Another day, another bucket of hair

Parker and I are now on a schedule where I attempt to remove hair from some part of his body about every 3rd day.  Sometimes I'm really ambitious (like yesterday) and we have a morning session and an afternoon session.  Other days, not so much. 

I'm of the mind that if you're willing to put in the effort to research and try something new, and you're not afraid of some failure, you can pretty much learn to do anything (I put that in bold because it's a pretty important life philosophy).  And having Parker around gives me daily opportunities to challenge this theory.  Most things are going well, but the dog grooming is kicking. my. ass.  Initially I thought "$80?!?  Every 6 weeks?!?!  Oh hellllllll no.  I can do this."  Now . . . $80 for a dog haircut seems kind of like a bargain.

Today I buzzed his body shorter (poor guy still gets so hot when we're out walking!) and did 1 foot halfway.  So 1/8 of his feet is done.  Not including toenails. 

Here he poses with the bucket of hair I removed today:

In other hair news, mine is still falling out.  A lot.  The bald patches are widening, despite the shots, extra vitmains, and medicated shampoo that makes my scalp all tingly.  When I shake my head it smells like a medicine cabinet.  BUT----as more hair falls out, new little hairs are growing in!  Check out the comparison pictures:

Before (5.15):                                                                   After (6.3):  (See the fuzz???)

Closer up . . . see, there's little fuzzy hair there.  Something's happening!

Before:                                                                             After:

I felt a little crazy taking the pictures at first, but now I'm glad to have them for comparison purposes :) 

More hair drama, and Scrabble Pt. 2

Today was round 17 (ok, really, round 5) of attempting to cut Parker's hair.  The electric clippers that we bought aren't strong enough (we got "medium" and apparently we need "heavy duty") so I reverted back to using scissors, and did as much trimming as I could while outside at the park. 

Clipping away:

It might be hard to see the difference in pics, but there's a big one.  The fluff is gone, replaced by the softest little curls.  It's like having a sheep.

                 Before:                                                                               After:

If you look closely, you can see little white splotches in the grass.  That's Parker's fur (I bagged as much as I could scrape up, and figure the rest will be gathered by birds to pad their nests.).

Parker!  Get off my lap!  (Maya is eating a sticker in these pictures.  And, what's the deal with perspective?  Why does Parker look gigantic in one picture and tiny in the other?)

You may remember that back in the day, Dave made a scrabble board shadowbox with the Nieder family names.  After we got Parker, Dave realized that his name would fit across the bottom of the board . . . but, alas, we had thrown away our extra tiles.  I mentioned this on a message board, and one of the lovely ladies  (thank you!!!) there offered to mail us the letters . . . and here's the finished product!

Well, this doesn't seem fair

I'm losing my hair.

Have you ever heard someone say something like "These kids are going to make me lose my hair"?  I always thought that it was just a crazy thing that old people say.  Like when someone says that if you sneeze with your eyes open your eyeballs will pop out (that's not true, right?  Anyone willing to test it out?).  But, in reality, it seems like Maya is making my hair fall out.

 In clumps. 

And now I have bald patches. 

And pictures to prove it.

Before we get to the pictures, let's take a moment to dwell on how much this sucks.  I don't want to lose my hair.  I don't want to have giant bald patches.  I had a full on panic attack (with tears and a hysterical can't-catch-your-breath-hiccupy-kind-of-conversation with my mom) yesterday afternoon about it.  This morning I went it to the dermatologist, who said that I have alopecia areata (fancy latin name for bald patches, caused by an autoimmune response in which my body is attacking the hair).  She injected me like a million times (ok, somewhere between 35-60---I lost count because she kept talking to me) with cortisone, which will make my body stop attacking the hair follicles so that new hair can grow in.

My googling tells me that this type of hair loss is often caused by a major stressor a few months prior, which totally makes sense to me.  A few months ago I was cycling through the stages of grief, coming to terms with the fact that Maya's disabilities may not be as short lived as I had hoped.  I was depressed, I was finding a support group, I was changing her therapists.  I was kind of a mess for a few hours everyday.

But how unfair is that----that you go through a traumatic time, and then a while later lose your hair?!  What the hell.  Seriously.

So hopefully I'm going through a big shed, and the hair will come back rapidly.  Dave asked me yesterday (mid-panic attack) if I'm stressed about things now, and through my tears I laughed and pointed at my head and said "Yes!  My hair!"

But I've got to at least put it out here.  I often things of the Indigo Girls saying "You have to laugh at yourself, because you'd cry your eyes out if you didn't."  And so, expect balding jokes, people.  And, if things get any worse, expect some unique fashion statements (would it be weird to glue a flower to the top of my head?  or color my patches with magic marker?).

And now, pictures:

A bald patch in the front, along the part:  (try to ignore the frames without pictures that adorn our bathroom)

The biggest and scariest patch.  I hate to even look at this.  Thank goodness I'm fairly tall and have enough hair to change my part around and cover it.

Luckily, I still have a lot of hair.  And with some part maneuvering, I can minimize damage. 

If this is the worst that it gets, it's not really a big deal and somewhat funny.  But I'm kind of stressed out about it getting worse.  Oh crap, I'm not supposed to get stressed, it makes my hair fall out. 

Oh, irony.

Speaking of irony, I used the new clippers to shave (or attempt to shave) Parker today.  35 minutes in, I'm sweating, he's panting, there's so much fur in my bathtub that it looks like I killed a sheep, and he still looks like this:

I think he's taunting me.

Parker's first haircut

Disclaimer: I do not know how to cut a poodle's hair (yet).  I will learn (because it's good to learn new things, because grooming provides an opportunity to bond with your dog, and because we can't afford to shell out the big bucks every few weeks for a stylish new doggie do).  I'm going to buy a clipper kit and video. 

However, in the meantime, poor Parker was so shaggy I began to wonder if he could see. 

So I bought some round-tips scissors at the drugstore, and gave him a bone to chew on.  Then I contorted myself around his chewing head and did my best job trimming what I could.

The results definitely need some cleaning up, but my goal was just to shorten the fur without making it an unpleasant experience for him, since it was my first trimming attempt.  Poodle owners everywhere may be shuddering at my butcher job, but he doesn't seem embarrassed (and I couldn't care less!):