Alvin

Alvin
Alvin sticks out his tongue when he is nervous

Friday, November 11, 2011

Alvin's Gone International

One of the features on this blog allows me to see which country readers are from and I have been so surprised at the number of international readers and the countries people are from: Lebanon, Jordan, Russia, Germany, Malaysia, Singapore, Canada, New Zealand, Argentina, Spain, United Kingdom, Brazil, Poland, Colombia, and Thailand.  I don't know why the French are giving us the cold shoulder but it wouldn't be a good blog without a bit of international controversy.  If any of you are ever so inclined, including readers in the United States, please leave a comment letting the other readers know anything you wish to share.  Thank you to all of you who come here and read about Alvin's ongoing adventures.

So, now to the star of the show, Alvin.  Oh boy!  Poor guy, he looks like a boxer on the wrong end of a boxing match because his eyes are slits today due to the swelling but this does not stop him from keeping his schedule of sitting and staring at me for hours.  Due to his swelling, it looks like he has either fallen asleep sitting up or is very stoned and the only way I can tell that he is still awake is when his head turns.  He was particularly cuddly last night, which surprised me because I really thought that he would be standoffish due to the fact that I drove him to his own version of hell and back.  I imagine he was either still quite drugged from the medication or that we now share a trauma bond.  When I worked with abused children it was not uncommon to see children very attached to their abuser and it is referred to as a trauma bond.  The idea is that due to heightened emotions the victim shares while with the abuser, as well as the isolation the victim feels towards others, they form an unhealthy attachment to the person that harmed them.  Last night when Alvin was so affectionate and trusting, I could only roll my eyes and feel like the perpetrator for willingly taking him through so many scary events in one day.  Between long car rides, people touching him, being in enclosed spaces, and coming out with eye lids the size of golf balls, I have sufficiently started a great foundation for a long-lasting trauma bond.  Now I have to give him eye drops twice a day.......picture that one.  When they told me I just stared at them, wondering if they were hearing their words and thinking through what they had seen in Alvin.  For goodness sake, hours before we were all on the floor on all fours trying to hold him down so he could be examined because being on the table was too much for him but these same people somehow think that I am going to single-handedly hold him still enough to get eye drops in those slits for eyes?  Yesterday the vet ended up spending about three minutes with him, walking out without comment and reappearing right away with a syringe in hand to sedate him way ahead of schedule, but apparently I am supposed to have super powers that they didn't possess.

Through all of this I am assuming that Alvin is going to feel way better then he did.  I am going to call the vet's office today to find out a bit more about what the doctor thinks about how much pain and discomfort he was in before the surgery because I wonder if that could have been partially responsible for some of his behavior and not wanting his head or face touched.  We all know what it feels like to have one eye lash brushing against our eye but apparently he had tons of them.  There's a good possibility he is going to have to go through this procedure again and my guess is that after that one he will come home, pack his bones, and get on out of here.  Poor guy!

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