That Awkward Age

For a more exciting weekend, try brushing your dog's teeth!

 

So our vet says that our dog is officially a senior muttizen.

"His teeth are a disaster," says Dr. Fink, pulling back his rubbery lips. "Caked with tartar ... probably needs some extractions."

We didn't come for teeth. We came to get refills for prednisone, which Scottie lives on because he has extremely allergic skin. Special dog wash. Special dog food. Special dog drops. Cha-ching. Cha-ching. About once a year, he gets a big-time skin infection that costs about $500-600, in spite of everything. This, for a dog of questionable parentage.

With body hair so thin he looks like a "before" picture for Rogaine, the only prize Scottie could win in a dog show would be Mr. Congeniality. His only two redeeming dog values are his equally large personality and bladder, requiring only one outside potty visit per day.

"How much would that cost?" Bob asks the doctor. This time, I made him come with me because he pitches a fit every time I come back with the bill.

"Can't tell until we get in there ... somewhere between $750 and $1,000 most probably," the good doctor says. "But you have to keep in mind. That same surgery would cost $5,000 if it were on a person."

"Uh-huh," Bob says, unimpressed.

"Scottie's at the age where you have to think about senior care, and he's going to start getting expensive."

Start?

We don't know exactly how old he is, since he was rescued by a friend of ours seven years ago from her neighbors who had left Scottie tied to a bush during Hurricane Isabel. There, when he was a couple of years old, he had been traumatized by the storm and chewed up by other dogs. As a result, he's terrified by the mere whisper of a spring rain and threatened by any dog, leashed or unleashed, within two blocks.

Heck, he's freaked out by a plastic bag blowing down the street or blow-up Santas in the yards at Christmas. We're talking a major woos dog. He has to be tranquillized to ride in the car for a mile to the vet's office, otherwise he gets so anxious he throws up in the car.

We adopted Scottie after Bob swore we'd never have a dog in spite of three boys in the house. He'd had a dog in his first marriage, Duff, a Westie, who died with cancer the week we got married. That dog, he said, had cost him thousands of dollars in chewed furniture, ruined floors and vet bills, and he vowed never to have another.

That pledge stood in spite of the pleas of three little boys who begged for a dog for years, then alternately bargained for other pets -- cats, snakes, gerbils, rats, iguanas ... the whole Animal Planet. Bob nixed them all. Once I found the boys in the backyard with a shovel digging a hole, and when I asked them what they were up to, they informed me they were hunting worms for pets.

Even that didn't melt Bob's cold, cold heart.

It wasn't until our youngest, Nathan, was in the hospital at age 14 that Bob lost the battle.  When Bob asked Nathan if there was something he could do to help him, Nathan looked up at him with his big blue eyes, and said, "Dad, get me a dog."

That finally did it.

The following week, an email went out across campus where I worked at Virginia Wesleyan College from a professor, friend and animal lover who maintains a house full of animals she has rescued. She was looking for a home for Scottie, who she had rescued and nursed back to health. Once Nathan was out of the hospital, we drove to Suffolk and picked him up.

But first there was a lecture that came with the dog.

"First of all, boys, he's your dog, and you have to feed and walk him, understand?" Bob told them.

"Oh, yes, Dad," they promised. "We will."

"And just so you know, we're not the kind of people that spend a lot of money on a dog. The dog gets sick or hurt -- we have the dog put to sleep. I'm not going to spend hundreds of dollars on this dog. OK?"

"OK, Daddy, we understand."

Within a week we were walking and feeding the dog. In two months the dog ran out of the house, got hit by an SUV and was in the hospital with 60 stitches up his leg and side, resulting in a $900 vet bill.

So here we are in the vet's office talking about spending $1,000 on this dog's teeth, after having spent at least $5,000 on a neurotic and physically compromised dog that we weren't going to spend anything on. The boys are long gone from home, and here we are with the dog.

"So what happens if we don't fix the dog's teeth?" I ask.

"Eventually, his teeth will get rotten, he'll get an absess, and you could have to put him to sleep," Dr. Fink says, among other things. After more discussion and a heap of  guilt, we decide to let nature take its course.

"But you could brush the dog's teeth," Dr. Fink suggests. "That would help."

First, we've never heard of brushing a dog's teeth. Second, we're sure that Scottie will find that idea just as acceptable as clipping his toenails -- which is why they don't get clipped.

But we agree to try.

You can see our efforts in the video. This is right after I have the bright idea that perhaps we could actually clean the dog's teeth ourselves if we tranquillized him first. Maybe use a credit card or other sharp instrument and scrape away. How hard could that be?

Since trying to brush his teeth, I've changed my mind about being his dental hygenist. I don't think I even want to try to teach him to floss.

 

 

 

 

Wanted: Family rates for dog whispering

 You know those pictures that show dogs and owners that look remarkably alike? Well, Scottie the Wonder Dog doesn’t look so much like any of us, but his neuroses are so on target.

Unlike most dogs that like to stick their snouts out an open car window and feel the breeze blowing through their floppy ears, he needs a Xanex to ride the two miles to the vet.  

Likewise, I’m terrified of amusement park rides, especially roller coasters. When I was 16, I rode the roller coaster at Myrtle Beach on a $5 bet, and while I was on it, I promised God that if she let me live to get off, I would never ride another. She did and I haven’t. 

Scottie hates vacuum cleaners. So do I.

There’s the diet. I tend to be a compulsive eater . . . if it’s there, I eat it. Then there’s Scottie, who views everything – and I mean everything – as food. So much so that we can’t let him go outside on a rope any more because he sees yesterday’s doody as today’s snack food. 

The potency of dog gas has gone up several levels on the Richter scale. Almost to husband-level. 

Like Bob, Scottie will prostitute himself for a good scratch. Bob curls up like a doodlebug for a good head or back scratching, and Scottie stops, drops and rolls if you merely look at him cross-eyed so he can get his belly scratched. 

Like me, Scottie is an English major. We now have to spell in front of him – like when the kids were little – to keep him from getting too excited about going out or from hiding under the bed when we talk one of the sons into giving him a bath.

One day this week, in a totally Gail-klutz move, Scottie took a tumble down the stairs. Since then, he’ll go upstairs, but then stands at the top step and whines when he wants to come down. He only ventures down when accompanied by clapping and encouraging cheers. 

Now, I’m not saying I need that kind of handholding, but I do highly approve of the buddy system when going to the ladies room. You just never know when you might run into a situation where you’ll need applause to carry on.

Dog May be Man’s Best Friend, But He’s Woman’s Biggest PIA

There’s something very humbling about realizing that you can’t out-think a dog.

You might have a college education, even a master’s degree, and you might have raised three conniving teenaged boys who can find loopholes in your “don’t do thus and so’s” as well as Harvard-educated lawyers, but you still can’t out-smart a mutt designed by two paperless junkyard dogs having unprotected sex during a one-night stand.

Case in point: Scottie.

I know I’ve written previously about his skin sensitivities and gastric upsets, not to mention his long list of neuroses, all making him right into a family that knows how to put the fun in dysfunctional. I really had no intention of ever mentioning his bodily functions again, but when you work from home with little outside stimulation, little crises, such as dog diarrhea, become major events in your life.

It all began last week when Scottie, a prize crumb snatcher, gobbled half a boiled egg that slipped out of Bob’s hand in the kitchen. Now this is a dog that has to eat special (read: expensive) dog food made only of lamb and rice, otherwise his little tum-tum gets upset and he scratches so much that all of his hair, rather than just half of it, falls out.

Within 48 hours, Scottie began having diarrhea, and it’s continued every day since then. Then this morning, I stumbled downstairs to find a trail of it across the dining room floor leading to the sliding glass doors to the deck, where we usually tie him to a long rope so that he can go in the yard. What a lovely way to start the day!

So I cleaned up the mess, trying to keep from retching myself, and talked baby talk to Scottie, “Poor boy, ums doesn’t feel good, does ums?”

“I wouldn’t be talking so sweet to him,” says Bob, safely perched on a stool in the kitchen eating breakfast. “You need to whack him on the nose with a newspaper.”

 “How mean!” I said. “What if somebody whacked you on the nose because you got diarrhea? He couldn’t help it!”

So I disinfected the floor, took out the trash, even wiped his rear with a paper towel (Scottie’s, not Bob’s), and all was again right with the world. But then, later, I had to go out. Here’s where the genius-thinking came into play. I spread newspapers all along the trail where he had had his accident overnight in the event of another accident.

I was gone for several hours, meeting with a printer, then going for my thrice weekly chiropractic adjustment, then stopping by the grocery store for a “seagull,” as Bob calls the rotisserie chickens you buy at Harris-Teeter that I depend on about once a week when I don’t have time to cook.

The aroma was wafting through the house as soon as I opened the back door. When I brought the first load of groceries into the kitchen, there it was. It looked like there had been a private showing of “The Exorcist” in the kitchen. And there was collateral damage on the side of the refrigerator. Go figure that one.

I looked around the corner into the dining room, and it was all over the floor there, too. All the way up to the edge of the newspaper I had so carefully strewn on the floor “just in case.”

This time I wasn’t so nice when I said, “Scottie! You dumb dog! I put the paper out for you to USE, not to work the crossword puzzle!”

Scottie slunk off to a corner and turned his head to the wall in his typical, “I know you’re mad, but if I can’t see you, you don’t exist” gesture. So I’m cleaning up the mess again, cussing under my breath, when he begins whimpering and prancing around, his signal that “I gotta go RIGHT NOW.”

I called him to the glass doors to put him out on the rope, and he walked around the dining room table so that he could completely AVOID walking on the paper. He had to take one step on it to get out the door, and you would have thought it was a bed of hot coals.

So –- lesson learned. Never try to out-think a dog. And the husband who drops the egg that the dog eats should definitely be the husband that cleans up after the dog made sick by said egg.

Mothers and The Necessity of Invention

When I woke up after foot surgery on Friday morning, I had some additions to my chest, but I didn’t realize it until I got home.

No, unfortunately, the doc hadn’t augmented the wrong body part. I had suggested that perhaps he might want to do some liposuction on the thighs while I was asleep and the insurance people weren’t in the room, but he stuck to the toe area.

But after my son took me home, tucked me into bed, propped up my feet and put ice on them, I began finding hard little buttons under my shirt. When I checked it out, I had rows of snaps making me look like I had been rigged up as Octo-Mom with a chest full of metal nipples.

The snaps apparently had been used to attach EKG leads while I was zonked. I pulled off a half dozen or so, then found more of them from time to time poking me in the ribs and side every time I turned over. Then they started showing up on my stuff – on my cup, then on a book I’d been reading, and later on a piece of junk mail on the floor. I was raining sticky nipples!

Soon I had them stuck to my dressing. Bob picked one up and asked if he should throw it out. But somehow, I couldn’t quite bear for it to go into the trash. It just looks too useful – kind of a female “Snap-on-Tools.”

I’m thinking that, if I could get the “innie” snaps to these “outie” halves, they would be very helpful around the house and office. For example, I always lose stuff, such as my cell phone. At least once a day I have to call my cell to find it.

That works fine if it’s actually on and in the house – perhaps slipped down between the sofa cushions. But if I’ve left it in the car, a coat pocket in the closet or the battery is dead, I can spend a very long time ripping apart the house. I can imagine my cell phone with a snap on it – attached right to my waist, for example. No geeky phone holder needed!

Those very same snaps would work well to keep my skimpy costume in place should I be selected a contestant on Dancing With the Stars. I wouldn’t have to worry about unexpected wardrobe malfunctions like that experienced by Melissa during the last season – just snap that little hoochie-koochie bra in place right to the boobs.

There would be multiple uses for kids. Rather than teachers putting notes into bookbags for parents, where they gather lint and gum until the end of the school year never to be seen again, teachers can snap them right to the kids’ foreheads where they are in plain view. And no more lost mittens!

OK. I know. I’ve got too much time on my hands. I’m not used to having to sit around all day with my feet propped up like a princess.

I wonder how Scottie would look with nipples?

Ford, GM and Chrysler – Move Over. Moms are Experts at Cleaning Up The Big Three.

I’m tired of hearing about who’s going to clean up The Big Three.

I’ve been cleaning up The Big Three for decades, and there doesn’t seem to be an end. I’m talking about the REAL Big Three – Poop, Pee and Puke.

You’d think there would be a moratorium on cleaning up the Big Three after the age of 50. I’ve raised three kids and done heavy-duty grand babysitting. That should be sufficient for a pardon. After all, you could get convicted of murder, serve a life sentence and be out of the slammer in less time.

I was never any good with it. When my mom came to help me with my newborn, I made her change all the messy diapers. On the last day of her two-week stay, she told me that I would have to change the next one, because she was worried that I might not be able to handle it. I whined and figured I could surely get one more out of her.

 But Baby Abram settled that one. I was holding him on my shoulder when he slimed me good. Pampers weren’t the high-tech solid waste management system they are now. Thirty years ago they didn’t have elastic at the legs to keep everything inside, so they only slowed down the expulsion, they didn’t stop it.

Changing me was worse than changing him because I was wearing the fashion statement of the ‘70s, a caftan, which is – for the uninformed – a cross between a Mumu and a Nehru jacket that you had to peel over your head to take off. Mom thought it was a scream.

Then there were encore performances in a movie theatre and on the plane taking him to North Carolina to meet the rest of the family when he was six week old. I was in the bathroom cleaning poop out of the feet of his onesies and holding on for dear life when the plane landed. Nothing like a change in air pressure to end a week of constipation.

And then there was the puking. He was 6 years old when I, a divorced single mom, started dating Bob. After picking him up from the sitter on our first date, Abram threw up on me and the front seat of Bob’s prized Grand Prix with the black interior.

“Kids are so organic,” I said, hoping my wittiness would make up for the cost of detailing his car. Bob had no kids. I can’t believe he called again.

Abram went on to teach himself how to throw up when he didn’t like what was presented to him at mealtime. When he said, “I’ll throw up if you make me eat that!” he wasn’t kidding. It was a real show stopper in a restaurant.

When Abram was 9, his brother Jordan came along. Jordan had a penchant for finger painting on the walls with whatever raw materials happened to be handy. He resisted potty training so long that he learned to change his own diaper.

Nathan, born three years later, was always too busy playing outside to take a break and come in to go potty. He just pulled his pants down and went wherever he was.

“Hey Mom, Nathan pooped in the front yard again,” Abram, then 16, announced one day. “But don’t worry. I sucked it up in the lawnmower.”

Fast forward 20 years. Jordan comes over on Saturday with his new puppy – a Jack Russell terrier than my granddaughter Cheyenne’s mother gave up on – and asks me to dog sit while he works on his junker in the driveway. Jordan walks Dutch before bringing him in, but within the first 10 minutes, Bob yells that he has pooped in the bedroom.

I pretend not to hear, just like I used to pretend that I didn’t hear the baby screaming in the middle of the night. Bob takes care of this one, at least.

While Jordan works on the car, I take the puppy out every half hour, deftly avoiding any pee accidents. When Jordan finishes his work, he brings in Dutch’s chew toys, which Scottie, our mutt, decides look enough like real food to fight for. So after some growling and snapping, he begins to gnaw on the plastic bone as if it is his last meal.

“He’s not supposed to eat anything but his special dog food,” I say. “Take it away from him.”

“He can’t eat that, Mom. It’s hard plastic,” he says. “It’s good for his teeth.”

Then Jordan says he is going to a party, and he’ll be back “in a couple of hours,” and he is leaving the puppy with us. Surprise.

After walking the dog again, I find that Scottie has chewed up and swallowed half the plastic bone that is impossible for him to eat. I rake his mouth out with my finger – dog slobber – I forget how much I like that, too – and throw away the remains.

The rest of my day is spent taking the puppy out to pee every 30 minutes and refereeing him and Scottie. Scottie doesn’t have good dog social skills. He vacillates between growling at Dutch and trying to hump him.

Around 8, it is obvious that Jordan wasn’t going to be back “in a couple of hours,” and Dutch poops in the kitchen. I’ve had enough. I put him in his kennel and then into the garage, only to listen to him yelp for an hour.

Jordan finally calls saying it will be late when he gets back, can we leave the door unlocked, and can he sleep on the couch? His ride to Yorktown backed out and he doesn’t want to drive the junker on its maiden voyage at night.

Meanwhile, Cheyenne – who’s spending the night – is fixed on Animal Planet, watching a boa constrictor barf up a baby antelope. “Oh-h-h-h, co-o-o-l,” she says.

As far as I know, the dog is still in the kennel when Jordan gets in – whenever that is – and he and the dog are gone when I get up. But not without leaving me a present just outside the bedroom door. Where I can step on it with my bare feet when going to the bathroom.

An hour later, I hear Scottie retching in the corner of the den. I rush in just in time to see him puking up pieces of plastic dog bone. Did I mention that he not only has sensitive skin, but also sensitive plumbing? Something I learned the first Thanksgiving when feeding him turkey scraps only to clean up diarrhea for two days?

I drag Scottie outside and tie him to his rope where he can puke in peace while I – trying to still my own stomach – clean up dog vomit.

What a lovely way to spend Memorial Day weekend.

Someday, in the not-too-distant future, perhaps I’ll get even with these kids when I’m senile and incontinent. Would I wish that on them?

It all Depends.

Don’t Tell Me to 'Just Say No' -- You’re Barking Up the Wrong Tree.

  
Please don’t narc me out, but I’ve been stealing drugs.

From my dog.

He’s not into hard drugs, so it’s not like you need to look up the number for the DEA or whatever. He doesn’t even do weed, as far as I know, and I’m sure he wouldn’t inhale if he did. 

But Scottie’s got a nice stash of prednisone. He has terrible allergies to just about everything. We were led to believe that mutts were pretty much invincible, saved from the genetic purity that leads to disease and a desire to bark with a French accent. Not Scottie.

Rescued by a soft-hearted friend from neighbors who had left him tied to a bush during Hurricane Isabel, Scottie was the first and only dog my kids ever had. Bob refused to allow them to have a pet – especially a dog – because he had a dog before we were married that had done thousands of dollars in damage from chewing and peeing on stuff.
Actually, this was his ex-wife’s dog, a Westie, which she left behind. Duff punished Bob when he was late getting home – he swears this is true – by jumping on his bed, peeing on the pillow, and then pulling the spread over it.

Duff had the good sense to die three days before we got married. If he had done that to my pillow, he would have gone the way of Bob’s ex-wife’s Elvis painting on velvet.

Anyway, the kids begged for years for a dog, but it was a non-starter. They tried the whole list of pet possibilities – lizards, rats, snakes, gerbils, iguanas – but I nixed those. Nothing is allowed to slither in my house but me.

Once I found the boys digging a hole in the back yard. When I asked him what they were doing, they said they were digging worms. For pets.

Even that didn’t change Bob’s cold, cold heart.

But six years ago, Scottie came into our life as a sympathy gift. Nathan spent about a month in the hospital from complications of Crohn’s disease. He was a very sick boy. Bob made the mistake of asking him if there was anything he could do for him when he got home.

“Yes,” he said. “Get me a dog.”

That was that. Crohn’s did what begging and worms could not.

“Just know that we’re NOT the kind of people that spend a bunch of money on a dog to keep him alive if something happens to him,” Bob said. We understood.

Scottie was perfect for our family: friendly, no pedigree, a big tank and neurotic. He’s not only terrified of storms – easy enough to understand considering his history -- he’s afraid of the big blow up Santas people put in their yards at Christmas, other dogs, water, riding in the car and the dark.

Within the first two months, on a day when Bob was at home with the kids on one of those holidays that only government employees and school kids get, Scottie got out of the house, ran into the road and got hit by an SUV. Bob called me at work to tell me that Scottie was in the hospital and had had surgery to sew up his back leg. Cost: $900.

Then he scratched all of his fur off several times, one time even getting a staph infection. Each time required vet care to the tune of $200-300. The vet recommended allergy testing at a dog allergist. I just knew how that would play at home.

But I had another idea. Prednisone. I’ve taken it for a number of things: allergic reaction to penicillin. Chronic sinus problems/hay fever. Uncontrolled migraines.

Like Cipro and Prozac, I think it should be in the water supply. With those three things, we’d all be infection, depression and inflammation free.

The vet reluctantly agreed with my idea. (Why do something simple where there’s a much more expensive alternative?) So along with special, 100-percent lamb food, oatmeal bath and predisone, Scottie manages to keep most of his motley fur for most of the year.

So last week I had a series of migraines that my other meds just weren’t handling. On Friday I called my pharmacy to get them to refill an old prescription for a seven-day pack of predisone, but there weren’t any more refills. By the time I knew this, the doctor’s office was closed, and I was faced with a weekend of migraines.

That’s when I thought of Scottie’s prednisone. I thought I’d just start with his and get mine filled on Monday, but Monday was busy and so was Tuesday, and it slipped my mind. By Wednesday I figured I might as well go with what I had. And so that Scottie doesn’t run out early, I’ve pushed his doses to one tab every three days for a while.

I do feel a little guilty when I see him scratching more. But I figure it’s only fair. I share my Xanax with him when he goes to the vet.