MUSINGS FROM THE MIND OF AMANDA

We have four dogs. One was dumped as a puppy and ended up with us. His name is Duke, and he has two functioning brain cells, and they don’t communicate with each other. He’s also the happiest dog I’ve ever seen in my life and is devoted to my 18-year old son. Duke is not a problem.

Emmy is a roughly five year old foster fail. She is also always happy, and she loves nothing more than to lick my husband square across the face. She LIVES to catch him unawares. If he’s not available, any old face will do. She also likes to raid the litterbox first to give it that extra pizzazz. She’s the most gentle dog on the planet.

The problems are the other two foster fails: Lillie and Syg. They’re both about three years old, and we’ve had them since they were four or five months old. Lillie is a pit mix, white with the brown spots. She’s devoted to me, and will do anything I tell her. Syg is a lab mix, and he’s a little…off. He growls a lot.

Since our German Shepherd mix, Tundra, developed lung tumors and had to be put down, there’s been a power vacuum in the backyard. Duke is older, but he has no interest in ruling the pack. Lillie and Syg are both trying to be in charge. They’re roughly the same age, and about ten pounds difference is all there is, weight wise. Unfortunately, when the power goes to their head, they attack sweet Emmy. It happened last week while we were at church, and they ripped up her shoulder badly.

Of course we took her to the vet, and our wonderful vet did emergency repairs: lots and lots of stitches, antibiotics, pain meds, drains, and a collar. Oh, yes, the collar. We’re $550 into this dog, and she’s milking the sympathy angle.

I mentioned above that Em is a licker. The wound on her leg is too much to resist, so she has to wear the collar. She bumps into EVERYTHING. She stares into your soul, begging to have it removed. Her eyes do terrible things to my brain, so I think “This time, she’ll listen.” I’m a moron. She doesn’t listen, she licks.

Back goes the collar. Cue the sad eyes. She wants to go outside. Fine, let’s go…but she wants to go to the backyard with her friends, who tried to kill her. Nope. She bumps into approximately 45 things in the ten feet from her bed to the door…walks out onto the sidewalk…and runs back to the door. Occasionally, just to spice things up, she tries to run around the house. For a dog with a lame leg, she’s surprisingly fast.

This gives her two options. She can wait until approximately .000001 seconds after I lay down, and beg to go out again, or she can just pee on my new floors, because after all, nobody would let her out. Sigh.

She had to go back to the vet yesterday. The drains had stopped working, so she was no longer leaking dog juice everywhere, but two stitches seem to have popped open. It took us 20 minutes to get her in the truck. No matter how quickly we shut the door, she got out. I finally had my son put her in on one side while I held the leash. Then he came to my side and I went to the front seat and held the leash from there till we could shut the door. He asked for help loading her at the vet…and she went right in and sat down. The nurse was amused. My son was not.

We bought canned food to make it easier to give her meds. It worked for two days. Now she’ll only take them if you wrap them in cheese. Sometimes she misses a the cheese sticks to the inside of the collar. It’s hilarious. She’ll also accept milk bones, but she likes to catch those and that doesn’t always work either. She wants to remove the collar to eat, but then she instantly starts licking her leg instead.

My son has retired as her caretaker. My husband, who she actually belongs to, suddenly seems to have a lot of extra work to do. That leaves me…working from home and trying to outsmart Emmy the wonder dog.

Send milk bones.