Category: Animules

Wherein I talk mostly about dogs.

Comfortably Numb

Given that Violet needed to remain pretty calm and still for a couple months to let the knee heal, the doctors recommended keeping her on a sedative. A pharmaceutical study at State offered to give her Trazodone or a placebo for the first month, and known Trazodone for the second month, and pay $100 toward my follow-up x-rays.

Sold.

I got her home, and the study drug didn’t seem to be doing much. Once she came off her pain meds, she was rarin’ and ready to go. I was convinced I had gotten the placebo.

After two weeks of giving her those little white pills and filling out surveys, I was freaking out. She kept trying to play, and I kept not letting her. She would cry and throw herself against the door when I left the house with Redford. We were both miserable.

Finally, when she goaded Redford into wrestling with her while my back was turned and he stepped on her and made her yelp something awful, I emailed the vet student and study administrator I had met with and told them the story. They shipped me known Trazodone right away and, when even it didn’t seem to be doing much, we upped her dose several times. Still, the moment I’d let her out to go potty, she would sprint across to the deck and out to the tree to check it for squirrels.

On Tuesday, at Redford’s appointment, my vet said I could give Violet regular old Benadryl, for a cheap option. I went out and bought a $15 bottle of it. Two hundred capsules.

He said the dose was 1 milligram per kilo of dog (25 mg), but that I may want to start with a half-capsule. No, thank you. I wasn’t taking chances. I gave her a full capsule. On 25 mg, she chewed the heel of one of my new Danskos. On 37.5, she ate the bottom of the spare bedroom’s door.

Maybe the Trazodone was working somewhat after all.

Anybody own a tranquilizer dart gun?

Shut Up, or Lessons from the Universe, Part 3

Second date with FOT last night went pretty well. Some of you (Dan, Cat, etc.) will be pleased that he picked up the check, I said I’d chip in, and when he said, “Nah, I got this,” I shut up and let him pay for dinner.

I’m not sure whether we have “it” or not, but we had a good time, so there you go.

I have been fantasizing a lot. But not about FOT.

And not about my girl-crush. (Sorry, Margo.)

About

this guy.

On our first date, FOT told me his co-worker had found a puppy and was trying to find the little guy a home, and I asked FOT to send me a picture or two. I KNOW, I’M A DUMBASS. SHUT UP.

Before I even saw him, I wanted him. I wanted him to be mine mine mine. The words “baby” and “pit bull” have a similar effect (though in a much more pleasant way) as “mayonnaise” and “burpees” for me. I lose all strength and integrity. I will lie, cheat, and steal to get my hands on them. (On the baby pit bulls, not the mayonnaise and burpees, of course.) Mammalian crack cocaine.

Then I remembered

this girl.

And my bank account. And I knew I shouldn’t do it.

That’s when FOT sent me the pictures.

Shut up! Look at him. Sunbathing. In the ivy. Sunbathing in the ivy!

I lost my ever-loving mind. I was all, “DON’T CARE ABOUT MONEY WILL SELL MY BODY MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE.” I wanted to stick my face right in his neck and stroke those silky ears.

I started thinking I’d do it, you know. One more dog. What? Mr. Wonderful and his Doberman certainly aren’t banging down the door to fill up the dog-shaped space in my house. I’d fill it myself. No big whoop.

Well, guess who’s turned up lame now?

This guy.

I picked Redford up from his babysitter yesterday, and she told me he was limping. Oh boy is he limping. Today the vet prescribed him some pain meds and told me to keep him from exercising. (Good luck with that.) If it doesn’t improve in a few days, he’ll have to have an x-ray. Could the solution be surgical? Yes.

So I’d just like to extend both middle fingers right now to the Universe for teaching me that lesson (Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Date’s Co-worker’s Foster Dog) in the nastiest way possible.

(And ten thousand people are dead in Japan, so I’m gonna shut the fuck up now.)

My Baby Is Hurting

And it’s making me hurt.

She's shaved.
And swollen.
And wine-red bruised.
And sutured. (Seriously, who did these stitches? Dr. Frankenstein?)
And, worst of all, humiliated.
No, I mean, really humiliated.
Seriously, y'all.

I’m sorry, Violet!

Worst: no walks, no wrestling, no nothing—just going out to go potty FOR A MONTH. Week 5, I can walk her for five minutes twice a day. Week 6, ten minutes. Etc.

I’ve been vexed by how to get Redford enough exercise during the day so he won’t harass Violet and tear up her bionic knee at night. I tried doggy day care for two days last week, but it was expensive, and he wasn’t even tired when he got home.

Fortunately, Theresa, my friend’s mom and my neighbor, offered to watch Redford during the day while Violet’s recovering. We tried it today.

That seems like it's going to work.

Dear Violet, Part 6

You were such a brave soldier at the hospital today. It was clear you were scared, but you let them poke you and stretch you and rotate you, with little but a quiver now and again. You even gave the veterinary student a dainty kiss on the chin when she was done with her examination.

You’ll have your surgery next week. The radiographs indicated that you’ve been working on this injury for a lot longer than I thought you had. Growing a bunch of bone around the knee to protect it! I had no idea you were working so hard. Well, that bone is going to need to be shaved down and the cruciate repaired. I hope it’s not too painful and you recover quickly and, in a few months, I can let you off-leash again. In the meantime, you may be feeling really resentful toward me, but know that I’m feeling even more guilty about it.

I would do anything for you, Violet. You know I’m very careful with my money. I don’t buy shit I don’t need, I don’t carry a balance on my Visa, and I don’t do debt. But between today’s visit ($317), the surgery ($2,800-3,200), and future follow-ups ($?), it’s going to be expensive. I’ve just taken out a $4,100 line of credit, which the vet school folks think should cover it (knock wood).

And I want you to know, I’d gladly pay double that, triple that, I don’t care, because you’re my baby.

Here’s a dainty kiss for you: mwah!

Love,

Amy

Dear Violet, Part 5

I want you to know some things.

I want you to know you have an appointment this morning at the NC State vet school. They’re going to take a look at your wonky knee, which Dr. Purcell thinks you’ve torn. I’m sorry you’ve had to limp around on it for so long, but this was the first appointment they had, and I didn’t think I could afford the orthopedic vet in private practice in Cary.

(I kind of hoped, between when I made the appointment a month ago and now, that it would work itself out like all the rest of your creakiness. But no, the limp has persisted. You won’t even jump up into the car. It’s a good thing I’ve been going to CrossFit so I can squat-clean you into the Outback when I need to.)

I want you to know that this injury is my fault. I saw you walking gingerly on that leg before Christmas. I should’ve kept you on the leash. But scampering up Swift’s hill is one of the great joys of your life, and watching you scamper, well, that’s one of the great joys of mine.

Most likely, the vet school folks are going to say you need surgery so, most likely, you’re going to have surgery. I know you’re not even four yet and Mom said they might not even put you fully under, so it’s highly unlikely that anything bad will happen to you.

But I want you to know I’m fucking terrified that you’re not going to wake up from the anesthesia or there will be a complication. What does that even mean, a complication? I guess a complication makes things more complicated, more difficult, and I can live with that, as long as it doesn’t make you dead.

I’m having a difficult time right now. Work is hard. There are great changes afoot in my life. You and Redford are the only thing that keep me sane sometimes. Your needs are so predictable, so simple: food, water, play-dates, walks, and belly-rubs. My needs are so complex: I need my students to be compliant but not robots. I need to feed my body but not too much. I need a mate, but I don’t know how to find him.

So you’re going to be fine. For me. There will be no complications. Because—and I really want you to know this—I love you so, so much.

Do you hear me, Violet? Don’t die today, OK?

Love,

Amy

Abandon All Hope Ye Who Big-Wheel Here

In my little neck of the woods growing up, a lot of the houses looked like this:

That's a brick ranch.

Or this:

That's a single-wide.

At best this:

Before you get excited, I did not draw this.

That is, they were made of brick, wood, or aluminum, and squatted, the opposite of ostentation, in the crevices, set back from the roads.

But there was one that looked like this:

Except there was blood oozing out from under the gate.

Maybe I’m exaggerating. It was definitely big, definitely made of stone, definitely had a pointy roof line, and definitely sat close to the road.

It belonged to Mr. Nelson. Mr. Nelson was a mean man, a bad man. He would come out and yell at us if we made too much noise.

My siblings and I were so scared of Mr. Nelson that, when we wanted to cross the bridge and ride our Big Wheels on the road in front of his house (the road in front of ours had a blind curve, and people drove really fast), we had a method. We would skid to a halt at the edge of his property, pick up the trikes between our legs, and tiptoe the forty yards past his house before setting them back down and tearing off again.

Mr. Nelson had a gun. And he drank a lot. At some point, his wife divorced him and moved away.

Mr. Nelson didn’t like people on his property, especially fisherman despite the fact that he had a perfect little peninsula that jutted out into the deep part of the creek. He posted No Trespassing signs and came out hollering at people who disobeyed. He even tacked up a sign on our side of the creek on a tree right above a rock so perfect for fishing we called it the fishing rock. Risking execution, we took it down.

One morning we arose to find a perfectly-arranged pile of dog shit outside our front door. Turns out, the day before, our dog had crapped next to the road across from his house. He had shoveled it up and deposited it on our deck.

(Note: I have a moral code about dog poop now. I’m all Atticus Finch about it. It can be dark, and raining, with no witnesses around, and I’ll still pick up my dogs’ doo-doos. But this was in the days before people carried bags, and we lived way out in the country anyway. This was where folks’ pets could live their whole lives and never see a vet, much less have their poop scooped.)

Safe to say Mr. Nelson was an angry curmudgeon. I don’t know if I ever verbalized it, or if the thought just banged around in my little brain for decades, but I always wondered how somebody got that surly.

When I was up for Christmas a week ago, I saw Nelson come out to walk his Yorkshire terrier—one of the rare times he comes out of his stone manse now. (I don’t know if he picks up its tiny poops or not.) I said to my dad, “There’s old Nelson.”

Dad looked up and said, “You know he’s got a boyfriend who comes in from Mountain City a couple times a week to spend the night. Parks his truck in the back where people can’t see it.”

(record needle screeching across vinyl)

All of a sudden, I had such a different—compassionate, even—view of the old sorcerer. He was gay in rural Western North Carolina in the 1980s.

Man, there must be nail and teeth marks on the inside of his closet. No wonder he was such an asshole.