Would you believe that Tuesday was my five year anniversary of blogging?

I’ve made mention before that I started blogging to establish an ‘online presence’ as was suggested by an agent at a small library event I’d attended. I decided on a blog because I’d heard about it in the movie, “Julie and Julia.” I’m pretty sure at that time I didn’t really know WHAT a blog was, just that this woman, Julie became a published author through blogging.  Sounds like a plan to me I said, I’ll become a famous author by writing a blog.

Now I’ll be the first person to tell you that I don’t know nearly enough about blogging as I should, especially for someone who’s been blogging for as long as I have. I do however know a whole lot more than I did on that very first post.

Because guess what?

I knew absolutely NOTHING about blogging at the time. The first line from my first post was this, “I have the basic idea for this website from the movie Julie and Julia; except I’m not going to be cooking and eating my way through a book of recipes.”  If you want to read that entire 108 word post, you can read about it HERE.

Of course that changed, as I began to hone in on ‘finding my voice,’ (which I struggled with initially.) The goal that first year was to publish one post per day for an entire year, so I titled the initial posts as “Day One and Day Two.” I didn’t actually start adding real titles to the posts until Day Three.

When I looked at those initial posts in my ‘back office’, I noticed that none of them had SEO Titles, SEO descriptions or SEO key words. I started scrolling through to see when I first started adding them and guess what? I got bored after scrolling through the first YEAR! Yes! It was OVER A YEAR (maybe two or three even) before I started working the SEO on this blog.

No wonder I haven’t become famous.

I didn’t even add photos until Day Twenty Five.  In case you’re wondering, here is the very first picture I ever placed in a blog post.

I had to shrink this picture to fit in this post because it was SO large, it took up the entire page, BECAUSE I had no idea about re-sizing pictures at that time. In fact, I’m surprised I actually put a title on the damn thing.

It DOES look good though, doesn’t it? That my friends is an Apple-Pecan upside down pie and it’s to die for. It is probably the dessert I miss the most in being Gluten-Free because I haven’t figured out a way to replicate it. (If you’re interested, the full recipe for it is HERE.)

I recently read somewhere that you have to stick with blogging for three to five years, to outlast all the others that start and then quit.  Well here we are five years later, and I’m left wondering, what’s left for me? Where do I go from here? Because well, obviously I haven’t quit, but I haven’t ‘made it’ yet either.

Maybe it’s the end of year blues, or the holiday doldrums, but sometimes I just want to stop altogether, but the thought of NOT having my blog, makes me anxious. And yet, I sometimes feel like after five years of blogging, what’s left to say?

Update two. Linda and I have removed the linky tool from our blogs as it appears to be slowing them down.

A quick update, apparently there are issues with the Linky Tool. I hope Mr. Brent is working on this and will have it fixed soon. I apologize to everyone that’s trying to link up. Please bear with us and keep trying.

This is the Thursday Barks and Bytes Blog Hop hosted by 2 Brown Dawgs and Heart Like a Dog. Grab the badge and the linky code and join us! Please only link up blog posts and as a courtesy to the other hoppers, please add the linky to your post and/or link back to the hosts’ blogs.

Sampson had his annual wellness exam last week.

There were a couple of things that were concerning to me and I was anxious to discuss them with the vet. The first up was Sampson’s physical well being.

Sampson’s been licking at his front paws for at least three years now. He goes on an off with it. I put him on a supplement and he does well, then after a short while, he starts licking at them again. X-rays taken when it first started showed nothing. We couldn’t determine if he was licking at his front paws because they hurt, or he was licking because something hurt somewhere else and his paws were the easiest thing to reach.

Since his ACL surgery 20 months ago, he doesn’t put full weight on his back feet. Since each back foot takes approximately 20% of his weight, I wasn’t sure if the extra pressure on his front was causing him discomfort.

His back legs tremble when he stands. Like when we stop on a walk. And he doesn’t care for standing, if he has to stand for too long, he’ll lie down.

Then about 10 days before his exam, he was running around the house and he started holding up his left front foot. I massaged the leg and the foot and he went right back to using it. In my mind this confirmed that his front paws were bothering him. I filed it in the back of my mind to mention at the vet.

 

I shared all of this with Dr. Soutter who after examining him determined that Sampson has arthritis in the two middle toes of both front paws and he also has it really bad in his left wrist. He also has it at his surgery site and more than likely in his hips. As for the trembling, she says she can’t say with certainty, it could be something vets refer to as “geriatric trembling,” or it could be that stinking Illiosoas.

My poor guy.

The next question was how do we make him comfortable?

Well he’s already on Glucosamine, an Omega product and Zyflamend for anti-inflammatory. Our choices were to put him on pain pills for days when he’s really struggling, or we try Adequan injections. Then Dr. Soutter suggested he might be a candidate for PEMF (Pulsed Electromagnetic Field Therapy). Clearly we had some decisions to make.

Next we talked about his noise phobia.

Sampson never used to have an issue with noises. Oh a sudden and loud noise might startle him, but thunder storms, fireworks and wind never bothered him.

Until recently.

In the past year he gets very anxious when any of these events take place. When I’m home, we typically go in the bedroom where we can snuggle on the bed. If I am beside him reassuring him, he usually does pretty well. If I’m not home, he heads downstairs to my mom’s apartment. With the apartment being in the basement, it is typically much quieter than the upper part of the house.

He also takes issue with my husband and my mom’s cell phones (either ringing or text alerts) and my mom’s house phone. Mind you, when my phone goes off, whether it be ringing (actually my phone barks) :-), text alert or one of my crazy alarms, it doesn’t bother him at all. Long time readers may remember that last summer we had a problem where the smoke detector went nuts. We don’t know for how long it was beeping but poor Sampson was really freaked out by it.

Dr. Soutter thinks his new aversion to sounds could be as simple as the frequency of the phones is the same as the smoke alarm.

My poor guy.

He does have one bad tooth, right in the front of his mouth. He had that last year too, but it doesn’t appear to be bothering him. Dr. Soutter suggested we take care of it sooner, rather than later because it could cause a bone infection. So I went ahead and scheduled him to have it removed in January.

Other than those issues, he seems to be okay. He’s maintained his weight of 85 pounds, and everything else seems good. We had blood drawn to check for tick borne diseases as well as heartworm and those were both negative.

The biggest issue is making him comfortable and as pain free as we can.  Next week I’ll let you know how we decided to treat his arthritis. In the meantime, have you had experience with pain management, Adequan injections or PEMF? If so, would you mind sharing them with me? Thank you!

This is the Thursday Barks and Bytes Blog Hop hosted by 2 Brown Dawgs and Heart Like a Dog. Grab the badge and the linky code and join us! Please only link up blog posts and as a courtesy to the other hoppers, please add the linky to your post and/or link back to the hosts’ blogs.