I. Love. My. Dogs. And, I feel completely justified in saying it with such emphasis because I do not have kids {yet}. That motherly, nurturing gene that exists in women is fulfilled in me by a 17-pound male Puggle who continually poops in our basement and a 75-pound female Boxer-Pit Bull who takes up three-quarters of our king size bed. I spoil them so rotten that my husband may {or may not} have said once or twice in our nearly one year of marriage, "I wish you loved me as much as the dogs." What he can't possibly understand is that I do not love them more, just different.
First of all, my girl Roxy is just that,
my girl {although she would probably choose my husband if given the choice because I am convinced that she has a crush on him}. She has traveled with me through three states, four houses and five jobs. In a time in my life when I packed up everything I had ever known and moved 1,500 miles away from Colorado to Portland, Oregon, she was sitting in the passenger seat next to me. Then, again, when I packed up everything from Portland to move 3,000 miles to Louisville, Kentucky, she was in the back seat. She was a very stable part of a very unstable time in my life. Frank, on the other hand, is my little prince. He prances around the house, following in every single one of my footsteps, and it is not possible for him to sit anywhere without human contact. He does not have the potential to hurt even a fly {although he tries}, and I recently discovered that he viciously attacks all of our mail when the poor delivery man slides it into our door mail slot. His personality is unparalleled, which is what made it so devastating when we came home from church on Sunday and he started yelping every time we went to pick him up. All we kept saying was, "Something is really wrong with him," and yet neither of us wanted to fork over the hundreds of dollars to go to an emergency clinic on a Sunday afternoon.
Time out. Before you go and call us bad pet owners, here's the down low on Roxy's life up to this point. She is approximately five. I rescued her at three-months-old. Two years ago, she got hit by a Land Rover going 40 MPH on a Friday night while visiting my future in-laws. We were forced to rush her to an emergency clinic where she stayed for a week while they performed surgery to reconstruct her pelvis {yes!}. I couldn't afford it, but I had nice parents and a decent credit card. Six months ago, she blew out her knee including a full tear of the ACL. My husband and I were faced with, yet again, a hurt {but relatively healthy} dog and a hefty bill. We just found out last week that she broke off a piece of the knee implant, which will inevitably mean another surgery {thank you, Roxy}. Time in.
So, as any 21st-century pet-owner would do, I Googled. I scoured for every possible reason that my little dog would not want to be picked up. I went from constipation to bulging disk and back to constipation. I resorted to feeding him wet food mixed with canned pumpkin since he refused to drink water and wouldn't go to the bathroom. I snuggled him all night {as any good mom would do} and got him to the vet first thing in the morning {after crappy sleep and a 6:30 AM run that had me in tears for fear that I'd be taking my dog to his death bed in a few hours}. My hope was restored when I grabbed his leash for the outing and he started running around me in circles like the Frank-of-old; the second miracle happened when he
finally pooped on our way into the vet after going dormant for over 24 hours. Hallelujah. All was right with the world. His back is still bothering him, but the vet said it's nothing that a few doggie pain killers and muscle relaxers {mixed lovingly with canned pumpkin} can't fix. Compared to Roxy, it was a surprisingly cheap day. I don't know how much I would have spent to make his pain go away, but I can tell you one thing: the number in my head was probably {much} higher than the number in my husband's head. Thankfully, that battle was saved for another day.
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