This week started in the ER on Monday night and proved itself complete tonight when I came home to gummy bear Cavalier ears.
I always feel as if I should present myself here as the perfect dog mom. Of course then I remember that anyone who’s read for any time at all would know the truth, I’m just a dog mom with Real Life on my hands too.
My dad ended up in the ER on Monday night. It was a very scary situation, the scariest my mom said she’d ever been in. After being awake with them all night in the ICU, I was exhausted when I finally got home on Tuesday afternoon. He’s stable now, though still in the hospital. Having family in the hospital tends to trump all else so other than work not much got done this week.
I’m always so grateful my dogs are so patient and can go without walks and training without going too crazy. Still the neglect showed itself in the typical way. Boredom struck them hard and they struck back. Of course it’s always the crazy weeks when things get neglected and this week was no different.
On Wednesday night the brand new bag of cat food got left on the bottom shelf. (The guilty party shall remain nameless, although in my defense I’ll say it wasn’t me. . . This time.) I can only imagine the glee Magnus felt when he pulled it down and gorged himself. To his utter delight, he ate about a third of the bag. At 4:00 AM he threw up and of course ate it before I could get awake enough to stop him. I’m pretty sure I dreamed telling him to leave it and he thoroughly laughed in my face. After he puked he started coughing. It sounded awful. Everything sounds awful at 4:00 AM, but this really sounded bad. The neighbor dog has a cough and I was sure he must have kennel cough on top of it all.
When I was in ICU on Monday night my dad was such a trooper until about 4:00 AM when the night started to seem as if it would never end. After absolutely no sleep we all started getting discouraged by then and the nurse said, “Just make it till morning. Everyone feels the worst this time of night. If you can just make it till morning I promise it will seem better.”
Those words came back to me at 4:00 AM on Thursday morning while I was laying on the floor next to Magnus, waiting for him to throw up again. Things look truly bleak at that time of morning and I certainly wasn’t amused. I finally decided I couldn’t let him be sick and eat it again and I couldn’t stand laying on the floor all night, so I did what any insane dog person would. I put a towel down and put him in bed next to me.
I’m sure in a google search of “What to do when your dog throws up in the middle of the night” One of the top answers would not be, “Take him to bed with you!” Yup, it’s official, I’ve totally lost it!
I must mention at this point that Mehusbandy is one of the most tolerant men alive to let the sick dog come to bed with us. (Let it also serve as a warning for anyone that leaves the cat food on the bottom shelf- you reap what you sow in the form of sick dog next to you in bed at 4:00 AM.)
So there I am with a sick boy puppy sleeping in the crook of my arm. Pretty soon he starts groooaaannning. There are not enough letters in the word groaning to describe the sound he was making. Need I mention I still wasn’t laughing? So I’m trying to sleep, even though I know it will be with one ear open, and Magnus is moaning and groaning. As my partner in crime at work later described it, “It’s that sound you make when you’ve eaten way to much ice-cream and ice-cream doesn’t agree with your body. And you’re thinking, “WHY? Oh WHY did I eat all that ice-cream?” I’ll never have a sick belly again without thinking of Magnus laying there, grooooaaaannning.
As if all of that wasn’t enough to prove to you I’m a normal, imperfect, although insane dog mom, today I was the guilty one. About three o’clock this afternoon I realized I left a package of red cinnamon gummy bears out on the side table. (Apparently this is the post where all my foibles are revealed. The more tired I am the more caffeine and sugar I consume. Isn’t that what all insane dog moms do when they’re stressed out and exhausted?) Well it didn’t do me any good to remember my bonehead move at three in the afternoon while I was at work. My dogs are good at not getting into things, but apparently gummy bears and cat food can not be resisted. Sure enough I got this text message on my way home from work tonight, “Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Maizy had 2 gummy bears stuck in her ear hairs. Ughh.” I was not amused at the thought.
Thus my week finished off with me bathing two sticky Cavaliers at 10:30 PM after a long day of work. They were not amused either.
The 4legged lesson in all of this? Perspective makes all the difference. Things often do seem bleak with not a funny side in sight, but later on you realize it’s laugh or cry. I choose laugh. It must be all my new found positivity that makes both of these things seem funny to me now. I wish I had video of Magnus diving head first into the cat food bag, I bet he was so happy. I just keep hearing him grroooaaaning and it makes me chuckle too. Of course maybe you had to be there. . .
The other 4legged lesson? You reap what you sow wether its with a bad case of indigestion or a really long bath- it never pays off to gorge yourself on cat food and gummy bears.
