An answer...

Last night was just brutal for me.  Amos started vomiting and didn't stop for hours.  All over the sofa.  All over the rug.  All over the pillows.  All over me.  All over the floor.  All over the main staircase.  I took away his water, even though I was worried about his hydration.  His last expulsion was around 3:00 AM, when he vomited in my bed.  SIGH.

I did not get much sleep.
I dreamt he died.

His vet and vet tech are simply wonderful.  To him.  To me.  Because I often sit on the floor, they prepare a room for me with a few blankets on the floor for padding.  Because Amos is so nervous, they will start his appointment sitting on the floor with him and then move to the table.  They listen to ALL of my fears and worries.

We determined that, hopefully, the vomiting and the denuding himself are two separate issues.  We believe the vomiting was from the benadryl, that Amos is unable to tolerate it.  I stopped it.  The vomiting stopped.  I wish he could have such an effective medication, but I am glad Amos is no longer vomiting.

Whilst I was whispering sweet nothings to Amos and giving him body massage after waking this afternoon, I discovered a flea.  It shocked me since he is on a combination of heart worm and flea medicine.  Being an ex-professor, I put the flea between a piece of tape (I should have wrapped it up in a kleenex) so that I could bring it to the appointment.  Given the flea's presence and the worst bare spots being on his behind, Amos appears to have a bad allergic reaction to flea bites.  Since he had no fleas and no flea dirt (poop) when they searched his body, the vet thinks it was just that one.  It is difficult for me to think that one teeny tiny thing could do this to my dog.  Plus, I am highly allergic to fleas and I have no bites!

It turns out the combination medication that Amos takes is one that renders fleas sterile so that they cannot reproduce.  So, the vet switched Amos to a combination medicine that kills fleas, so that one can only bite once.  Sadly, that type is more than double the price of his original medication.

The thing is ... for 11 days now, I have been walking Amos.  A couple of weeks ago, I spent the whole day languishing on the sofa, not even eating.  Amos languished with me.  I was struck with fear that I was turning Amos into a couch potato, so I decided to start trying to walk Amos every day. To venture out with my cane and walk a few block out a few blocks back.  Let me tell you, Amos prefers to be the couch potato.

With the warm weather and Amos having to walk through leaves on the sidewalk, he likely picked up a flea on our walk.  So much for puppy dog exercise!

Given his cherry red skin, even on his lips, the more expensive combination medicine is warranted.  He gets his heart worm medicine on the 1st of each month, but the vet asked me to switch today so as to prevent another occurrence.  She said it can take a few weeks to get his inflammation calmed down and it is best not to have any more bite whilst working on that.  I wanted to tell her I'd be glad to stop walking, but that would not be best for my little Fluffernutter.

There were two good bits of news:

First, Amos had become a bit of a chunky monkey.  His weight ballooned to just over 27 pounds.  Given that his mom was eight pounds and his dad was 10, he already is a bit of a porker.  The vet would like him, for his frame, to be about 22 pounds.  We dropped his food down last December, but at his visit in May, he was still ... hefty.  She talked about switching to a sedentary diet since I am disabled, but that costs more money.  So, I asked for me to try one more thing.  I just didn't tell her what.

You see, I think dry dog food should be wet.  And I was wetting his food with milk.  I doubted that a little bit of milk twice a day would make a difference, but I switched to water.  The other main thing I did was start being meticulous with his scoops of food.  I have a quarter cup scoop (from powdered  Gatorade) and he gets two scoops per meal.  I was rounding them, which I realized meant he was really getting five scoops of food a day.  Now, I watch to ensure the scoop is mostly level before dropping it in his bowl.

Amos is now 23 pounds.  One more pound to go!  His vet believes that if I continue walking him each day, then he will be the lean, mean Fluffernutter machine she wants him to be.  The vet tech helped me adjust his harness because it was practically falling off of him.

Second, Amos is now taking theanine, too!  A short while ago, Becky mused about theanine for dogs when we were discussing his angst.  I smacked myself in the forehead at my stupidity and went searching.  I found several brands and set about reading ingredients.  I settled on Composure, primarily because it only had three active ingredients instead of a boatload of things.  Today is Day 6 of his taking Theanine.

I have noticed that Amos flinches less when I touch him and have deeply enjoyed that.  Since the pit bull attack, he has not enjoyed being petted.  What was remarkable is that Amos let both the vet and the vet tech touch and handle him! AND when it came to examining his head, they did not have to use a muzzle.  I was sooooooooo excited ... doubly excited that they noticed a difference in him.

That pit bull attack robbed so much from Amos.  It changed him and diminished his quality of life.  I have long searched for ways to ease his angst, his constant hyper-vigilence. This is a small, but significant step in that direction.

I certainly hope that Amos' inflammation calms down more quickly than the two-three weeks the vet said that it could take.  It is hard for me to look at his raw skin, to know that he is hurting himself.  And he's been just plain miserable.  At least the answer to his illness is far better than I feared when he was puking his guts up.  And it is a tiny bit cool that we share the same allergy!