Saturday 9/17 - dog stress

Nothing new in the weight department today.  I really appreciated everyone's comments and encouragement on my last post.  I still might try the fast track in a week or two to see how it works, but other than that I'm not going to change anything else I'm doing.  I feel like I've gotten to a point where I'm eating so much healthier than I used to, choose only healthy carbs now when I have them, and only get sugar from basically my vegetables and dark chocolate in the evening.  I think the weight will come off even it takes me another six months to lose the last twenty.  Even though the scale is slow, I've really noticed a difference in my clothes.  I used to wear a size 16 pants and right before I started the BFC I had even bought a couple size 18's.  I'm 5' 6" and even before I was married and had kids (almost 23 years ago), I wore a size 12, maybe some of my clothes were a size 10. I was in shape then too!  Unless they are making sizes different these days I have no idea how people are getting into size 6's or 4's.  Anyway, it's getting cooler here now and I went to try on my jeans and they were too big - yeah!  I decided to just buy a cheap pair at Walmart for now since I'm still hoping to lose more weight.  I bought a size 14 and believe it or not, they not only fit but I can fit two fingers in the waist while I've got them on!  My shirts went from a size 1X to a size L.  So in general I am doing pretty well, I just have to stop being in such a rush and give myself time to lose the weight in a healthy way.

So in other news I got some bad news about my dog this week.  We have two dogs, Buddy & Marley.  Marley is three years old and is a yellow lab/retriever mix.  Buddy is an Australian shepherd/beagle mix. Buddy will be eleven this March.  Anyway, in the last three weeks Buddy has developed a cough that sounds like kennel cough.  I took him into the vet this week and they told me he has a heart murmur.  The vet wants me to take him to a canine cardiologist that is about 45 minutes away.  She told me their workup would be about $450.00 to diagnose his heart condition and find the right meds for him.  Geesh!!  I love my dogs but I have two kids in college and that is a lot of money!  So after much thought (and kids making me feel guilty) I decide to do it.  I call the cardiologist yesterday and they say it's not $450 it's $600!  Well that is just too much for only a diagnosis.  I started looking around for other vets in my area that might be able to figure out my dogs problems without him going to a cardiologist and I finally found one that sounded hopeful. This vet told me she could do all the diagnostic tests the cardiologist would do except for a heart sonogram.  She sounded super nice and talked with me on the phone herself for about twenty minutes. She even said she could see him the next morning, which is this morning.  I hope she gives me some better news and I'm able to give Buddy another couple years with medication.  I love dogs, and have always had them, but I do hate this part.  The part when they get older and such hard decisions are needed.  Wish me luck!

Buddy & Marley