Goin' to the dogs

Been a rough weel.
We have this Brussels Griffon dog. He is my wifes constant companion, walking buddy and confidant. He is a very good boy, yes he is.
He is also a financial drain and a lot of work.
He has cataracts, so he really cant see well. He walks into things. he will also walk right off the bank and into the ditch. He is an insulin dependant diabetic.
Somewhere or the other the last week he walked right smack into something sharp. I suspect it was a blackberry vine. So we took him into the vet and he had an eye infection. So on top of his insulin injections, he has four eye medications.
Then he developed the shhits and pukes. took a stool sample into the vet last Friday. They were closed for the weekend, so we had the weekend ffull of cleaning up puke and crap. Nor a whole lot of fun. He couldnt hold anything down, so we were tring to keep him hydrated with pedialite. he was worse on Saturday, worse on Sunday. We werent sure he was going to make it, neither one of us got much sleep. Carol was crying and i was trying to be the strong one.
By Monday when the vet opened we were a mess, and we handed over Monk not sure we would ever see him alive again.
Turns out he had giardia, which is a parasite from unclean water. Don't know where or how he could have picked that up. He is an inside dog, and when he goes out, he is on a leash. Untreated it can be fatal.
They took him in and rehydrated him and treated him for the bugs, and he is much better, About $500 better.
Still, having to seriously consider  life without the little bugger, iit is a relief to hear him warn us about the UPS driver, or a truck driving by, or a jet flying over, or another dog barking in the distance,orr...............

Procrastination.

I am a world class procrastinator. This blog is a perfect example of that.
I have started to make an entry into my blog several til
mes his tear, but find that I don't like where it is going, or find I am not ready to talk about things or just lake immagination.
So like this is about start six or seven.
2019 was a difficult year for me. My mom died. I have always been a nit of a mamas boy, so it hit pretty hard when I finally came to the realization that I could no longer just pick up the phone and talk to her. This was a PERMANENT change to the fundementals of the Universe. It just wasn't fair. It made an already cold universe just one minescule degree colder. So you hunch your sholders against the cold and march forward.
Then Keith died. It's not like Keith was that close to me. He was my daughters significant other. He was my friend. Having to watch hims fade away and die of Pancreatic Cancer was a terrible experience. He went from a very robust strong guy to a walking skelleton drifting through a world wnere pain was the main feature of the landscape. It just exposed that the universe is indeed a cold and uncaring place where we stumble along doing the best we can whils things crumble around us. The universe became just a little bit colder, but what can you do?
You hunch your shollders and march fotward in the hope things get better around the bens.
So woth new years, I approached the new decade with the sincere attitude that things will improve.
Man did the universe drop kick my ass.
It is not ver ofter in life that yo go through an experience completely out of your control that illustrates to you just how insignificant you fruely are.
This had been one of those times when you know, when you are absolutely sure that things have just changed forever. In terms of my personal life, not as significant as the other two events, but somehow more pervasive because it doesn't just efect me, but all of humanity forever. It is a journey where we have no idea what things will belike when it is over, but are aware that things will be changed forever for everyone. What this looks like in the real world, I have no idea.
One can hope that this experience will show us all how fragile our place in the world is, and therefore make us a little kinder, a little more considerate, a ;ittle more helpfu.
OR. The big or. We beome more insular, more selfish, less empathetic. HEY! I might NEED those 370 rolls of toilet paper and to hell with the little old lady that has crones disease and just crapped her Depends. I NEED that case od hand sanitizer and to hell with the caregivers for whom it caouls be life saving not just for then but for all the people they come in contacht with.
So we hunch our sholders and march forward, not quite sure that the place we are bound is any better than the place we are right now, and may be a whole lot worse.





















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