when I will be moving again? It's really a wonderful feeling. I was thinking about it, and ever since I graduated from high school, I have known the next time I would be moving. Whether it be from dorm room to dorm room, dorm room to house, or apartment to apartment, I have always known when my next move would be. It is so great that now I can officially feel settled.

Yesterday was a traumatic day for our sweet puppy dog. For the last several weeks, she has been randomly throwing up for no apparent reason. It doesn't happen everyday, and she doesn't act like she feels bad, but for whatever reason, she just keeps doing it. We have actually taken her to the vet twice before for vomiting, but on both of those occasions she was throwing up like 10 times in a day. At first we thought she ate something weird. Then we thought maybe she had allergies, so we started giving her Benadryl. But yesterday she threw up the Benadryl as well, so I decided to take her in to see the vet again. They did some x-rays and found out what's going on. She has what they call megaesophagus. Basically, the muscles in her esophagus are weakened for some reason, and her esophagus is like 3-4 times bigger than it's supposed to be. Turns out, she hasn't actually been vomiting all this time, she's just been regurgitating food, saliva, etc. that hasn't even made it to her stomach. Poor puppy! So now we're just trying to figure out what caused it. They did a test yesterday for Addison's disease, which we should hear back about today. If it's not that, they may run another test to see if it's myasthenia gravis. Both of those conditions are treatable. Or, it could be that one of the times she was throwing up so much before her esophagus got so irritated that it caused this, or we may never know the cause. So, for now we have to give her Reglan and Zantac twice a day, which is supposed to increase motility in her esophagus and decrease acid in her stomach to hopefully manage the regurgitation. We also bought her elevated feeding dishes, which is supposed to put her in a better position for eating so her food will make it to her stomach. When the vet was telling me about elevated feeding positions yesterday, she said that some dogs have this so bad that they have to be fed in a high chair type thing. I almost laughed in her face. I cannot even imagine Emmy eating from a high chair! She would not be happy! But, of course I had to know what this looked like. So I Googled it. Here is what I found: http://www.geocities.com/bailey_chair/Page2. Hopefully we will not get to that point!