I will say that there *are* a lot of bad, older translations of FD out there, and Pevear and Volokhonsky's modern ones are excellent. But—as someone who loves him and even wrote my senior thesis on Bros K and The Idiot (my favorite)—I concede that in any translation he probably works best if you're a God-hungry Russophile, which is a pretty niche category of reader and person.

Heee, this also tends to be my feel-bad work-listening trajectory. (For me, bluegrass = Bill Monroe, Louvin Brothers, etc., I don't follow the modern scene.) I think for me the pattern is: mope flamboyantly in that wonderful Mountain Goats way (I remember an explanatory interview quote of his as going something like: "Sometimes the best way to feel bad is to feel awesome."), then eventually just let the dry fire of gospel bluegrass cleanse you of all personal feeling.

Also western tanagers are some consolation! And man, I miss the ravens from my time in New Mexico—of course you can get crows anywhere and those are good too, but nothing beats those beaky, croaky friends.

Corrrrvidddds, I love 'em all. But especially ravens (but I don't live where they live anymore :<(> ). I highly recommend this book about their impressive brains and societies! http://www.amazon.com/Ravens-Winter-Bernd-Heinric...

Oh, we got our rescue at around the same age. The process of overcoming her separation anxiety was gradual; probably took about a year until she was consistently totally fine. (For us, a major help was just giving up trying to crate her—I know it's really comforting for lots of dogs, but in this case getting her in there was stressing her out so much that there was nowhere to go but down. We just ended up dog-proofing the main rooms and letting her hang out freely in them.)

If she starts freaking out as soon as you make moves to leave, you might try a program of desensitization. Try, say, picking up your keys and walking toward the door a bunch of times (when you have no plans to go anywhere) if that's what sets her off, and reward her when she's able to handle it calmly. Then you can progress to opening the door, stepping outside for a moment, and so on. It'll at least buy you some time and give her less time to ramp up the freakout.

Finally: you've probably figured this out already, but an early mistake we made was spending a lot of time coaxing her into the crate or petting her and trying to calm her down before we left. The bandaid approach works much better than a gradual departure in which the dog has time to sense that something bad's about to happen

Can she be distracted by treats? A hearty Kong was what allowed us to at least get out of the house before the horrible yelping started. Eventually, she calmed down and now is fine—probably partly just because she's gotten mellower and started trusting that we'll come back, but I imagine the association between us leaving and her getting tasty things is pretty strong by now. Hang in there!