Giving up/ Cutting Down Alcohol Thread Part 16

Barny1979

16/25 AFDs today

rosy10

Good evening everyone. Weather has been lovely today! 17/28, please Shaggy.

maggiem

15/18 and 3SNC - I avoided wine at the meal last night too Maman but it was a struggle. Still I will feel less guilty next week when I am on holiday if I am at target or very close by the end of the week and can then relax a little.

marahouti

17/20 for May and 3/5 for SNC please Shaggy. X

GlendaSugarbean

Morning! 21/28 for me today.

Had a spare bottle of wine I was using for cooking and had a glass - it went down very quickly and I had to stop myself reaching for another one! So maybe I'm not as far on as I thought...

Green_Karen

Glad you made it through that terrible week HB! Great that you managed to find your little feline visitor a home. Kindness shown during a time like you were going through is a real sign of your strength of character.

Early call for 19/26 May and 4/5 WDC.

cathybird

Morning all, 18/21 for me today thanks.

Honey_Bear

arsenalbarnie wrote: »

Gosh Honeybear what a time you have been having. Years ago we had a stray Tom cat get in our house. Left fleas and sprayed everywhere. Total nightmare. Hope Layla is ok. What does the heart murmur mean? Is she going to be prone to fainting?

Have been really fed up since I got back from hols. My hormones seem to be all over the place and I feel very down. Am going to try extra hard this week to see if not drinking will perk me up.

I hope you feel a bit better, Arsenal Barnie. Post-holiday blues are an understandable 'thing' which I why some people book another holiday almost the instant they come back, even if it's only a weekend break, to have something to look forward to.

Our stray's pee smell was particularly strong in the shower room/utility area, and that was cured with a thorough wash with St@rdrops, thank goodness. (Miracle stuff that's only recently become available locally - I think it's readily available in the Midlands, but not so much in the southwest.) The real stink was in the cupboard where it had to be confined for the final 24 hours to get it into the trap, and I knew that would be the case. The bleach bottle is seriously diminished but it worked on the third application and thank goodness for dehumidifiers, and if I have to heave out the 40 bottles of wine and all the other gibble again, that's what I'll have to do. Can't live with that acrid stink if it comes back again. It was very, very strong.

Thank you for your comment, Green Karen. I don't understand people who are unkind to animals, never mind cruelty. I simply couldn't do anything other than I did, and I had to harden my heart to trap it, but it really was the only choice open to both me and it, in the end. I'm so grateful that Woodside had a place for it because it's a wonderful animal shelter. First one I ever discovered (30 years ago) with a No Kill policy. They've got a lot of old crocs up there!

As to Layla's heart murmur, well, what a revelation that's been. Each dog I've adopted has had a completely different set of health problems in addition to the very predictable arthritis and tummy troubles, so it's always a steep learning experience taking on a new one. Never had heart problems before, so starting from scratch but learning fast ....

It isn't just a murmur, it's also an irregular heartbeat, which apparently is potentially more concerning. The specialist veterinary cardiologist (yes, there is such a thing) is peripatetic, and the earliest Plymouth appointment was mid-June, so I asked for it to be expedited by travelling to wherever, and we were fitted in her Exeter clinic yesterday. She was absolutley wonderful, Layla was with her from 12.30 to 4.00 pm; she had a scan, an ECG and she's wearing and ECG monitor for 48 hours at the moment. At this stage nothing really concerning has shown up, and she'll issue a report when all the results are back in, but in the meantime we feel a lot better than the initial post-faint consultation, during which the examining vet clearly urged on the side of caution but scared me to death. I cleared my credit card before the cardiology appointment and am very, very glad indeed I have pet insurance because the bill was seriously :eek::eek::eek:.

Everyone who comes into contact with this dog adores her, and they're all amazed that she's only eight weeks out of being confined to a crate as a breeding !!!!!. She's inquisitive, hugely affectionate, happy and amazingly courageous, so with a bit of luck she'll be with us for a long time although clearly exhausted by yesterday and having a lie in this morning.

Season_of_Mist wrote: »

Well done on treating that stray with kindness, HB. If you’ve ‘escape-proofed’ your garden though and the stray got in somehow, there must logically be a way out for your cats as well?

Thank you, and yes, logically and normally, I'd agree with you. However, I used these to top the 8' walls and trellis, so while it's possible to climb up this wire to get in, it's almost impossible to climb out of the yard, and we've had to grow plants up it all to make it look less like a prison. If any cats could manage it it would be ours, so their access to the yard was strictly controlled for the first year, and even now at 18 months they're only allowed out there during the day and kept in overnight. As they get older we might be able to lift that restriction but I'm not promising them anything, the little tykes. We've never had problems like this before with our cats, and we've had six other cats over the last 26 years here and not one of them needed this kind of Colditz security to keep them in.

Having said that, because they're indoor cats I wasn't going to get their vaccinations boosted annually but after this episode they've both got a vet's appointment next week to be jabbed. Cue a lot of cat whinging, but tough.

Maman, I take paying guests in a couple of rooms. I've been doing it for 26 years and it's a specialist niche market. People stay with us for a minimum of a week ususally, and these guests are with us for 17 nights, although after they leave someone who's been before is here for only four nights. Someone recently came for four weeks and ended up staying eight months! We've had people for three years, on and off, so it helps that we like most of them a lot! We've been to a wedding in Edinburgh and two on a tiny Italian island of former guests, so while they pay me it's more about hospitality and common areas of interests and location than the normal landlady kind of thing. I don't do B&B or anything remotely like that - that would be far too much like hard work!

22/31 please, Shaggy.

sukeyboo

Declaring early on 11/12 for today please Shaggy

Arkers

Good afternoon everyone,

11 please Shaggy
Sorry to hear about Layla she's lucky to have found her forever home with you HB.

Arkers x