So, since the vet recently told us that Peek is in the last
stages of congestive heart failure and doesn’t have long to live…well, things
have been a little rough.
And they got even rougher late Wednesday night when I
realized that I had miscalculated how much of his best heart medicine we had
left…in my defense, he is on FIVE different medicines and it’s a little hard to
keep them all straight. In any case, as
soon as I realized what had happened, I called the pharmacy to immediately order
more.
Except the prescription had expired.
Which meant that there was no way to get more medicine in
time for Peek’s morning dose.
Some people would take this news with cool aplomb and begin
stoically trying to figure out a solution.
I wish I was one of those people…but I am sooooo NOT one of
those people. I am the kind of person
who gets this news, decides the dog will never survive, bursts into hysterical
tears and begins screaming that I’ve killed my dog.
Which was a little disconcerting for my husband,
Opie…particularly since the dog in question was sitting at my feet at the time,
very much alive.
“Not for long!” I
shrieked. “He’s not going to have his
medicine in time, and he’s going to die, and it’s going to be ALL MY FAULT!”
Honestly, I think Opie was a little relieved to hear that
last bit since I usually find a reason these situations are all his fault.
“He’s going to be fine,” Opie assured me. “He’s not going to die tomorrow.”
Which is when I decided the rational thing to do would be
turn to Peek and forbid his death.
“Don’t you dare die on me tomorrow, do you hear me?”
In retrospect, this was a terrible idea…Peek is a spoiled
rotten, willful dog who hates being told not to do anything. I could tell he was thinking “Don’t you tell
me not to die. You’re just the food
lady, you’re not the boss of me! I’ll die if I want to!”
So I resorted to my fall back plan—bribery—and assured him
that if he could just manage to live through one more day, I’d give him peanut
butter for dinner.
It seemed a fair trade.
“He’s going to be fine,” Opie said again.
“He better
be!” I shrieked. “Because if I’ve killed my dog, that is just
THE END!”
“The end of what?”
Opie asked.
And I can’t really blame him for being confused because,
even now, I don’t know what the heck I was talking about. Which didn’t stop me from storming upstairs
with my dog in my arms yelling incoherent threats at the universe.
Sometimes I am so fun to live with, I can hardly stand it.
And it wasn’t until the next morning—after a long night
during which I flung myself out of bed every time Peek so much as twitched his
tail, in case he was preemptively dying on me—that I realized the second part
of the problem. I had to work all
day—and Thursday is my long day away from home—even if the vet called in the
prescription the moment he got in the office, I couldn’t go pick it up and give
it to Peek until late at night.
“Just call me when it’s ready,” Opie said. “I’ll take care
of everything.”
But I have to admit, I was a little skeptical. I mean, I know he loves this dog too…but he
has what I would consider a “healthy attachment” to the ridiculous animal. And people with “healthy attachments” don’t
engage in the same manic, I-will-move-mountains, type of behavior that we
obsessive freaks do.
Luckily, Opie’s attachment to me is little more on the
I-will-move-mountains side of healthy…because as soon as the medicine was
ready, he took a vacation day from work, went home, medicated the dog, and
called me to reassure me that everything was fine. “He’s alive and well,” he reported.
Which means I should have said thank you…but I had spent a
really long time working myself up into this crazy frenzy and it seemed
downright wasteful to let all that energy go quietly. “Make sure he stays that
way until I get home!” I snapped.
“You’re a lunatic,” Opie responded. “But I love you.”
So, as we’re heading into Thanksgiving week let me just say
that this year I am most thankful for a dog that can be bribed into life by
peanut butter, a husband who has his priorities perfectly straight…and who
thinks my particular brand of crazy is endearing.
You can’t really ask for more than that!
Kimbo325 is a teacher and writer who is laughing her way
through life. She would like to be a sane, rational person but fears that ship
has sailed. To read more about why her
husband is the luckiest man in the world click here http://skirt.com/kimbo325/blog/just-oc-no-dthis-isnt-disorder
To read more about her crazy life,
follow her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ItIsInterestingToNote?ref=hl
or tweet with her at Twitter at @kimbo325
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