Trooper

by LesleyG on July 30, 2010

Last Sunday morning I woke to find my dog, Lola, with half her face swollen as if she’d had gotten into a bar fight Saturday night and had a lot of explaining to do.

For those that may not know, I worked in the Veterinary field a bit in high school and all through college and my entire life before that I grew up in a Veterinary clinic as my mother’s business was in the same building as the clinic. This lead to a life of not only loving and caring for animals but also getting to know Veterinary medicine about as closely as a person with no formal education can know it. I am a walking encyclopedia of animal knowledge, which is occasionally useful but generally just annoying. The good thing, I suppose, is that when it comes to common animal ailments, I can identify them most of the time. And when I saw my dog’s face Sunday morning I knew it wasn’t her raucous lifestyle that caused her to look like Rocky after a match, but rather just an abscessed tooth.

That is the extent to which I’ll go with the description, however, because I will admit that a tooth that has abscessed to the point of swelling a dog’s face is one of the more gross, non-emergency things  a pet owner might have to face. Even I, the person who learned to eat lunch in between routine surgeries, do not like to think about it.

A little further investigation confirmed my amateur diagnosis and even though all my background tells me that this sort of thing happens and most people do not examine their dogs’ mouths on a daily basis, I still felt like the worst person in the world.  I knew it had to be painful and, once again, although experience tells me that animals generally handle mouth pain so much better than humans, I felt like I’d kicked her in the tooth myself. Awful.  The following day Lola was in the vet’s office, having blood drawn, and started on heavy antibiotics. This is not the usual for this dog.  When she first came to me at ten weeks old, she was a rescued, mangy mess. I spent the next 13 weeks treating her and nursing her back to health.  Other than those first few months of her life, she has been a very low-maintenance pet, even if she thinks she’s too good to sleep on the floor.

She had surgery yesterday, Thursday, and was home last night recovering like normal. This morning she went outside when she woke up and tried to chase a cat, so essentially she’s back to her old self again, short one tooth and up a whole lot of sympathy and spoiling from family and friends. I didn’t realize how popular she was until this week, and it was such an unexpected reminder of what she means to me.

Over the last eight years she has been through everything with me; houses, jobs, friends, boyfriends, deaths, births, everything. She is a trooper, that’s for sure.

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Well, isn’t that special

by LesleyG on July 29, 2010

Summer feels like such a good time to make plans, doesn’t it? It may be only me but even with the difficult parts—and there has been no shortage, I know—there is a part of me that doesn’t want to miss that carefree, comfortable part of summer, too. I know it’s there, in the air. I feel it, and every day it gives me a little more drive to look ahead while still trying to soak up the moment.  I make plans, lots of them, and even if only in my heart and mind, it makes me feel better. I feel more certain every day, even with no reassurance except faith.
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I feel like very few people get to experience a time in their lives when they really learn to live and appreciate day to day. Either by circumstances we create ourselves or by things handed to us without our asking, some of us get the opportunity to learn this odd, beautiful kind of appreciation. While I am certainly the former, the person who essentially has chosen her path thus far, there is part of me that knows this added bonus of consciously realizing the value of each day is something I didn’t plan on at all. In other words: I always knew life was good, but even I don’t think I knew it was this good.
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And so, I’m making some plans. Minor, mostly, including remodeling my kitchen and some other home improvements. (Aside: I know calling a kitchen remodel “minor” is laughable, but I only mean in the grand scheme of life, not in the grand scheme of my own sanity, which is sure to be lost very early on.) It isn’t much, but it’s planning and it’s something I can control, which always makes me feel a little better. I can control countertops and flooring. Nothing special, I know, but it’s some kind of forward motion, even if it’s not what I’d imagined.  The imagined part will come later, I know.  As crazy as it sounds, I know.
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(I know this doesn’t fit the space, which bothers the crap out of me, but I had to include it.)

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Please pass the Doritos

July 22, 2010

This was a post I originally began writing last night about how I felt run over by life yesterday and everything was just so angsty and inexplicably strange. But then the electricity went out just as I was ready to publish and I heard voices outside my house. It was only my neighbors, because apparently [...]

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Today

July 20, 2010
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For the Win

July 13, 2010

First, let me just start with this: my mother has a new found love for the Internet. Since my last post, she now loves everyone, and says thank you from the bottom of her heart, and is convinced that the entire blog world is all nice people with nice things to say. Let’s just allow [...]

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And if she really does kill me, I still win– that’s how lucky I feel

July 7, 2010

I realize that by just concentrating on the [expletive!] water bugs in my last post that it may seem to some that I didn’t really have anything else to say about the trip, and that I didn’t really appreciate being able to go. Neither of those is true. In fact, I can hardly explain here [...]

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Water bugs, my ass: A night of sleeping on the beach

June 30, 2010

Ooof, I just looked at this post. It’s really long.  Here’s the thumbnail version:  I stayed in a cabin on the beach. There happened to be cockroaches in the cabin. I did not like it AT ALL, but in the end, I forgive the beach. Oh yes, I forgive the beach.

Here I am, on a [...]

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