Your Dog's Brain on Drugs

Scruffdog had to have another emergency surgery on his abdomen. It seems that when a big dog tries to make a snack out of a little dog, terrible things happen to the little guy's interior. Things that give infections many places to hide and fester.

When the vet saw on the X-rays that his broken right rear femur healed crookedly, without being set, and his broken left pelvis healed by itself, he kept shaking his head and saying, "He is one tough little guy!" But the infection was worrisome. Scruffdog went under anesthesia again, and awoke with yet another long line of Frankenstein stitches on his belly.

Memories of 1970s parties assailed me as I watched him do"Drug Dude" things while coming out of anesthesia. He swayed in my lap, peering squinty-eyed as if to say, "Ma-a-an, where are we?" Then he tried to launch himself off the couch with crazy, wide eyes, acting like, "We have to get out of here, NOW!" I put on our jackets and we went out out into the cold night air. He just sat, staring at the moon and musing, "Whoa, Dude! What're we doin' out here?" We did that three or four times (What? You wouldn't have? What if he really meant it one of those times?) Much like the drug dudes of the 70s, he finally fell asleep.

My doggie nursing skills are becoming finely honed. I can put a guaze pad on a tiny leg and wrap it in stretchy wrap in about three minutes. I can swab the dreadful maze of stitches across his tummy and slather them in Neosporin in about two minutes. Twice a day, I work on his little body, using stuff from a shoebox full supplies like I did when I played nurse with my dolls as a kid. But this is serious stuff. So serious, I'm even making him wear the head cone that we both hate. It changes him from Dog 1.0 (chews off stitches) to Dog 1.2 (scrapes leg with cone while trying to get to stitches, then pulls leg into cone and chews on it because he can.)

I couldn't leave by himself, since he was hellbent on turning his underside into hamburger. It's a good thing he's portable. I put him under my arm and took him to church, to the electronics store, the bank, the post office. He got lots of sympathy, which he acknowledged with an owl-like stare. I also learned why Nature doesn't want Boomer-aged women to have babies. Doing everything with one arm while holding a little being in the other is damned hard! (It didn't seem that hard when I was 23.)

I hope he'll soon be walking on his own three feet (yes, he has four, but the crooked leg is usually held close to his body without touching ground), and I'll get my life back. Maybe someday we'll be able to take a walk in a park. Or maybe we'll just wear matching sports caps and root for our favorite teams on TV. Whatever. As long as he keeps hangin' in.

BTW, his new middle name is Milagro--"Miracle" in Spanish.