Well not really. Dude’s had this spot the size of a silver dollar on his back for 3-4 weeks now. The hair has all fallen out and you can see his skin is pink. It doesn’t seem to be bothering him or itchy or anything but it just didn’t look good so after trying hydro coritzone cream on it for four days, I made a vet appointment. Before we went in, I diagnosed him with mange thanks to the help of Google and that’s what it ended up being. Dude has the better of the two types of mange, the other is much worse and is sometimes referred to as scabies. The good news with this is that there is no risk for internal problems because of the mange. Poor little guy had to get his skin scraped because the mite attaches itself to the hair follicle and there’s no other way to see it but under a microscope. He now has some scabs and a bruise around the area that they scraped. Apparently its pretty common in puppies under the age of 18 months and it usually goes away on its own by the time they reach this age unless there is a serious immunological deficiency. But being the worried mom I am, I opted to give him the oral meds (Ivermectin, a drug approved for reducing mange in cattle) once a day for 2-4 months. I’ve never dealt with a dog that had mange before but I asked if dips would be a better, cheaper and less invasive, alternative. The vet said that he wouldn’t give his dog dips and that’s a very time consuming, messy, ineffective in a lot of cases, not to mention toxic process. Before letting us go, the vet wanted to ensure that Dude hadn’t gotten heartworms because the medication would interfere with treatment of the heartworms. The test didn’t come back till the following day at which point we could start the medication.  The boy that eats tree bark, mulch, and dirt *hates* the taste of the medicine but I think he’s really enjoying getting an extra treat to rid the taste from his mouth. Mange is not contagious to humans or to Stoli so everyone’s still sleeping in our bed. We’re up to 100 pounds of bulldog (Stoli is 57 pounds, Dude is 43.6 pounds). I’m really praying this goes away on its own, but the vet said without the medication he could lose a lot more hair in the meantime since he’s only 5.5 months right now.
Many of you have heard about my newfound annoyance (dare I say hatred) for Expedia. I booked our reservations for our upcoming trip to the Dominican Republic back in June.  Since that time Expedia has written us with changes to our departure on more than six occasions. While the delays in there of only a few minutes don’t bother me, they sent a schedule change “from Delta” where we would have left Denver five hours later than we were originally supposed to making us miss our connecting flight from Atlanta to the Dominican Republic. Instead of offering me the original flight (red eye with only a four hour layover) that I was on (I have since found out that the flight wasn’t canceled only the number changed and my theory is there’s some kind of system in place where it automatically reschedules you when a flight number is changed because their system sees it as canceled), Expedia called Delta and had us scheduled to leave the night before we wanted to get our connecting flight to the Dominican Republic leaving us with a THIRTEEN HOUR layover. I’ve been fuming about this for months now (they did this in August) so I finally called up Expedia to see what could be done. The customer service rep was worthless and did nothing to calm me or try to fix the problem. I told her I saw that the original time table that I was supposed to be flying on was still available just under a different flight number and could she switch me back to the original time. She said she could but that it would be $100 per person to change it. I was really getting pissed then and I said you’re going to charge me $200 to fly on the flight that I originally booked and paid for and she said yes. I asked if Expedia planned on compensating me for a hotel since we would be in Atlanta over night on a THIRTEEN HOUR layover and she said they don’t do things like that. I finally got so fed up with her inability or unwillingness to do anything and called Delta directly (which in hindsight is what I should have done from the get go and saved myself a lot of stress but I thought since I booked through Expedia I had to use them as the go-to for everything). I called Delta explained my situation to a very understanding and helpful guy and he changed our flight information and immediately sent me a confirmation email. When I asked if I was going to be charged for the changes, he said no, do you want to be charged? I can’t explain how grateful and relieved I am that contacting Delta was such an easy process and the agents were so eager to gain customer satisfaction.
We’ve been attempting to carry-on our luggage a lot more lately because waiting at baggage claim is such a nightmare. If your luggage isn’t lost, you still have to wait an ungodly amount of time before you get it and that’s just not something that we’re eager to do. So, last week I ordered new 22″ expandable carry-on suitcases and a set of medium and large packing cubes. Now I had never even heard of packing cubes until Joe came out last month. These things are awesome! I could see he was able to pack a lot of stuff into his carry-on but he’s a guy so I was eager to put the cubes to the test – packing my stuff. Not only did everything that I wanted to bring fit into the suitcase with the help of the cubes, I was also able to add even more stuff because there was still room! I’m a total convert now and at first couldn’t fathom trying to only bring two carry-ons to Europe but now am hoping that when we go to Europe everything will fit quite nicely in carry-ons since it’ll be summer clothes and thus less bulky. Even better would be if all the clothes could fit in one suitcase and we could use the other one for souvenirs – knives and steins!
