July 18
Me. Cancer Dog. Before the stitches came out, yesterday afternoon.
What's better than photos of other people's adorable little pets? Nothing? That's right! Nothing! Not one single thing! The dirty sock paw is a direct result of her shucking the protective mitten the hospital had put on to protect it. Protect it from herself, apparently. Did it work? Well, sure. She leapt over the fence and ran around the neighborhood, eating garbage and evading capture with three noisy feet instead of two.
So the dog. It's gotten to the point where I feel bad, leashing her up because she's so happy! She's all wagging her happy tail and her butt and she's hopping and jumping and dancing and running around. "Going out! going for a walk! yeah! yeah! walk!! walk! Love walking!! Stuff to sniff!!" Then she gets stuffed into the backseat of my truck and let out in the parking lot of the vet. The moment she hits the ground, she knows. She knows by the smells and the barks and the building. She goes into super turbo stealth dog mode: low to the ground, nose doing overtime, 10 places at once. Then, entering the office. You remember there was a cartoon or something (not the Flinstones, thank you) of someone trying to bring their dog to a vet, and as soon as the dog realizes where it is, it stiffens like a board? So the person can't get it through the door? Yep, that's Grayson.
Tail firmly between legs, we walk/drag her into the examining room. The vet tech cuts off the nasty sock ("Hope you didn't want to keep this...") and begins the tedious job of cutting out the stitches. The stitches, mind you, that go up between and underneath the pads. These stitches require us to try and flip Grayson gently onto her side. Now, with a normal dog this is easy. You tell it to sit or lay down or you push it over and it goes. Grayson is not a normal dog. She is tense. She is nervous. She is terrified out of her mind. She is fear shedding. The vet comments "wow, look at her eyes!" They are, and I believe this is the proper medical term-Bugging the Fuck Out. I have never seen anything like it.
In any case, the stitches are removed. We see that the webbing between the toes has been almost completely removed. The vet explains options, outcomes. Cost. He talks oncology. We ask quality of life questions. He urges us to go home and talk about it. We thank him and leave. We'd already made the decision, we didn't actually have to talk about it. She's our puppy. Chemotherapy will start next week.
An Abrupt Change of Topic.
RAAAR!! This is when we all managed to get together last night. The little guy? Still on a leash, you notice? We let him off for less than 5 minutes and he ran across the street and ate the neighbor babies. Good riddance. They were always like "Waahh! Waaah!!! Look!! Mon-tr!!" and they thought they were all cute and whatever. Babies should be tasted, not heard! RAAARRR!!
Here's the four of us. See? He came back!! I don't know where he went. He mumbled something about needing some Time to Himself. What kind of a monster needs time to himself? He's a MONSTER! On the plus side, he DID bring us all some ice cream, and monsters like ice cream. I got to show everyone my vacation pictures, except we didn't look at the ones from that big, creepy house. Shut up, I wasn't scared of it. Monsters aren't scared of anything. RAAAR!!!