The THING

Maggie has a thing on her foot.

The groomer noticed it this weekend. I'd noticed she'd been licking her feet an awful lot. I looked at it, I was like, huh, that looks like a wart. The groomer said, I think that's a wart (what she actually said was, "my boyfriend has a wart like that on his foot. It gets all spongy when it gets wet, too, just like hers does." Umm...).

But then I slowly turned from overeducated pack leader into a pet parent.

What if it's something terrible?

What if the dog's foot falls off?

What if Maggie has toe cancer? (Now, that one's actually justifiable, because Kedzie, my old roommate's dog, had toe cancer. And they cut off his toe! And he missed it, I think, poor old fellow. And he's also, like, six hundred years older than Maggie. And cancer of the toe is sort of a fluke thing. But still!)

So I kept fussing at her and looking at her foot. And fretting. And worrying. I think this is what Maggie thought of my whole "toe cancer" idea.

I knew she was right.

But I took her to the vet anyway. Who said, "well, what that looks like is a papilloma."

And I thought, oh, God! A papilloma??!! Like, papillary toe cancer? A papilloma! Oh, God! Not a papilloma! Oh, my poor baby, not a pap-

And then I stopped. And I looked at the vet. And I said, "So....she's got a wart?"

Maggie has a wart. On her foot. A foot wart, if you will.

So glad I took her to the vet all freaked out about a wart. So is she. Because she ended up getting four shots while we were there. And has to go back for her lyme, giardia, and bordatella boosters in three weeks. Plus, now she has to get her teeth cleaned one of these days. But on the plus side, she did get a new toy.

And she now has vet insurance. Which I've been meaning to get for three years, but, seriously, the only thing my dog has ever had wrong with her are some seasonal allergies (Maggie having a sneezing fit is about the funniest thing you've ever seen in your whole life), and apparently a case of plantar warts that she probably picked up at that filthy horrible boarding facility. Which she really loves, and will probably be going back to stay at next weekend when I'm on call. However, not having vet insurance totally bit me in the ass with my last dog. Poor Wolfie was a sick little puppy (he was, like, eight), and his final three days in the doggie ICU alone almost cost me $2K. This cheap little Banfield-only plan is definitely a better idea.

What I think is especially funny, though, is that her health insurance costs more than mine. Now, admittedly, mine is subsidized. But I don't know why Blue Cross/Blue Shield won't let me claim her as a dependant. I mean really.

::sigh::

Oh, and you remember how like a year ago the groomer back in Illinois looked at Maggie was like, "Wow, she looks like she's got some coyote in her." And I thought, huh, she kind of does. Well, if I'd had any doubts, they were squelched by the photos of Charlie, a coyote who's been domesticated by a lady out in Wyoming after he was orphaned as a tiny little pup. Check out the pictures, he's way cute. And could well be Maggie's littermate, if she wasn't like four years older than him.

In other news...I did finish my Bones Hat the other day. I even wore it to work yesterday and got compliments on it. Now, you'll remember that this is Take Two of the Tapestry hat. I'd made one to go with the set that I'm making, and it was really boring, and I was busy coveting the hat that Emily Deschanel had been wearing on a recent episode of Bones. So this was my template And this is what I ended up with.

Not bad. The cables are a little different, and the brim isn't designed to be flipped up like that, but all in all, I'm quite pleased with it. And it's far more interesting than the original. It's made out of Tapestry and Cascade Superwash.