Monday, March 03, 2008

My Dog has more than 9 lives



So you've heard about my cat and his broken leg last year. He even had a urinary tract infection around Thanksgiving that put him in the hospital, but he is doing fine. Today, I'm talking about the dog.

First of all she is old. About 110 in human years. Over the last year or so she's been slowly failing, her hips, her eyesight. She never quite smells good, but she's my dog and I love her.

You can see a few pictures of her above. We started to realize a few years ago, that her time with us might be limited.

I went to NYC to do an interview with Dan Rather for 60 Minutes and right before I was to go to the studio for the taping, I got a call from home telling me that she was very ill, and it didn't look good. I had my son put her on the phone and told her it was OK and I would be home in a few days and then instructed him to take her to the vet, let her lie on my dirty laundry and put it on the floor for her to sleep on. She got better.


She started to grow a tumor on her tail, and about a month later, she got better.

She got some sort of skin affliction that we handled with a change in diet, but it was bad, she was bleeding.

Now, she's not as perky as she used to be, in fact her emotional range goes from sympathy to expressed resentment. If my son points his finger at her (in fun) she snaps at him. With me, though, she just follows me everywhere, lays outside the bathroom door when I'm in the bathroom, and makes sure she's under my feet when I'm cooking.


Last Thursday, I came home to find that she couldn't get up. As much as she tried, she couldn't and she was crying. I thought to myself, "OK, it's time, she's old." I moved her best I could to her food bowl and sat on the floor with her, sobbing, as I do love this dog. I called a friend to bring a crate to the house so I could take her to the vet (she's 70 lbs, a bit much to just carry) and started to make arrangements to take her to the vet. I sent my younger son upstairs to get my other boy so he could say goodbye to her.


At that point I was still on the floor crying with the dog, mind you, when my son says Mom, I can fix her. Me, being me, was doubting, and said "come on, you're not a vet...."
Anyway, he figured out what was wrong. The dog got her nail stuck in her collar, that's why she couldn't walk. He released the nail and she walked away as if nothing had happened. Well, she got me again.

She truly has more than nine lives....Go figure :-)
I guess she's the Timex of dogs...she takes a licking and still keeps on ticking!

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