I’m happy to report that Kinley is just about back to her old self. More accurately, she thinks she already is back to her old self, but her body isn’t quite back to normal. The first night was rough; we had a hard time getting her to stop throwing up and had to go back to the vet’s office late that night to pick up more anti-vomiting medication. I spent the whole night with my senses on high alert listening for any vomiting sounds and waking up periodically to let her have little sips of water. But today , aside from her bandaged paw and sutured tummy, you’d never know she wasn’t totally healthy. Dogs have an amazing bounceback. Then again, they don’t have to wake up at 7am to report for work, so they have less incentive to drag out their recuperation.
Now that she’s happy as a clam, I can laugh about just how hilarious she was the first day or two. She just seemed so confused about what was going on. I imagine if she could have talked, it would have gone something like this:
(That, by the way, is absolutely one of my all-time favorite internet videos. His concern is just so genuine at the end when he asks, “Is this gonna be forever??”).
Here she is yesterday, appropriating our living room chair as her recovery spot.
Poor little belly.
Roux has been good, all in all, if you don’t take into account the fact that she murdered a squirrel yesterday. Actually, worse than killing it herself, she mortally wounded it so that when I found it it was unconscious but still breathing. Which is far, far worse than finding a dead squirrel, because then I felt like it was my responsibility to make sure he wasn’t suffering. And because I am physically incpable of harming a little furry creature, it then became Alex’s responsbility to finish the job as humanely as posible. I will spare you the photo of our fallen friend as well as the gory details, but suffice it to say I am really hoping the catch was a total fluke and that Roux is not in fact capable of actually catching anything else.
She spent the afternoon with me yesterday lying quitely by my feet on the patio of a coffee shop while I worked, so quietly in fact that it dawned on me that she is growing up. She’ll be two this summer, which, yes is still a puppy by most accounts, but it is the lead-in to middle age, right? There are all kinds of little tiny signs that she’s maturing into a real dog instead of a silly puppy. And that is both unbelievably exciting and sad.
But mostly exciting.
