Shedding Season

One of the reasons I didn't want a husky was because they blow their coats every spring and fall. That reason far from outweighed wanting a husky ever since I even considered getting a dog after I moved out of my parents' house. Little did I know that would be a very good reason not to get a husky. I deal with it, but I don't like it. I don't like my carpet looking all dingy and grey because there is always a layer of dog hair on it. I don't like the hairs all over my clothes. A lint brush works well for those things, and I learned to keep one in the car to use after I got out, but it doesn't work for food. I'm finding way too much dog hair in food, and it doesn't go unnoticed like most of the cat hair does. Gross, I know, but it's the truth. I'm sure we've eaten several animals' worth of hair.

Now I'm wondering when this shed-fest is going to end. It is no longer spring, yet the beast is still shedding without abandon. I can still pull clumps of hair from her just as I did a month ago. When we all went fishing a couple weeks ago, I opted to sit on the shore with the dog and pull out clumps of hair. I was surrounded in my own personal lake of fur when it was time to go. Fur was floating on the real lake. Fur was stuck to everything. I could have stuffed a couple throw pillows with the amount of fur I pulled off that dog, yet she still sheds. I have no doubt I could stuff a mattress with all the fur the animal has shed and continues to shed. I think she is producing new fur so she can shed constantly. We are now full into summer, and I see no sign of an end to the shedding. Don't think that shaving the dog has not entered my mind several times by now.

We've had to deal with fur for years, so I am used to the vacuuming and the lint brush worth its weight in gold. Cats seem to shed at a steady rate year-long, so we've grown accustomed to wearing fur-covered clothing and picking the stray hairs we can see off of our food. The silky longhaired cat is the worst of the shedding felines, and I've vowed never to keep a longhair cat again. Besides dealing with fur everywhere, there's also ten times the hairballs coughed up by that cat than the other shorthair cat, and most of the time the shorthair coughs up hairballs that look suspiciously the same as the longhair even though the longhair is orange and the shorthair is Tonkinese. I say I will never have another longhair cat, but I will probably fall in love with a damn Persian tomorrow, even though I really don't like their flat little faces.

I have no real hope of ever being a fur-free household again. I love animals way too much, and even if we never got another animal after these ones (who I swear will live forever, because I say so) leave us, the fur would not magically disappear. It was worked its way into the depths of our furniture and carpet and everything we own. Once it's there, it multiplies and grows. It does. Anyone with animals knows that.

I could go for bald cats and dogs that need hair cuts instead of shedding, but I don't care for either of those. Bald cats are just hideous, and dogs that need haircuts are generally too yappy and irritating for me. So� that dooms me to be a crazy animal lady with a house full of Sphinxes, poodles, spaniels, Persians, Lhasa Apsos and any other breed that will keep me firmly wedged in insanity. I will eat ramen noodles while I cook them chicken and steak, because that's what crazy animal people do.

I think I'm well on my way to that end. I'm beginning to shed myself. This isn't the first time I've lost an unusually large amount of hair, and just like the dog, I continue to shed unbelievable amounts of hair on an hourly basis. My hair is constantly in a ponytail to keep strands from falling all over the place, including our meals. Pulling a short dog hair out of your dinner is one thing. Pulling a twelve-inch strand of copper hair is quite another. I know the ponytail solution makes the hair loss worse, but it's a necessity. My hair wreaks havoc on the vacuum cleaner and itches you to death when stuck in your clothes. It wraps itself around things and cuts the circulation off toes and fingers. It's like animal hair's evil cousin, and it's in nearly the same level of abundance right now.

I go through a good shedding every once in a while, but these ones tend to make me a little nervous. I don't have them very often, so I always worry that the brain tumor I know is lurking in my skull has finally come to take me. When I look on the Internet for hair loss information, it's always related to nasty diseases, and I think I have each and every one of them. Once I even counted the number of hairs I lost in a day to see if it was in the normal range. It wasn't, and I have been sure I'm dying ever since. I probably am dying because I'm worrying myself to death.

The thing is, whenever I go through a major shed, I always get very sluggish and moody too. I had my thyroid checked at my physical, and that all checked out normal as it has every time it's been checked. I don't seem to have a darn thing wrong with me at all, but I have a hard time explaining why I have headaches and feel like sleeping all day long at the same time I'm shedding every last hair on my head. If you even mention hair loss to the doctor though, they generally blow it off, because people freak out about that kind of thing all the time, and it's usually nothing. I've never gone bald, but it has gotten much thinner than normal. Eventually the shedding would stop, and I'd feel right again, so I'd let it go.

That's probably what I'm going to do this time too. The fatigue has done nothing at all for my training, and I haven't done a thing in several days because I feel far too shitty to do more than walk a flight of stairs. I'm assuming it will pass in a couple weeks, and the girth of my ponytail will be a bit smaller, but I'll still have a full head of hair and maybe be a little cooler this summer. And hell� if I go bald, I think that would be pretty damn cool, and not just temperature-wise.