This picture (courtesy of The Big Picture) is of a dog who is sitting in the place where his owner died during the recent earthquake in Italy. This is why we here at STN are dog people and not cat people. (FYI: There is a cat in this picture, too. It’s buried under the rubble cause it was too lazy to move off of the couch when the rumbling started).
I got a phone call a little over a week ago from my wife. Now, I’m always happy to hear from her, but when the conversation begins with “I know you aren’t going to be too happy about this but guess what?”, well, needless to say you know that you’re about to hear something you wish you didn’t.
As it turns out, she found a dog running across the highway. She took the next exit, circled around, and put the dog in her car.
“We might have a visitor for tonite.”
I immediately let her know that we could not keep this dog. She assured me that she was taking it to an emergency vet hospital to see if it had a chip with the owner’s information. Thirty minutes later, she came home with the dog in her arms. That’s right–no chip.
The dog is a small dog (at least in comparison to our dog.) It weighed about 20 pounds, stunk, and was covered in fleas. As we bathed it (twice), I noticed that it wasn’t neutered and had no collar.
“We can’t keep this dog.” I informed her.
After setting up a bed for him in our office, I began to wash all the towels that were used in caring for the dog. Then I began to spray everything with an anti-flea concoction. I think I used about half the bottle to make sure that no flea would ever survive.
My wife went ahead and contacted a local number to figure out how we could get it back with its owner. Again–not neutered, running around a highway, no collar, and no chip. The reality was setting in that it in all likelihood had no owner.
For the next two days, I began to take all measures just to make sure that my wife would not get attached to this dog. I banned my wife to the office so that she could spend some time with him (after all, it wasn’t his fault that he was here) which meant that she could not spend time with me and my dog (and watch her shows on the tv.) I also began to name the dog different names each day–hoping that this would stop her from forming a bond with him.
All seemed to be going well until the third nite. That was when we noticed that fluid was leaking out of a wound on the top of his neck. We made the decision to take him to the emergency vet clinic to check it out.
It turns out that he had a tennis ball sized pocket of fluid on the left side of his neck. We had no idea that it was this large–his hair had covered up the severity of his injury. Because the wound was at the top of his neck, the fluid couldn’t drain, and they recommended that they perform an operation to get rid of the fluid.
At 3:00 AM, I picked up the dog (whose name was PITA at the time <Pain In The Ass>). I brought him back home and began to realize that he was here to stay.
Two days later, we made it official–after great discussion.
It’s been a few days since we’ve begun the process of introducing the two dogs. Our original dog is pretty big and she likes to play (a lot!). She’s more of an energetic and anxious dog–which isn’t the best combination when it comes to being gentle around a wounded friend. He’s got more of a calm personality, and it is very apparent that he is becoming more of the dominant dog in the house.
So, now comes the fun part of training both dogs to listen to the two-legged residents in this home.
In talking with the other half of SeventoNine, we joked that this trait of caring for animals is great–in theory. In actuality, this quality of my wife has a bunch of practical long-term work that needs to be done.
I love that my wife has such a caring heart, that she would impulsively stop to care for an animal that might have had his life ended on that highway a little over a week ago. That she took it upon herself to care for this animal is one of the things I love most about her. I can only hope that I learn how to be as compassionate as her one day.
Well, we’re finally leaving the beach house. It’s been a really great winter here. So much fun, and so very, very productive. When we showed up here 6 months ago I couldn’t even see the light at the end of the dissertation tunnel, and I was getting rejection after rejection. Our stuff was scattered across 7 different houses in 4 different states and we had no idea where or when it was all going to come together. But at least we had the beach!
Well my oh my what a winter at the beach can do. We have a job, a house, and all of our stuff will soon be in it. This is our last weekend at the beach house. Moving day is Tuesday. We’ll be back for visits, but probably not to live again (although maybe for sabbatical?). As proof that we ALL enjoyed ourselves, I offer the following video:
What We’re Doing