Love (my sweet gimpy dog) Thursday

Initially, I had a very different Love Thursday post planned. That may have to wait for tomorrow...or actually, Tuesday, because my internet access may be spotty between now and then (frakkin' stupid Time Warner can't install it until Tuesday...).

Because my poor sweet puppy dog broke her foot at Day Care yesterday.

I'm not sure how, actually. The vet says she usually sees that kind of break when someone steps on the dog's paw or they get it caught in a door or something. The day care swears they "reviewed the tapes" (what?) and assured me that nothing like that could possibly have happened.

Right. Because I remember every single time I've stepped on the dog and she's been fine.

Maggie has a bad habit, actually, of being underfoot. She's not that small a dog, either, but she likes to be right on your heels to show how obedient she is. And, in fact, the one thing I'm so very going to miss about this place after we move TOMORROW (ahem), she and I have this ritual of racing down the stairs in the morning, her trying desperately not to get ahead of me but wanting to just bolt down them. It's very sweet and quite funny and although I've almost tripped over her about 83,000 times, I've never once stepped on her.

My girl. She's such a character.

So anyway, she was totally fine when I dropped her off on Tuesday morning before call. Yesterday, when I picked her up, she was moving a little slowly. And she kept licking her paw when we got home. So, like I said, I assumed her paw pad was burned or something. And then this morning she wouldn't bear weight on it at all. Wouldn't get off the bed, wouldn't walk any farther than absolutely necessary, didn't even want to go outside. So I took her to the vet (here's my day - pager goes off and wakes me up just before 8am. Talked to my friend in FL for an hour. Went upstairs, got dressed, carried the dog down the stairs, picked her up again, put her in the car, went to Starbucks. My aunt came at 10:30-ish. Mike came to claim his share of the donated bounty about 11. Went to the vet at noon. Donation folks came about 2:20, roughly ten minutes after Mags and I got home from the vet. They quite literally took a full truck worth of donated crap out of here. My aunt and I worked like fiends. Went and got Marble Slab - similar to, albeit better than, Cold Stone - for dinner. She left around 9. Bernie and hubby showed up shortly thereafter for their bounty. They finally left just before 10, with only one of the two book cases they intended to take tied to the roof of their car - they're coming back for the other one sometime later in the weekend, couldn't fit two - but they also took Ming's new carpet scrubber with them to drop off at his house. It's been a long damn day. Anyhow...) and the vet said, hmm, she's sure acting like it's broken. So a couple hundred dollars later (we do have vet insurance, mind you), she comes back, points out this thing on Maggie's x-ray that could be a bone chip. Says, it's really fine, don't worry too much about it, give her these anti-inflamatories, with food, for the next two weeks, and try to ice it twice a day for the next few days.

Ice it? Ice my dog's foot? I gave her the "are you absolutely certain that you're serious?" look I've learned from Mags.

She was a good vet, though. Put up with me and all my armchair doctoring very well. Had an intelligent conversation with me when I said, "are you sure that isn't a sesamoid bone?" And she didn't even laugh at me when we had the following exchange

Me: Do you think that could be a sesamoid bone?
Dr. Vet: Well, you know, I thought of that too, but I don't remember there typically being any sesamoid bones over the DIP...[insert boring - if brilliant, ahem - medical dialogue here between veterinarian and psychiatrist who thinks she can apply her meager knowledge of human anatomy to dog feet]
Me: Hmm. Well, I agree, that seems more likely to be a bone chip. And it would be a weird place for a sesamoid bone. Although, you know *I* have these sesamoid bones in my ankles that are in a weird....[trails off as silly human doctor remembers that she and her dog, are not, in fact, genetically related]...yeah, I know that made no sense. Nevermind. I'm sorry, I'm really tired...

Dude. I so would've laughed at me. Laughed right out loud.

Especially after she brought my dog back in. They gave the pooch a shot of poochie demerol or something for the pain before they took the x-rays.

She was so totally stoned. Like, Jimmy Buffet, Jerry Garcia, pass-me-the-cheetos stoned.



Oh my God, it was hysterical. That's her at the vet. Note the high quality Treo photography.

She didn't sober up for a long, long while.


She really was gonked. It was, of course, the cutest thing ever.


She's doing better, though. I got her evening pill into her without any trouble whatsoever. She's getting the three-legged-shuffle down without much trouble at all now (we had this three-legged cat who used to live across the street from us in NH who loved to torment Maggie, who, of course, loves cats. That little bastard would taunt her and taunt her until she finally took off after him, and then, BAM! he was off like a shot. And remember, Maggie's part Greyhound, she's quick on her feet. But she actually ran into the back of their car one day when Tripod dove underneath it and she couldn't stop in time. I kissed her nose and rubbed her belly when she walked back, all dejected, despite the fact that I was rolling in the grass with tears streaming down my face I was laughing so hard. Anyway, I like to think she learned a little something from him). And she gets twice daily peanut butter and wet food (because she has to eat with the pills so they don't upset her little tummy, and she typically free eats her dry food at some point throughout the day whenever she gets around to it), and she got a new dog bed, and some fancy treats, and I have to carry my 45lb dog up and down the stairs (her timing's actually great, since we're moving to a ranch house tomorrow) and she's being all babied and I won't let her jump onto anything and you know she's going to be totally, totally spoiled.

Seriously. It's very possible I shouldn't ever be allowed to have children. She just broke her toe, for Pete's sake.

Sweet gimpy little girl. How I love her.