i don't really expect updates to reach the double digits, just felt like putting up some info for anyone interested and hasn't heard the story because you might not watch val's journals.

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Since getting "Pestilence" (we're still debating names) my life has been pretty much consumed by 1. working for religious zealots, and 2. doting over this little puppy who needs all the help he can get. I don't remember agreeing to "Glorify God" when i accepted a job staring and editing mind numbing amounts of HTML code for 8+ hours a day, but I do the job because i'm interested in getting paid so I can buy food for my wife, my little puppies, and myself. So once i wake up in the morning I check on little pestilence, He's doing much better we've managed to get most of the scabs off of his body, and he's scheduled for another bath this weekend. Hopefully it'll be nice and sunny that day so he doesn't freeze his little poop covered tail off....i've never seen a dog actually sit on their own pile.....

Well his paws are certainly getting better, he can run me down (I don't run fast by choice) and he's getting fast enough to catch val who is a little freaked out by dogs. she adores her crabs that look....well.....but adorable little puppies give her the wigglies. go figure, either way I'm still a little worried his paws might be bending a little too much for him to walk on, When we return to the vet it'll be about time to start him on his corrective bandage regiment. To help him along developing his muscles properly. His fur has started to fill out, you can still see patches of pink all over his body and some really dark patches of skin... But for the most part his fur is slowly making a come back and he's looking more and more like a puppy who ran away mid grooming. definetly an improvement over the disease with a tail look. I suspect that once we take him in for a proper grooming (going to keep the mohawk/mane look if we can) and all his fur is evened out it'll look great.

We're trying to limit how much he eats for a couple of reasons, when he eats his tummy bulges and looks kinda freaky....Also, he eats like he's still half starved, I'm a little worried he might still have some worms sucking up all his vital nutrition and stuff. Finally, we're still a little unsure of how much can/dry food to feed him, once the vet weighs him again i'll probably be able to look something up. We're trying to limit his can foods because it also makes his messes a lot more of a pain in the ass to clean up in the morning, I practically fall asleep around 8pm (2-3 hours after i get out of work) and wake up at 6 am to clean his area up and give him some food, unfortunately i only have 2 hours to get ready for work so i am unable to let him run around in the mornings and Val has to clean up poopy pads around noon. Usually i'm finished with all his needs (and trying to keep sable from getting jealous by giving her some love too) around 6:40+ today was a good one though because he didn't poop so i jsut had to swap pads and wipe his tray down. got to enjoy my breakfast for the most part and even had time to pick up a big bottle of evian for work.

He still scratches a bit, since his fur is starting to recover a bit I'll probably put his flea collar on him sometime soon. We're starting to think he might be past the most contagious part of his scabies treatment, unfortunately we were kind of thrown into it because my father opens the garage door and sable has has exposure to our precious little vector for about 3-4 days now, She'll probably need a shot or sometimes soon.... We took the opportunity of some cold weather we had yesterday to start familiarizing them with each other, Sable spent the night in the garage tied to one of the support beams with just enough slack to get a few feet away from the puppy. All seemed to have gone well, so we'll continue to let them get familiar with each other since chances are that soon as he's deemed clean he'll be thrown out with her to live in the yard.

I'll be looking into invisible fence stuff, we tried it before with sable and snickers but it didn't work for either of them. Unfortunately....

Hopefully Sable will be a good influence on him other than the doted on child complex she sometimes gets where she refuses to sit for a treat because she knows her face is so adorable she'll get it anyways e.e

I had planned to bury a bit of wire mesh or some kind of barrier around the parts of our fence where rain has eroded the soil exposing huge gaps SABLE can fit through. Unfortunately this was rejected because it would "make the yard look bad" so my only recourse is to look up some other kind of method to deter him from getting out and probably getting himself hurt.

I hate my neighbors, I make no attempts to hide it, most of them are self centered or just plain stupid. I have no doubt in my mind that given a chance any one of them would run him over in their hill billy quasi monster trucks while hooting and hollering like inbred slack jawed hill billies. So I don't want to take chances with the method my parents have been using which is unreliable and had left us with 1 dog instead of 2.

I'm getting hungry and running out of things to report for the moment so i guess i'll end with mentioning the name topic. We're still trying to figure out what to call him, judging by his fur and color we're convinced he might be some kind of Retriever, the fur on his ears doesn't seem to have grown back much or isn't noticeable so we're still a bit unsure of what his final coloring will be. But judging by the fluffiness of the fur on his back and various other characteristics we're convinced he might be mostly retriever. So now we know a little more about our bundle of energy. Val explained to me why she wanted to call him "gaspode" and I thought it was kind of sweet till she got to the end of her story... So yeah, i'm not really feeling it anymore than i did when i thought she was suggesting "Gas Boat".

A few of my suggestions were:

Cloud (well he is going to be a whiteish creamy color)
Ichigo (because strawberry just cracks me up as a name)
Zero (I love the X series)
Little boy (i'm already refering to him as that so i thought maybe it would work out)
Chupy (back to the original thought that he might actually be a chupacabre)
Cthulu (because the idea of taking him places and introducing him as such cracks me up)
Bartz (think I was thinking of a Final Fantasy character.....maybe it was Butz....)
Roy (was thinking of Smash Bros Brawl at the time)
Ike (reminds me of kyle's little brother from SP too much...)
Marth (eh.....i've heard better)
Lelouch (Code Geass was pretty interesting and It's definetly an interesting name)
Minoru (Because Minoru from Lucky Star was just awesome)

A few of Val's ideas were:

Puddles (he does pee a lot....)
Gaspode (.....not feeling it...)
Laddie (....e.e very vague lassie reference.....he's not even a collie)

At somepoint i might just start going through my videogame collection and picking out names. like Wanderer or Kratos......wait no....not kratos e.e.....definetly not Ratchet or Jak........anyways I bought Dragon Quest Swords for the Wii today so maybe i'll get more ideas. Since my sister is back from her wedding we'll be able to get a digital camera soon so we'll post more pictures of of Pestilence soon so you can all see the dramatic changes he's undergone in 7 days. His next appointment with the Vet is on the 6th so i'd like to have a new name decided on for updating his records. Thanks for reading this far even though this matter doesn't affect you in any way. I hope that anyone taking interest in this act of kindness will remember it and feel obliged to do something nice for someone else. I'm sure i'll remember something i've forgotten to mention as soon as I post this but it'll have to wait for the next update.