Hershey

Today was a big day for Judith - I wasn't expecting to make a trip like this so soon (and especially during the peak of RSV season).  We had our first visit to Hershey Med to see a specialist there.  The reason?  Judith's newborn screening came back with a positive for cystic fibrosis (CF).  I'm really not concerned - John is actually a carrier, and I am not.  More than likely Judith will also be a carrier, but we have to do further screening just to be sure.  Needless to say, we have to repeat the sweat test because Judith didn't sweat enough (she's too small to do it - go figure).  We'll make the trek again for that, and another trip there for our study follow-up appointment.  I'm really looking forward to that one!

My only regret was we don't have the stroller yet (still in shipping transit), and we had to walk kind of far for some of the stuff.  Well, it was kind of far to be hauling a car seat, my purse, and a diaper bag around.  Not that I'm complaining, mind you.  If you know the distance you have to walk to get anywhere around that hospital campus, though, you'd understand why a stroller is an invaluable tool to have.  By our next trip we'll have it, and we can possibly avoid some parking headaches by parking in the garage.

Judith really likes riding in the car, and I know we're lucky that she enjoys it.  She slept the entire way there, only stirring when we came to a red light.  She doesn't like red lights, and fusses when we stop.

In other news, I have a traumatized Boston on my hands.  Lady was attacked by our neighbor's dog yesterday.  One caveat before I go into the story: I totally realize that my dogs are not perfect and completely innocent in many things, but in this case Lady was doing what dogs do: protecting her turf and her family.

My dad was here helping, and we let the dogs out a little later in the afternoon than what we normally do.  Our neighbors are great people, but they let their dogs out without leashes.  They have a pit bull, and he's constantly roaming onto our property and even running onto our patio to get to our dogs (this past summer the dog tried to scratch down our screen door on the patio to get to Buster & Lady - not cool).  Yesterday, the neighbor's dogs were out, and the pit was near the fence line.  Lady saw him, raised her hackles, ran to the end of her leash and started to bark at him.  Problem was the pit decided to come after Lady (on our property/section of common area) and actually attacked her.  Lady bit her lip in the fray, and the pit bit her leg.  He wouldn't let my Lady go, and our neighbor finally got in between them to release Lady from the pit's grasp.  My dad was frantically trying to pull Lady back.  She was so worked up that she refused to go out and do her business until this morning.  Thank goodness I had them at the vet about a month ago, and their shots are up to date.  The pit didn't puncture Lady's skin, but he scratched it with his teeth.  Fast forward to the same time this afternoon, and Lady refuses to go out and do her business.  She wanted back in the house right away, even though my dad checked to make sure the other dogs weren't out.  He said that when she came back in, she was shaking, then fell asleep and must have been dreaming about the attack yesterday because she began trembling like a leaf, complete with back legs twitching differently than what they normally do when she's dreaming.  The only way she'd go out this evening was on her walking leash and in the front yard.

Needless to say I'm pretty pissed about the whole situation.  There is a borough law that all dogs must be on a leash in the borough unless they're in a fenced yard.  We can't have a completely fenced yard in the association because of the common area - you can have decorative fences, but that hardly does anything for containment purposes.  I know our dogs are sensitive right now, because they're trying to protect Judith.  But this isn't the first time it's happened, and the pit does not recall like he should, especially for being off leash.

I don't know how to go about resolving this issue.  And maybe I'm just extra skittish because it is a pit bull - I know there's a lot of stigma around them, and not all dogs are bad, but one that doesn't come when called is not a good thing.  My opinion: I've never been a fan of the pit bull, and seeing how this one acts doesn't cement a positive image in my mind.  John & I had a good talk about it, and we're going to try to see what we can do to get the situation resolved.