Bear & a few more details.

I am going to try to explain this properly without giving away too many details about my husband. It may be hard because it all ties in together.

My husband is a wonderful man in many ways, but he is cynical, a bit grouchy and has no patience and i mean NO patience. That is why he never wanted kids. He is great with them, but that is only for a few hours at a time.

I mentioned he doesn't believe people just do things to be good people. He thinks everyone has an ulterior motive. He does see what i do for others though and how awesome my brother is with us, but that is not enough to make him believe. I don't know why, but i know it has a lot to do with his past. His family also typically doesn't just do things to help others out, most things are for a fee. I get that people are different, so i don't judge it too much because not everyone can be the same. It takes all kinds of people. Anyways, my point in this is that we are very different in the way we think about others. We are two peas in a pod. We think the same on many things, but not this.

Also i mentioned he is not an emotional creature, although he does have emotions. 8 years later and that is still hard for me to accept. I WANT/NEED him to be there for me emotionally but for whatever reason i am just starting to really realize that just isn't going to happen.

When i had my best friend (of 13 years) it wasn't so bad, because i would just talk to her about everything. Since we split i have come to rely on him more because while i have girlfriends, and some of them are pretty awesome i don't seem to trust them the way i did her. It could be because the one i am closest too has already stabbed me in the back 3 different times (i gave her more chances). I didn't talk to her for a couple years but then she came to me and we made up. I love her to bits, and she has been great since, someone i can count on but i just can't extend that last olive branch.

I also mentioned that i don't complain about my husband or our relationship much, i keep most of that private. What i need/want in a best friend though is for all that emotional crap just in general. When i am down about my family/the pedophile/Austin/bear etc i need that person to lift me up. I always thought that was supposed to be your husband, and maybe it is, but it can't be mine.

Sometimes he is really good, and other times not so much. I then feel i am not getting from him what i should be getting and it turns into something bigger because he is not reacting the way i want him to or he is not supportive in the way i need him there. Some of the biggest most stressful times of my life he was there physically, but not emotionally or vice versa and i could never accept that before. I don't think that way. When someone needs you, you should be there. I would do that for him always. He then turns it around so i can't be upset because i am too busy placating him. When my mom got sick he was there at first emotionally, but fighting and arguing with me by the end. I spent my last night there in a hotel room all by myself extremely upset/scared and he was being a jerk.

Now here is where it all kinda hit me. Bear has been limping since he was a baby. He had jumped on the couch and someone grabbed his collar to pull him down(not in a hurtful way) and his chest/shoulder area hit the floor. It was not far to the floor either. He started limping a few days later. It is not all the time, just sometimes. We have taken him to the vet always, right since we got him. Kept him up to date on shots, took him in if he was sick etc. We had xrays done when he was little and they did not find anything. Labs are not out of the "infant/toddler" stage until they are 2 so once he was 2 (he is only going to be 3 on the 14th of this month) we took him into the vet to get a thorough exam. He also appeared to hurt his eye and the pupil was greyish.

She did an xray, and some tests on his eye. She told me she thinks he has a cataract (which is rare in dogs his age) and that she was thinking his shoulder problem was called OCD (not sure the technical term, it is friggen long lol). If she was right he would have to have surgery. She gave me a couple different kinds of medicines for his eye as well. One for infection, one steroids. The infection/pus part cleared up but while it appears to have shrunk the grey area was still there. She sent the xrays away and consulted with the senior vet on the eye. Now;that appointment was a bit costly, but necessary.

I got a phone call a few weeks later from her and she stated that she was 85% sure it was a cataract because if not it would have fully cleared up and that it would require surgery to fix and the cheaper option was just to remove the eye before it got glaucoma. I don't want to lose the eye so for now he has to have daily steroid drops which will keep it at bay until he can have the surgery. She also said she heard back from the bone specialist in Saskatoon (vet teaching hospital) and that he would need surgery as it is a chip of bone (the OCD) and needs to be removed. She said he would have to have an MRI first which itself is $600 to make sure the chip has not dislodged and somewhere else so that he is not under anesthesia too long. The surgery itself is about $1800 so in total almost $2500. That is not including a hotel room because he would need to be there overnight and it is 8 hours from here so we would have to go the day before.

These two surgeries were going to cost a pretty penny. We do not have pet insurance, and i still wouldn't have got it anyways because i have seen so many turned away. They will look for any loophole they can find.

A few weeks ago (right before i wrote that post, i was still emotional) I took bear into a dog trainer to get his nails cut. He is extremely skittish with groomers. He also refuses to have a bath (dogs shouldn't bath often anyways). We had a good groomer that he did well with but she moved away. This one is a new one and she is a trainer, a good one at that. So he was doing ok, she got him on the table. He did not like her putting the leash around his neck and he was a bit scared to get his nails trimmed. It didn't take long for her to do them. He did ok.......until she took him off the table. I was telling her about his anxiety issues and she went to put another type leash around his neck and he freaked the F out. I mean FREAKED. He had a muzzle on, he was foaming (not rabies, just over worked) at the mouth, his eyes were wide. He was flipping himself over, going in circles and he pooped and peed on the flood (from being scared, not sitting there poop & pee). I was completely traumatized. She would not let me go to him. She knew what she was doing, she was calm and had the situation under control. He had to work it out. He scratched her in the process and that really got to me to.

Now i know that will sound worse than it was. I took it worse than it really was too. He did NOT like that leash around his neck. He is VERY attached to his own stuff. She did not hurt him in any way. He just freaked the F out. She did something that made him feel uncomfortable and he was saying he was not OK with it. I mentioned before he has separation anxiety, but he also has anxiety with grooming. With her training she was not scared of him at all, but any other person would have been. Thing is, he didn't even want to bite her(or try, he just growled), he just wanted out of that situation he didn't like. She let him cool off on his own and i took the muzzle off him and put his own leash on and he was perfectly fine. Mine attaches to his collar, that one went over his head. That was what made him freak. I have only seen him freak like that once before though (and not that bad) and i burst out crying right there in her space. I thought there was something seriously wrong with my dog. I thought i would not be able to have him around people again. I went a bit overboard with my thinking because i never seen him go to that extreme.

She has this program that is a board & train. She told me she truly felt she could work him through his anxiety in uncomfortable situations and actually get him comfortable with a bath. He would not have extreme anxiety anymore etc etc. The only problem is.......he would need two week board and train, i know myself that one week would not be enough for it to be lasting with him. It would take him 3-4 days just to be comfortable. Well that is $1900 plus GST. With that on the last day she does a 3-4 hour session with the humans too, to teach them how to keep working with the dog the way she does so the dog does not revert. She keeps the dog home with her, takes him to work (she owns a kennel and doggy daycare), has the dog in her pack for walks etc. Basically treats the dog like her own but training him as well. I know people personally who have used her and they think the world of her. I also saw with my own eyes how calm she is. I think she would be wonderful for Bear, but i can't afford that, especially with the move.

When i got home i immediately called my husband, i started bawling. He was not supportive in the way i thought he would be or in a way i needed him to be. I was traumatized with a capital T. He said he would not pay for it, because he did not think Bear needed it (i didn't ask him to). He also said that of course she would say he needed the training because she just wants the money. I was like wtf, i said you do realize that while yes, she is a bit pricey (because she DOES have the proper training) but that some people just like to help animals out. My doctor gets paid a pretty penny too but he is a genuine nice guy, and everyone loves him. She is worth the cost, but still comes down to i can't at this time.

Anyways, he continued to be extremely negative which wasn't helping me. I really just wanted comfort. So i got upset and told him whenever something major happens he is never there for me so i was letting him go and i was gonna call my mom. So i called my mom and she made me feel better. He then sent me a bunch of crappy texts and it turned into a huge thing. I like to keep texts light because so many people fight through messaging (with friends too) and it is very easy to get misconstrued.

So that is how it all started. Yes i asked him to move for me, yes i asked him to step out of his comfort zone, but i have done it our whole relationship. I cater to this man. Everything i do is for him (he does things for me too, like clean the house). It is about time that i get the same effort that i put into the relationship. I can't live in a town with the pedophile and so many people who support him. There also are very few opportunities for jobs here unless you in the nursing field and i am not good at that. Every administrative job has between 20-50 people applying. He refuses to live in or around the city here so that wasn't an option either. At some point you have to compromise for someone/something and this is it. He reminded me over and over for years that if he hadn't met me he was going to go work in the oil field in Alberta and i held him back. He is VERY set in his ways and as i reminded him he can't ask me to change but stay completely with the same mindset, that is not fair. I know the only reason he is there is because of me but i think once he is adjusted and i am there he will be ok. The first stretch is the hardest. If he gave it a fair chance we would be ok.