There’s nothing like being a writer and being asked the literary equivalent of “where ya been?” This was essentially the question I got at a party a few weeks ago from a few folks. When are you going to write something again or it’s been a while since you wrote anything. As if the totally annoying writer’s block I’ve had for months and months now was done on purpose. As if I preferred to keep writing in my head all day long only to see a concrete wall built in front of my typewriter every time I approached it. OK, maybe I don’t use an actual typewriter, but take it easy, I’m writing here ain’t I? The logical reason could be that I’m suffering from imposter’s syndrome as does happen to creatives at times. That mind mess that makes you think you aren’t really a writer, or a painter or Paul McCartney so why bother creating at all. No, mine is more the, “I really don’t give a crap about imparting my thoughts to the same ten people who read my writing and I’m too damn lazy to do the work that it takes to widen that audience”, type of imposter’s syndrome. Instead, I just keep reams of imaginary paper and pen inside my head and write all day long to the point I miss exits on the freeway with consistency. But not today. I should be writing about Dublin or death or DOGE (one I miss, one I keep hoping to miss and the latter we all just wish we had missed) but instead I’ll just write about my dog.
Meet Moe Moe, a sixteen years and nine months old black and white shih tzu we’ve had since he was eight weeks old. Yesterday, he spent seven hours in an animal urgent care. It’s much like a human one, only way more expensive. The night before at about 8pm, inconveniently after my vet closed, Moe’s right paw started dangling helter-skelter out to the side and he couldn’t put it down. His head was permanently turned to the side and his back was sort of arched. He didn’t appear to be in pain. He just stared into space and moved around in a circle of sorts or laid his body down flat and stared some more. Now I’ve been told I’m a know-it-all at times and I take no offense to that, because I put a lot of work into being a know-it-all. I actually read and research the hell out of things before I impart knowledge, which is in direct opposition to what this administration and Congress does. The honorary veterinarian degree I bestowed upon myself tells me it must be a massive stroke. Professional that I am, I offer him a treat to test the waters. Moe is a massive treat dog. That dog will do anything for a biscuit. He chews it down no problem and I thought, hmm, that’s a pretty good stroke if it leaves his memory of what to do with a treat intact. I go to touch the leg to pick him up and he takes a nip at my hand. O this isn’t good, I thought, how the hell am I gonna get him to a vet. I start taking videos of his condition so I can show the vet and send to everyone I know who I will eventually tell the story to. About midnight I send it to a friend of mine who is the quintessential dog whisperer. He knows everything about dogs and agrees it looks like a stroke. We’ll come to find, he’s not as good as I think. I sleep on the sofa so I can stay near Moe all night and get like four hours of sleep. At 7am, I start looking for emergency mobile vets, because they are in such abundance these days. They all decline to come. At 8am, I call his vet who gives me more unavailable mobile vet numbers, but won’t see him because she says he really needs to go to a doggie ER. Great, except how do I get him to the car without losing a finger. My two sons are both out of town; the older on a short visit to his father’s up north and the younger one going on his second month in Italy. I decide I don’t want to ruin the last two days of my son’s trip at his dad’s, so I call my younger one who I feel I can bother since he’s had way too much vacation already. Of course, he panics and gives me useless instructions like you better keep him alive until I get home. We decide I should call his friend to come help me get Moe into the car, as this guy is a dog whisperer in training. He comes and throws a blanket around Moe and gets him into my back seat. Moe still doesn’t appear to be in any pain or distress, just hobbling around on three legs and looking annoyed as only Moe can. That morning, he even hobbled to his water dish and then wolfed down two scoops of kibble. The nice people at the doggie urgent care take him out of the car and then tell me I had to stay and wait in the parking lot for either 15 minutes or a few hours until they could tell me what’s wrong. At this point I decide to amuse myself by doing a human YELP review with people coming out of the place with their pets. Is this place any good, I ask of random strangers. Luckily, I get a lot of 5-star reviews so I don’t break Moe out of there and run. I wonder now if I could get any of these people to go to Starbucks for me, as it is now noon and I’m starving and need coffee desperately. I wander back inside to use the restroom after ninety minutes of perfect bladder control and what do I spy right in the far corner of the lobby, but a lovely coffee machine set up. I grab a cup and spy these little bags marked Scooby Doo treats. I grab one and ask the receptionist if these treats are for the dogs or for us? I really don’t care, I tell her, because I’m going to eat it anyway. She laughs and luckily these were delicious human graham crackers. I wait a little more and they come out to get me so they can tell you the actual cost of what they want to do and then you decide if you want to pay it or just take your dog home and use that fake medical degree you have and cure him yourself. When she tells me the estimate is about twelve hundred bucks, I ask if he is gonna die today. She looks a bit startled and says, no, his vitals are all good, he’s doing fine. Ok then I’ll pay it to find out what’s going on. This though was going to take another four hours with X-rays to make sure nothing was broken, blood work and a visit by a neurologist to see if she concurs with my stroke diagnosis.
At four they call me to come get him. Turns out it wasn’t a stroke at all. He just has a bad back and something called intervertebral disk disease (IVDD) where a disk can rupture and that’s what caused it. It’s a common old age disease of short legged dogs who insist on still jumping off things like a cat. He also has arthritis, which one would expect in a pup this old. They bring him out on a leash and this dog that went in looking like a crippled pretzel, prances out with his legs perfectly intact and his head straight and looking supremely irritated. Why does he have one of those horrible cones around his neck, I ask. What’s wrong? O nothing the nurse says, he was just a little aggressive with us. No kidding, I wanted to bite them myself after getting the bill. They tell me he just needs some codeine for a few days and prednisone and he’ll be fine. They tell me he really should be in a crate for a few weeks so he doesn’t run around and jump and do all sorts of puppy stuff. Ah, no I don’t think so. Putting Moe in a crate where he has never been in his entire life would be like putting me in a nursing home, I tell her. This is a dog that has never been in a kennel, let alone a crate. He’s 16 not six after all, even if he thinks he is. This is a dog that up to the day before still does his jaunty walk, as I call it, down the street. This is a dog that people we meet on his walk tell me what a cute puppy he is and then I have them guess his age and they are blown away. This is a dog that still jumps up on an ottoman and then jumps off whether the landing is soft or hard, most likely because he was raised by our cat Sally. This is a dog that won’t stay in the house if no one is home and then greets us on the porch by jumping up and down and running around in a circle doing his happy dance because humans are back. We’ll take our chances, I say, and off we go.
Now this isn’t the first time I’ve misdiagnosed an episode of his. This is the fifth time that I convinced me that he was having some type of seizure. The first one was two days before I left for Italy in September when his father came down to baby sit for him with the boys while I was gone. The second one again when his father came down so me and the boys could go to Aruba. That time he did his hunger strike routine and I had to take him to the vet the day before we left for some stomach meds. The third one, another seizure looking one, happened three days after I went to Dublin this spring. The fourth one was four days after my younger son left for Italy a month ago and now this one is two days after my older son left for northern California. Are we detecting a pattern here? The other times, though, were a bit different. There was uncontrollable shaking and then his legs give out and he just sits and stares for about ten minutes or so then gets up slowly and he’s fine and it’s over. I attributed these to some kind of seizure and his doctor just went along with my not so expert opinion. Now after this time, and much more research by me into the IVDD the back problem, it’s clear that those other times were also small disk rupture episodes. No one will ever convince me, though, that they aren’t brought on by his immense stress of not being taken along on another trip by one of us. The dog just cannot stand when one of us goes missing and works himself up into a frenzy.
Moe Moe is doing just fine now two days after this latest event. He took his usual walk yesterday. He’s wolfing down his treats. He always takes his meds easily. Ever since he was a puppy, I’d much rather give him all types of medicine than my two sons who acted like I was poisoning them when they had to take something. I give him his codeine, not because he really needs it, but just so he sits still for a few hours while the disk heals. I had to wake up in the middle of the night last night because although he jumped up on that ottoman, he was smart enough not to jump down this time and barked for me to come help him. The ottoman just has to go now. All in all, Moe Moe didn’t die the other day. I did tell him though, I am never putting you down so you are just gonna have to kick the bucket on your own, buddy! Thank you, Moe Moe for getting rid of your mommy’s writer’s block. Now perhaps I’ll even get back to finishing the pieces on Dublin and death and maybe a little bit about DOGE not dog next time!
A Cup of Coffee before you go…
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Midnight Missives and Musings 