Just Beat It Beat It Beat It Beat It No One Wants To Be Defeated - Take 6

Shawn and I fully expected a sad, droopy puppy when we went to pick Stella up last night but instead we were met with a very excited Stella. She came barrelling out of the back room when she heard our voices and covered us in puppy kisses. It was exactly what I needed after a stressful Monday.

Once she got over her initial joy that we hadn't abandoned her forever, Stella calmed down quite a bit. She was lethargic from the drugs and tried to avoid Wolfgang as much as possible. He would try to engage her and she would just slink away instead of trying to eat his face like she normally does.

He was quite flummoxed by it all.

Eventually he gave up and Stella and I enjoyed some puppy cuddles. It was all very nice and sweet until bedtime rolled around and we had to get the drops in Stella's ears.

She was having none of it. We have to put 3 - 4 drops in both ears twice a day for the next week. It is impossible to do. She jerks her head around and I can't see what I'm doing; I just squeeze the bottle and hope that some of the medication is actually getting into her ears. Shawn is 6'3" and weighs over 200 pounds and he cannot hold her down. He can control her legs but then she starts whipping her head around. So he lets go of her legs and tries to hold her head and she starts kicking and scratching. It took fifteen minutes to do this morning and I'm not even 100% sure that any drops went into her ears.

I am begging for suggestions here, people. How do you get drops in your pet's ears?

On top of the drops, Stella has to take two different pills twice a day for the next week. Getting her to take the pills isn't a problem - she's a whore for cheese (she takes after me!) so I just stick the pill in a chunk of cheese and she gobbles it right up. The problem is that both pills need to be taken with food and they need to be taken fifteen minutes apart. This means that I need to feed Stella half of her breakfast; give her a chunk of cheese with a pill in it; wait fifteen minutes; feed her the other half of her breakfast; then give her another chunk of cheese with another pill in it. And then repeat at dinner. So basically I'm putting more energy into planning Stella's meals than I am my own.

However, I am not complaining if it means that my pup is getting better (I will, however, complain about the $300 vet bill we were hit with when we picked her up.)

* * * * *

And just to make this the longest post ever, it's the last day of the month which means ... beets!

I peeled the beets and cut them into wedges. I drizzled them with olive oil and added five cloves of minced garlic and some sea salt. I wrapped them up in foil and put them in a 400 degree oven for 45 minutes. Then I unwrapped them, drizzled them with honey and balsamic vinegar and cooked them for another half hour.

They were ... alright. They didn't suck. The honey and balsamic vinegar really masked the taste of the beet, especially since the beets ended up extremely caramelized (when we were kids, my parents would refuse to admit that they'd burnt something; they'd always say that it was just "golden." These beets? Were golden.)

To reward ourselves for eating our June beets, we devoured a strawberry rhubarb cobbler.