Dang. I hope you find what you need. Did you donate it to some place you can go get it back? Drat. Feel better. Soft hug over the internet so as not to touch your painful areas. Take care of you.

Thanks for the responses. There's a large body of thought (and evidence, actually) that "juvenile spaying" is the way to go. I did a LOT of reading on the topic before taking THE BABY in for the procedure, and all of it was very in favor. It's only considered a juvenile spay if they're 16 weeks or younger and she was right at 16 weeks. In shelters, they're spaying them at six weeks old. The new anesthetics (I'm told) are a world apart from the older anesthetics - which was the main reason for delaying surgery until a dog had some age on her. The pros are, the puppies heal much faster and there are fewer complications. The cons are (this is my own opinion), it's not pretty to lock a puppy in a crate with an e-collar for most of her 24-hour day. This is precious socialization time, and she *has* to be quiet so she has to either be on drugs, or spend a bit of time in the crate - for the first few days, anyway. And now with this complication, she's in there until the infection heals (which I hope is no more than a couple days away). She can not be running around and/or jumping - which is what she longs to do. Prior to this, we had a lot of fun, taking long walks and going to the dog park every day and playing catch in the back yard. She was a tired dog and a good dog. Now she's been cooped up for six days and is all fired up. I dunno. The juvenile spay is supposed to be THE thing. I thought it was the best thing to do for my little dog and I spent a whole lot of time doing my research before I made these arrangements. We got into trouble when she licked her stitches and/or when she insisted on jumping up and down like she was a coiled spring. Rose

bnicebkind--There isn't enough space on here for me to tell it all. Suffice it to say that she undermined, interfered, and manipulated everyone around her. We just caught the brunt of it because we lived closer and were more available to her. I bit my tongue constantly, tolerated it for 9 years and let it roll off of me. Finally had enough and when I tried to talk to her about it, she didn't like it. Luckily my husband stood with me, or I guess we would be divorced by now. She is just an evil person and after 5 years of being totally away from the entire family, we have peace. The stress of it was creating health problems for me, although at the time I didn't recognize it. Afterwards, all the health problems quickly disappeared. That is what made me realize how bad stress can be. We have all the normal stresses in life, but we don't have outsiders contributing to the stress. I have healed from it, but I will never forget it. Even after this much time, none of it has lessened in my mind. Occassionally someone tries to "pop in" on our lives, but we have managed to quickly knock them back in their holes. In fact, just recently SIL tried to contact us, but I quickly stopped that one and let her know in no uncertain terms were any of them welcome. I refuse to allow them the opportunity to create that kind of havoc in our lives again. When people make your life miserable, then you need to remove them from your life. It doesn't matter who it is and I don't believe in "blood is thicker than water". We have no regrets other than I regret I took it for so long. I do occassionally wonder who her vicitm is now, because I know she has one, but I am thankful it isn't me anymore.

I found out why his oldest daughter had been so difficult, and it wasn't because she was a spoiled "brat". She has a hard edge and that hard edge is thanks to Dad. On a Saturday this spring, I received a phone call from a woman. She told me she had been having an affair with my dh for several months (she lives out of town). He travels for business and she gave me details that fit and I knew she was telling me the truth. She told me they kept in touch by text-messaging. I didn't even know he knew how to text. Her parting shot was "I guarantee you there are others". She was very angry with him. He must have made her promises he didn't live up to. DH wasn't at home when she called. When he arrived home, I confronted him. He confessed. I got online and went through the text messages and found I couldn't see what was written but I could see the history. I saw another phone number from a different city that kept showing up and sure enough, it was another woman he was also carrying on with. Mind you, just weeks before this happened, I told my Mom that I was so lucky because I knew where he was every night (watching TV at home). I had no reason to believe he was misbehaving when he was out of town. I completely trusted him. Then came the realization that he had lied to me about the reason for his divorce from his first wife. Since he was in a "confessing" mood, I asked and he confirmed he was the guilty party in that situation, too. He begged me to stay with him and try to make our marriage work. I couldn't do it. I never even considered that we could make it work after he deceived me (from the very beginning) and then he betrayed me by cheating on me with multiple TOW's. We are no longer married. He's still trying to talk me into giving him another chance but there is just no way. I've gone through it all - shock, anger, self-pity, despair and now I am reaching acceptance that I did what I had to do to take care of ME by divorcing him. It is not about punishing him but it is about me having my OWN life, separate from him and his lies. I can say that I am very much enjoying being back in the driver's seat of my life. I have talked to his ex numerous times since then. She has been very supportive because she went through the exact same thing with him - over and over. He is a serial cheater and I think our ability to talk to one another helps us both. I think he is just a real wolf in sheep's skin and she thinks he is a great guy. She still loves him, but she did have two children with him and spent most of her life with him. I didn't. I also spoke to his oldest daughter. She cried on the phone. I felt very sorry for her. She has been hurt so badly by what he did to her Mom and to their family. She loves her Dad but she hates him, too and I think she was more aware of his cheating than her little sister. I asked both the ex and the oldest daughter why they didn't say anything to me about his infidelity with the ex (I had no idea) and they both replied that they assumed that I knew. As for the youngest adult daughter, she calls me frequently and we get together. She told me she didn't want to lose me as a friend and her Mom is very supportive of us being friends. I would never say anything bad about her Dad to her (or her sister). We just talk girl talk and I do love her. The points I am trying to make is never assume the wife knows. She is often the last to find out her husband is cheating. And never assume a man has told his spouse-to-be the truth about his past. Also, beware of the recently divorced man who pushes you into marriage. There are reasons for this. First of all, if he is recently divorced and looking for a serious relationship, he can't possibly be over his marriage and divorce. If he acts like he is, something is very wrong with the picture. If there is a hostile child (or adult child), the reason may not be BM. The reason may be that the child is in conflict (love-hate) with Dad because of something Dad did. The other reasons the man may want to push the marriage issue quickly is 1. Financial 2. To try to remedy his image or help him with a bad family/child situation 3. He is afraid to be alone. I learned a huge lesson. I can relate to Christie Brinkley when she says she will never marry again. Never is a long, long time, but if I ever marry again, it will not be to a recently divorced man and I will have a prenuptual agreement and I will keep my finances separate from his. In spite of what happened to me, I still believe in love and I still believe in marriage - with the right person. I hope my Mom is still alive for many years to come. If I meet someone and introduce her to him, I will LISTEN to what she has to say. I will never let a man rush me again. I'm technically not in a "step" situation any more but I'd like to continue to read and post. I may be able to offer a very different and hopefully helpful point of view.