The Miracle Dog

 

5 years ago today, this miracle was born.

Let me start this off by saying what probably seems obvious: I don't have any children.  I am never going to have any children (by choice, not biology).  So, as is so often the case with people such as me, my dog is my baby.  When people bust out pictures of their kids, I bust out pictures of this guy.  When they go through unimaginable anxiety because their kids are sick, I go through that for this guy.  Buddy is my baby.  So if you can't understand that, you may want to skip this.  But if you do, then none of what I'm about to say will sound crazy and I invite you to read on.

As I was saying, 5 years ago today that awe-inspiringly adorable little man was born.  He was part of a litter of 4.  He was the second smallest.  And from the second I saw him, I was hooked.  That's all there is to it.

Since then, he has become the focus of most of my and my partner's thoughts, worries and affections.  He is integral to how we structure our day.  He is part of what we think about before we go to bed at night, part of what we are most grateful for in life, part of our family in the most fundamental way possible.  Like I said, my baby.

Its hard to put into words how incredibly grateful I am to have him in my life.  His pure, unfiltered joy infects me every time we play fetch (his favorite activity).  His soft little body physically heals mine every time we snuggle (probably his second favorite activity).  His simple mind inspires me to be mindful every time I see him smell, eat, run, bark, roll-around-in-whatever with wild abandon.  My life is better because he is in it.  Period.

And today, because it's his birthday, I just needed to say: I fucking love that little dog more fiercely than I've ever loved (or could ever love) a human.  And although I do honestly thank god everyday for him I am especially aware and grateful today.  Happy Birthday, Buddy!

Celebrate the Small Things- Preparing for Christmas

It's Friday Celebration time with our dear host, Viklit.  As always, click the link to sign up and see the full list of all the awesome bloggers participating.

This week my celebrations are:

Christmas Cards!  That little guy is my dog, Buddy, and he's staring daggers at me for putting him in that reindeer costume.  One of the best parts of having a freakishly adorable and tiny little guy like him is that you can torture him with ridiculous costumes and there's not a damned thing he can do about it.  (I'm pretty sure there's a special place in hell reserved for people like me.)  At any rate, I walked into the post office on Wednesday with a stack of those cards and a tower of boxes containing home-baked Christmas cookies (which take me forever to make but are so worth it) destined for places all over the US.  Friends and relatives are going to be greeted by that when they fetch their mail over the next few days.  And that makes me giddy.

Christmas Parties!  We had our usual potluck at work yesterday and I ate so much I spent the rest of the afternoon in a near coma.  Tomorrow is the company-wide Christmas party where I will again be eating way too much.  And in case all that doesn't put me into a diabetic coma we've got our karate potluck scheduled for tomorrow night, complete with the most ridiculously fun version of Pollyanna gift-giving I've ever participated in.  Awesome.

Christmas!  It's only a few short days away and I will be spending those days wrapping gifts, baking up a storm and trying to soak in every bit of the wonderfulness this time of year can offer.  I hope to take a brief break to go see the new Hobbit (cause how freakin' amazing is that gonna be?!) but other than that I'm in full-on holiday mode.  The key to this time of year, I've learned, is to be as present in the moment as humanly possible.  I know that's a good thing to practice in general, but especially now when things have the potential to pass by in a whirlwind.  So I will do my absolute best to pick up all the sights, sounds, smells and feelings of this wonderful and wonderous holiday, and to be grateful for every single minute of it.

Happy Holidays!

(P.S.  Don't forget to hop on the web Chrstmas Eve for the 50 States of Pray group posting hosted by the amazingly thoughtful Mark Koopmans.  If there's anything to put you in the Christmas spirit, that's it!)

Park, Interrupted

Saturday was a gorgeous day.  The sun was out, the temperature had climbed into the low sixties, there was a nice breeze in the air and the humidity was the lowest it’s been in months.  So of course, Dave and I had the same idea as everyone else: go outside.  And since Buddy had just recently become blissfully cone-free we were eager to let him run and romp in reward for the weeks of discomfort he’d braved.  So we put on the leash, packed up his ball, treats and water, and walked to the park.

It was deceptively empty when we got there.  It usually is.  So we let him off the leash and let him run.  For a few minutes, it was heaven.  Him running his little heart out, his little ears flapping in the wind, that look of unadulterated joy on his furry little face.  Lovely.

But then (of course) some kids showed up on the play ground.  Which wasn’t that big of a deal since we could just move further out into the field.  So we did, and we continued our game of fetch.

But then a guy showed up with his two dogs and we got wary.  They were normal sized dogs, technically.  But a normal sized dog is still a giant in comparison to Buddy so we always have to be careful. 

But at first it seemed like he was just going to walk them through without actually coming into the park.  So we just kept an eye on them and threw the ball a little closer.

But then he let one of the dogs off the leash.  Again, at first it seemed like it might be ok since the dog was staying within a few feet of him.  Some people train their dogs well so there’s less cause for concern.  This dog was not well trained.

I was just bending down to put Buddy’s leash on as a precaution when I heard Dave yell out a surprised “Hey!”  I looked up and there was a split second of seeing this dog (which seemed like a Husky mix of some kind) barreling towards me as fast as its rather sizable legs could carry it before Dave’s leg blocked my view.  He threw it out linebacker-style in an attempt to deflect the dog from getting to Buddy.  I instinctively grabbed him up in my arms.

He let out a loud yelp and in the confusion I didn’t know if it was from me grabbing him or the dog hitting him because a fraction of a second later the dog had bounced off of Dave’s leg and hit me in my back as I turned.  I didn’t think about it, the only thing in my brain was “get Buddy in arms and up off ground NOW!”

That might have been the end of the crisis except that this dog (who we learned was named Max when his owner called him and he totally ignored it) was a very good jumper.  So he jumped.  And I turned, to keep Buddy away.  Then he jumped again, and I turned again.  And so it continued- Max jumping wildly, me twisting and turning like a ball carrier trying to evade a tackle.  He was impacting pretty hard each time he jumped at me.  Buddy’s leash was dragging on the ground, getting tangled in my feet.  Dave was desperately trying to get a hold of Max and failing as he jumped and got on the other side of me.

Max’s owner, apparently in disbelief that his dog could possibly do any harm to my tiny bundle, kept calling out “He’s friendly!”  As if that meant that Max- who was at least 20 times the size of Buddy, at an extremely conservative estimate- wouldn’t hurt him by accident.  He’s tiny, as I’ve said many times.  Not to mention that he just had major surgery.  Needless to say, friendly didn’t mean jack to us at that moment.

So I started booking it to the other side of the park.  I didn’t look back to see if Max was chasing us, I didn’t try to explain to his owner that I really didn’t mean to be rude, I just ran.  When I heard the din die down I looked back and saw that the man (who was looking rather bewildered at the whole thing) had finally gotten a hold of Max and Dave was walking after me. 

As my heart started to slow I remembered that I’d heard Buddy yelp so I checked him to make sure he was ok.  I pulled on his legs, checked his face and undercarriage.  He acted normal so I started to breathe again.  I didn’t put him down and let him walk on his own again until we’d left Max safely on the other side of the block.

Dave I spent the rest of the walk home talking about how it had been a good idea, at least.

The Giant End of February Everything Post

With so many things to address, I'm not gonna piece-meal.  So here’s what’s up with everything relevant at the moment.

#NaNoReMo

Nicholas Nickleby is not an easy read.  I know that I’ve defended Charles Dickens in the past from those who claimed that he was entirely too verbose to earn their respect and although I’m not done defending him (or being a fan of his, in general) I must say that I REALLY get their point now.  Great Expectations is shockingly short in comparison to many of his other tales, so we’ll leave that out of the comparison.  But David Copperfield was a long read by anyone’s gauge and I found it much easier to get through for some reason.  I’m not sure why, but this book has made me achingly aware of how long it is, how the majority of the sentences contained within its pages are a paragraph long and contain more commas than I think should legally be allowed in a single sentence, how unnecessary some of the details are and how damned long it’s taking me to get through.  I’ve been reading everyday and I’m still close to 200 pages off from the end.

But this challenge is about reading a classic, not sticking to the rather arbitrary rule of doing it in the shortest month of the year.  And I console myself that if it had been January I’d still have 3 days left to finish this thing.  So I’m gonna keep reading as much as I can during my free time with the aim of completing it by Saturday and assuming I finish it by then I’m gonna count it as a win, even though it’ll technically be March.  Stay tuned for the review.

Buddy

So we got the biopsy results on Tuesday.  As I said before, we were pretty confident they were going to be negative; our thinking being that if he actually had this there would have been some other symptoms to verify that.  So when I got a voicemail from the surgeon saying “everything looks good” I naturally interpreted that to mean “His liver is healthy” and “he doesn’t have microvascular dysplasia" (henceforth referred to as MD) and whatnot.  Dave and I had a brief sigh of relief over lunch during which we discussed what timeline we should pursue in terms of taking him off the special diet and planned to happily return to life as it was before the seizures.

Imagine our surprise when we called the doctor to discuss things in more detail and heard that he does, in fact, have MD.  There was a brief moment of “what, now?” during which we had to throw out our list of questions and come up with a bunch of news ones, primary of which was “Wait a second- he does?!?”  While reassuring us that MD is an extremely common (among small dogs) and easily manageable condition which should in no way negatively impact the health of our little guy, he failed to clearly explain to us how results showing that he definitely has a certain disease equate to “good”.

It wasn’t until our regular vet (who is way more attentive and on top of things than any doctor that’s ever treated me, a human) explained it to us in layman’s terms that we felt better.  She stated that yes, it is extremely common and that most dogs never show any signs of it and you’d never even know they had it and only a few need special medication or diet or have negative health problems because of it.  If not for the seizures, she said, we never would have even identified it.  And although the diet is the plan du jour it is by no means guaranteed to be required- we might still try to take him off of it at some point in the future and see how he does; cause chances are decent that he won’t even need it.  And while they’ll have to be aware when treating him with medications that’ll be processed in the liver in the future, that’s really the only special precautions we should need to take.

She also said that while we had been operating under the belief that the ultrasound we did when this all went down had been definitive in ruling out a shunt, this biopsy was done largely for the same reason so “good” meant “he doesn’t have a shunt”- which we thought we already knew.  Oy.  At any rate, while deflated, Dave and I are hopeful that once our poor little guy gets his stitches taken out and we can finally remove the cone (which he hates more than anything in existence) he’ll be back to normal and since this is all done he shouldn’t need surgery again- ever.  We’ve told him that everybody gets one and he’s blown his so now he’ll just have to shut up and be healthy.  (Being a dog, we’re concerned he didn’t quite understand what we were saying.  But we’ll keep trying.)

More Stress

Friday was a rough day for me.  With Buddy in surgery for most of the morning/early afternoon I was glued to my phone, anxiously awaiting updates from the vet.  While I refused to believe in even the possibility of Buddy not coming through it just fine, I was still pretty anxious to see that he did.  I had a brief but momentous sigh of relief upon hearing that he was ok which was shattered by the phone call home to tell my parents of this.

“Don’t freak out,” my dad said, “but mommy’s in the hospital.”

Don’t freak out?  Sure, no problem.  It’s not like I’ve been on edge all day anyway. 

Now, my mom had told me that she thought she might have a slight case of food poisoning when I’d spoken to her on Wednesday but I really didn’t think much of it because she’d told me that she was feeling better and thought it was done.  It wasn’t food poisoning and it wasn’t done.

We never technically found out what the hell it was- tests they did in the hospital came back negative for E. coli, salmonella and all the other big names in serious gastro-intestinal illness.  But IV fluids and liquid diet were useless in slowing down the vomiting and diarrhea.  She was admitted to the hospital Thursday night and wasn’t discharged until Tuesday.  TUESDAY.  That’s 8 full days of illness, 5 of which were spent in the hospital.

My aunt is a nurse practitioner and one of the smartest people I know.  Every crisis, every serious medical illness and every new diagnosis she’s on the phone with us talking about it, letting us know what cases of it she’s treated and how people dealt with it, e-mailing us information and helpful web sites and explaining what the doctor told us in clear terms that we can understand.  She is a saint.  And she called me to let me know her hypothesis: that this was one of 3 “super bugs” that were going around wreaking havoc on people’s digestive systems.  While some people get sick for a day or two with little impact on their ability to function, some people, like my mother, get really sick.  A perfect example of this is the fact that my father came down with similar symptoms on Sunday but was already starting to feel better by Monday night.  And because it’s a virus there’s not really all that much you can do other than wait for it to run its course.

When I first heard all this I was fully prepared to leave Dave in charge of Buddy and drive up to New York to see her.  My mother told me- in no uncertain terms- that Buddy needed me more than she did.  Thank God, because it seems quite possible that I could’ve gotten whatever she and my dad (and now my brother) had.

At any rate, this all served as a pretty big scare that ultimately amounted to a reminder of how dangerous these things we regularly get exposed to can be.  I wish there was some other lesson that came out if- like how to avoid contracting it.  But I suppose all you can really do is know that there’s the possibility of these things, and to not hesitate to seek out medical attention if you’re really sick.

So that’s been the week.  Crazy stressful, not the best for finishing a book, and overall something I’ll be very happy has passed once it’s done.

Home Bound

Buddy is home.  The surgery went well, he's recovering nicely and I am so grateful.  The dental work took the bulk of the time with the internal stuff being completed shockingly fast by comparison.  But the doctor said his liver looked "grossly normal"- the medical term for "there's nothing wrong with it"- upon examination and the vet techs reassured us that he was "resting comfortably" overnight.

When we picked him up he was still pretty out of it and of course he's absolutely miserable (as we knew he would be) with the cone on.  And he makes these heart breaking little noises when he shifts his position on my lap that make it sound like he's in pain.  But, we've been giving him what I assume is a relatively heavy-duty pain killer once a day and his puppy eyes staring off into space seems like a good indicator that it's working.

And every day he gets a little more active, a little more eager to run around and play.  Which isn't entirely good news because we're supposed to keep his movement pretty restricted while he's healing- a task that will become increasingly difficult as time goes on.  But it's reassuring to see him alert and more like himself. 

And while trying to give the puppy as much lap time as possible whilst convalescing I've been catching up on my reading- only a few more days to finish Nicholas Nickleby for #NaNoReMo.  And there's no place he'd rather be, and no place I'd rather have him, than right on my lap.

Thank you, so much to everyone who's been sending him well wishes.  I am so grateful and so blessed to have my little guy home.

What's On My Mind

Disclaimer: I try not to write too much about my personal life on here, mainly because I can’t imagine that anyone really wants to read about it.  But there are times when the current events are important enough to me that I feel the need to share them here, for whatever reason.  This is one of those times.  So if you come here strictly for the fiction or creative endeavors, feel free to skip this post.  But if you have any interest in me or if you're a dog lover, keep reading.

Back in May, my teeny, tiny little puppy scared the sh*t out of my boyfriend and I by having two seizures in one night.  They happened out of nowhere and have not occurred since.  At the time, we rushed him to the vet ER and spent what was to be the beginning of a boat load of money doing tests in order to figure out what the hell had happened.  While they ruled out a shunt to his liver (arguably the most common cause of seizures in otherwise healthy dogs), there was no conclusive diagnosis reached.

Possible diagnostic labels included “he just ate something” (still a possibility), “it’s the beginnings of epilepsy” (very unlikely since it’s been so long without incident) or microvascular dysplasia.  Microvascular dysplasia, for those who are interested, is a condition wherein the blood vessels in the animal’s liver are malformed at a microscopic level such that the liver is unable to do its job properly.  Because it’s a microscopic problem, it can’t be corrected surgically and the only method of treatment is medications and special diet- for life.

Since this seemed the most likely cause, he’s been on a special healthy-liver diet ever since and we’ve been told that there’s a chance the reason he hasn’t had any more seizures is because of that.  This diet, while not harmful to him long-term, is prescription only and therefore very expensive.  If there’s a chance that he doesn’t have this liver issue, we’d sooner find out for sure so we can have him go back on regular food and not live in constant fear of him randomly having another seizure.  So, tomorrow, we’re finally going ahead and having him get the liver biopsy we’ve been considering since last May.

But that’s not all.  Buddy is a toy poodle.  In addition to being prone to shunts and microvascular dysplasia, this tiny breed of dog is also prone to holding onto their baby teeth.  True to form, Buddy is a tiny little tooth hoarder, still holding on to five of his baby teeth.  This is, needless to say, problematic because they crowd his adult teeth, make little gaps for food to get stuck in and increase the risk of gum disease by about a million-fold.  And because of them his breath is now at the point where, if you get a good whiff of it, your gag reflex reacts.  Not good- he has to get them taken out.  And since all dental work requires the dog to be put under anesthesia, it makes sense to go ahead and do that while he’s out for the biopsy.

And as if all that weren’t enough, my tiny little dog still has his tiny little balls.  Now, in all honesty, I would love for him to keep them.  He’s not out and about with female dogs that he might impregnate (and even if he were I don’t think it’d be an issue since he’s scared of all other dogs).  He doesn’t have any real aggression caused by too much testosterone.  And honestly, he’s prissy enough as is that I feel bad taking away the one semblance of manhood he has left.  But the vets all say that the risks of prostate cancer, testicular cancer and other issues are so much higher with dogs who have them that we feel compelled to have them removed for health reasons. 

Apparently it’s a much lower risk to put the dog under for longer to do more than it is to put them under several consecutive shorter times to do less.  So tomorrow’s surgery will be a sort-of blow out event of removing bodily organs, pieces of organs and teeth from our tiny little dog.  (And when I say tiny, by the way, I mean that he’s 3.5lbs soaking wet.  So it’s not an exaggeration.)

*Tiny*

Now, as you can guess, we’re pretty attached to him.  Not just because he’s our little Buddy (hence the name) but because he is freakishly adorable and therefore we do what all other owners of adorable dogs do: we worry, fret over and coddle the hell out of him.  Add into this mix all my maternal instincts since I don’t have real kids to direct them towards and you’ve got the makings of a very, very concerned puppy parent.  Tomorrow is gonna suck.

We’ve been getting increasingly anxious about it as the day approaches.  We’ve been feeling increasingly guilty for the fact that he’s going to wake up in a strange place with strange people and strange dogs and a host of strange smells drugged out of his tiny puppy skull and in pain for reasons he won’t know of or understand.  We’ve been questioning whether or not all this is the right thing to do and second-guessing the hell out of ourselves.  (And seeing as we’ve been mulling this over for so long that’s rather unsettling.)

But, as my mother attempted to console me last night, this too shall pass.  Yes, he’ll be in pain and yes he’ll be scared but he will come home.  He will be cared for (overly so, I’m sure).  He will recover.  And God willing, we’ll get good results from the biopsy, he’ll have a healthier mouth and we’ll never have to worry about testicular or prostate or any other cancers again.  And we’ll be able to live in peace with our little Buddy, seizure free and healthy, for a long, long time.

I’m not religious so formal prayer is not something I usually engage in.  And while I do believe in a lot of spiritual concepts I don’t really connect with any formal systems for practicing them.  But at times like this I can’t help but feel the need to perform some kind-of ritual for the purposes of asking for Godly support in my puppy’s speedy recovery.

Whether it’s kharma, positive energy or just thoughts I will be spending my morning (possibly afternoon depending on what time they actually get him on the table) engaged in the concentrated focus of wishing my little guy health, strength to get through everything, and healing powers to recover.  And I’ll be doing my damndest not to have a mental breakdown until I get that phone call saying that he’s out of surgery, alive and on route to being well.

As always, I ask for any well wishes, good thoughts or prayer you may wish to send in the direction of my little guy.  And I offer my thanks, as insufficient as that seems, in return.

50k

Tuesday night I had a panic moment.  Sill 9k words from the monthly goal, and several thousand words under where I was supposed to be I had a distinct, acutely terrifying thought: “What if I don’t make it?”  Winner’s badges and triumphantly purple word count bars and a really cool winner’s t-shirt flashed before my eyes and then poofed out of existence like a magician’s disappearing act.  I walked downstairs to break for dinner feeling defeated and really, really sad.

I told my boyfriend about the source of my woes and after his initial reassurance went unheard he tried a novel approach: he held our dog hostage. 

He said “You have to finish, you know why?” 

I shook my head at him, looking very much like the kid who’s just lost his ice cream from off his cone in an overzealous lick.

“Because if you don’t Buddy’s gonna die.”

At first I thought he meant karmically, like a curse or something.  Until he promised to crush our little dog’s teeny-tiny head with a single kick.  He said all this as if it were the most reasonable, logical response to a failure to reach my word goal.

I stopped my pouting, looked at him and said “That is the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

Over the next few days, with my little guy sleeping next to me on my bed, totally unaware of the danger he was in, I wrote.  I wrote with abandon.  I wrote without giving a rat’s ass whether or not what I was writing made sense to the plot or whether or not that was quite the word I was looking for or whether or not that was something that character would actually say.  And every time I found myself wanting to stop and research something on Wikipedia or look up that word in the thesaurus to see if there was something better to describe what I was trying to get at I would look over at my dog, so innocent and unaware of his impending doom, and keep on writing.  Because I didn’t want him to die.

*NOT Dead!*



I managed to play a serious game of catch up Wednesday when I met my word count goal after being 2k words behind.  Then tonight, because I’d just written over 3600 words the day before, I figured that another 3300 to cross that goal line was nothing.  A one-hour word war helped significantly and the promise of actually crossing the goal line and getting all of those things I mentioned above (not to mention my dog living through November) was enough to get me through.  I now have a triumphantly purple bar with the word “WINNER!” on it, a kick-ass badge- check it out, on your right, it’s so pretty!- and I will be ordering my awesome winner’s t-shirt (because even though this is my fourth year winning, I’ve never bought a winner’s t-shirt before). 

BUT, ah hem, I have not yet finished.  I started this month saying that even more than winning this year I wanted to finish my story because it was so terribly rewarding when I did it for the very first time last year.  Now, with only a day left and a pretty busy schedule for that day, it seems unlikely that will happen because I’m nowhere near the end so far as my story arc.  To sum up why, let me explain that my story is about a group of seniors who go to a haunted house to do a paranormal investigation and at 50k words in, I just had my first actual paranormal moment.  So, yeah- I've got a while to go.

In my frenzied, excited state I’m thinking of all variety of ways I can challenge myself to keep going and finish the thing.  I could do NaNoFiMo again like I did three years ago.  But that didn’t result in the end of that novel and ultimately just made me more frustrated.  I could extend Buddy’s hostage situation until I finish, but without a concrete end in sight that just seems sort-of silly.  I could say that I have to finish by December 5^th because that’s when the sale of the winner’s shirts ends.  Or I could come up with something so ridiculous, so devious, that I can’t even imagine it in my current elated state.

Whatever I choose, I know I have to keep going.  Because if this story deserved to reach 50k, it definitely deserves to be finished.  Wish me luck.

The World's Greatest Puppy

One year ago today my boyfriend and I brought home the world's cutest puppy.  He was only 9 weeks old at the time, petrified of everything (and I do mean everything) and unable to manage a moment alone without falling apart.  It took a long time to get him house trained, comfortable on his own outside of the pen or able to comply with simple commands like sit or down.  And it tested the will of both of us to deal with the far greater than we could have realized responsibility of raising a puppy.  (For the record, it's really not all that different than having a baby.  It's just that growing up goes a lot quicker, thank god.)

It's so easy to get caught up in the daily technicalities.  Getting him out for a walk before work when you're running around like a headless chicken in the morning.  Being frustrated that he's still so anxious around other dogs.  Trying to get him to stop barking his head off when you come home from a long, trying day of work... The annoyances, the details, the facts of everyday reality.  Like everything, you can get caught up in it and lose track of the bigger picture.

But the bigger picture is this: he is, when it comes down to it, a miracle.  The fact that this creature exists- that he's just walking around the house, looking up at you with those amazingly round puppy dog eyes that show such overwhelming love, jumping at your heels so that you'll play a game a fetch with him, sitting in his best 'good boy' pose in expectation of a treat, snuggling in your lap like a fluffy teddy bear, all of it- is a miracle.  The world's cutest, most devastatingly adorable dog  is right there, waiting for me to get home from work and take him for a walk.

I try not to lose track of that, and I've written here about how he helps me in that endeavor.  Reminding me to slow down, take a few moments to just realize what a beautiful day it is outside as we walk around the block.  To fully enjoy a game of fetch with a puppy who wants nothing more in the world than to play with you.  To just look at that face and melt the way that you can't help but melt at the sight of such a face.  To be present that way that one can only be in the company of a puppy.  I like to think I take that seriously enough to be always grateful for him, everyday.

But on this anniversary of bringing him home for the first time I can't help but pay special attention to that and to fully acknowledge, with all the weight that acknowledgement bears, that I am so blessed to have him in my life.

Puppy Training

Before we got Buddy, I read Caesar Milan’s “How To Raise the Perfect Dog” and I vowed not to make the same seemingly stupid mistakes that he talked about other people making.  Fast forward a year and I’ve made most of those stupid mistakes, one of which was not getting Buddy socialized early on so as to avoid anxiety or aggression in response to other dogs.

            We were told that Buddy needed ‘puppy kindergarten’ early on to get him healthily socialized.  Like a lot of other tasks that linger on the periphery of everyday focus, we always meant to get it done but it was never at the top of our list.  We thought we had time- he’s still so young, after all.  Which is why when we finally got in touch with a dog training organization in the area and were told that Buddy was well past the proper age for puppy kindergarten we were shocked.

            We got a bit of the ol’ riot act when we sat down for our first consultation last night.  The proper age for puppy kindergarten, the lady repeated several times, is between 2 to 4 months old.  Which meant that we were about, oh, 10 to 8 months late to the party.  Because of this, she informed us, Buddy might have some trouble keeping up with the other dogs in the class we were going to put him in.  Hearing all this shrunk me down to that ‘two cents’ feeling very fast.

            But I rallied when the trainer actually started working with Buddy.  Because while we missed out on socialization, we didn’t miss training.  Buddy is a proverbial master at SIT.  And DOWN ain’t too bad, either.  He did great at a painfully easy game called “Name Recognition” simply because he knows his name and responds instantly to it.  He displayed his nature- which is to want to please- in everything he did.  This makes him very trainable and relatively easy to work with (at least in comparison to a lot of other dogs).  I was proud, I gotta say.

            Still, as we were driving home I couldn’t help but wonder aloud whether or not we were bad dog owners for having missed that so-much-smaller-than-we-thought window for socialization.

“Seriously?” was the response I got.  “He has two people who not only shelter him, feed him, and shower him with toys but also play with him, hold him and give him affection, worry and fret over him and basically do everything they can think of to try to make him happy.  This is not a neglected dog!”

Valid point.  Plus I figure, better late than never.
           Classes start next month and I'm sure that many interesting, entertaining and likely funny events will unfold.  Stay tuned.

Buddy's First Christmas

As I said yesterday, there were many wonderful things these past days that made the holiday truly joyous for me.  Visiting two families, two huge delicious dinners, two sets of gifts to unwrap.  But among all the amazing and wonderful attractions that made this holiday the one that got the most attention at both venues was Buddy.

He was passed around like a hash pipe at a bake-in: no one could get enough of him.  And despite the fact that he spent the night in a strange house, despite the fact that he was in the car for a collective total of over six hours in the two days, despite visiting two unfamiliar places and being passed around by a host of strange people he handled it all like a pro.  There was no destruction of things he might have chewed on, nothing got peed on, no one got growled at.  He seemed to know that however strange his surroundings might be he was in the company of people who thought the world of him.

He even let us put his Christmas outfit- a little Santa hat and matching collar- on him.  He hated every second of it, of course, but he conceded to be photographed and cooed at by us crazy humans. 

And I must say, it was nice to have everyone get such a kick out of something that sometimes drives us nuts and whom we can take for granted.  It served as a nice reminder that among all the great gifts we received this year the biggest gift of all was most certainly Buddy.

Buddy's First Halloween

As a small dog owner there are certain things that you just have to do. No matter how silly you feel for being one of “those people”, or how much your dog may hate you for it you feel compelled to do these things because the sheer adorableness is too great not to. Posed picture sittings are one of these milestones, one that we passed many months back. Getting an adorable Halloween costume is one that we experienced for the first time last night.

I was a little nervous about the availability of said Halloween costumes given that this was last minute and that Buddy is so tiny that it’s often extremely difficult to find things in his size. Luckily, I found an extra, extra small that was just about perfect for him. His costume? A sock monkey. It was a little knit sweater with a sock money design on the back and hood with monkey ears. To say that he was adorable would be a severe understatement. He was painfully cute. Way cuter than any of the trick-or-treaters that came to our door. (BTW, slightly off topic, but my favorite costume of the night? One kid was dressed as a box. A plain cardboard box. And the best part? He couldn’t move his arms so his friend had to get the candy and put it in his bag. I could barely restrain my laughter till I closed the door.) He was so delightfully precious that even though he hated every single minute of wearing that costume we didn’t care- it was too cute to take off.

Now, with the hood down, he actually seemed to tolerate it. It was warm and he was getting a lot of attention with it on. But with the hood up it was bordering on animal cruelty. He couldn’t see and when he wrestled out of my grip and ran away he ran head-on into the couch, then backed up into the chair, then shook his head so violently that he fell over. We learned that the only time the hood could be safely up was when we were holding him. So we took a whole bunch of pictures and then put the hood back. Because even without the little monkey ears it was still an adorable little hoodie. And even though I’m pretty sure he disliked every single minute of it it was totally worth it. We’ve even discussed seeing if we can find a tiny little elf costume for him for Christmas! Poor Buddy.

Buddy vs. The Garbage Bag

We were out for a walk this afternoon, doing the longer loop around the whole neighborhood, when we passed by a garbage bag that had been left on the curb for trash pickup.  Now, buddy isn’t usually afraid of garbage bags but this one was particularly threatening because the tie had come undone and the plastic was flapping in the breeze.

Buddy, big, tough dog that he is, took the offensive and started growling at it.  It flapped at him, viciously.  Buddy decided he wasn’t going to let this bully push him around so he braced himself and then charged, barking up a storm.  A gust of wind sent the plastic whipping towards him and he jumped back as if he’d been struck.  He then tucked his tail between his legs and took off in full retreat.

Garbage Bag: 1            Buddy: 0

Buddy Goes to the Drive-through

My boyfriend relayed another Buddy adventure to me when I spoke to him on the phone tonight. I hate that I’m missing all this cute stuff, but John Con waits for no one.

My boyfriend decided to go get himself some dinner and, because he’d been at work all day and didn’t want to leave Buddy alone even longer, determined to bring him with him. He had him sitting next to him in the car and went to the drive through to get his food.

At the window was your typical drive through attendant: a teenaged girl making some after school cash. Well, she took one look at Buddy and, like everyone does, melted. And what did she exclaim in a high pitched squeal? “He’s so cute he doesn’t even look real!”

Yeah, that’s my dog: the living teddy bear.

Buddy Gets a Delivery

So, when I spoke to my boyfriend today he relayed a story about Buddy that, like most Buddy stories, shows how ridiculously adorable he is. Because I wasn’t the one who directly observed the event I’m going to embellish a little bit, so bear with me.

Our fridge died a few days back and we ordered a new one. Thankfully, free delivery was included in the price. When the delivery guys got there, Buddy was safely in his pen out of the way of the doorway so they could get through with the fridge. But, because he is a dog, he had to bark to let everyone know that he knew that there were new people coming into the house. And, because he’s Buddy, he had to excitedly jump as high as his little legs could kick him (which is impressively high given his size) while he barked.

Well, when these delivery guys came in, they took a look at the source of the excited barking. One of them asked the question that everyone asks: what kind of dog is that? And my boyfriend told him: he’s a toy poodle.

Now this guy was a bad-looking mofo. He was big. He was crazy muscular. He was tall and broad and looked like he could break you in half with one hand. (At least that’s how he looks in my head.) And, because I’m telling the story, he had a voice as deep as Barry White’s. Got the image?

Now imagine this guy looking at this tiny, cute ball of fluff who could easily be described as a ‘floofy dog’ that big, bad guys typically don’t go for and saying “A man could fall in love with that dog.” Yeah, that’s what he said. Does that kill you, or is it just me?

The power of Buddy: turning even the toughest mofos to mush.

Me and My Shadow

Buddy is a very comical looking dog.  He’s so tiny that when he starts barking at other dogs or people they can’t help but go “Awww- look at the big, mean doggy!” in a cutesy baby voice.  We even bought him a colar with skulls and crossbones on it to drive the point home.  We considered naming him Killer, but decided he’s got enough going against him already, being the cutest little thing on the planet.

So with his frightening physical appearance it’s no wonder that he is chicken shit scarred of everything.  And I do mean everything.  Including himself, as evidenced by the crazy barking fit he had when he first discovered his reflection.  Well, the same thing happened when he discovered his shadow.

We were out for a walk at night and I had the flashlight on so I could see where I was going and to enable me to pick up his business when he was done.  We’d made our usual loop around the block and gotten back to our house when he stopped.  I noticed him pulling on the leash so I stopped to see what he was doing.  Rather than sniffing some fascinating scent on the ground as I expected him to be he was in a tensed position, staring out at something.  I looked over to the side of our house and there it was- his shadow.  because of my flashlight it was, by all rights, a lot bigger than he is.  But it was still in his terribly cute shape.

Just as I was about to call him he growled.  He put his legs back, leaned forward and growled as loud as he could.  At his shadow.  I, of course, burst out laughing.  And as if this wasn’t funny enough, he ran forward barking at it and then got terribly confused when it got smaller and less threatening.  He was fascinated by this shadow dog for a solid ten minutes before his tiny attention span moved on to the next distraction and there was no point in time that he seemed to gain any concept that that shadow dog barking at him was nothing other than him.

Much like his evil twin, I imagine it will be a long rivalry.

Buddy in the Park

We took Buddy for a walk in Valley Forge park today. It’s something I’ve wanted to do since long before we got him, having seen countless people happily walking their dogs along the path every time I drive through there.

Buddy, as always, was crazy excited- bouncing around like a wind-up toy and sniffing everything with the fascination of a two year old. He loved the long grasses on the side of the path a little too much and we had to keep reining him in for fear of ticks and whatnot. Needless to say, we didn’t get to cover much distance.

We had just rounded a curve in the path when we heard a very loud, very deliberate screech of brakes on a bike tire- the kind of thing you hear when someone is trying to hurriedly come to a stop to avoid hitting something. We looked up to see what had happened.

A young woman was running- running over to us, removing her bike helmet as she came. She only had eyes for Buddy.

“Oh my god! He is the cutest- what kind of Dog is this? Oh my god!” she said, bent over to look at him.

We rushed to give his usual introduction: “This is Buddy, he’s a toy poodle.”

Buddy gave his usual greeting: bouncing around and making quick, short sounds with his open mouth and wildly flailing tongue- the sound that is not a bark or growl or any other distinguishable noise.

“Hi Buddy!” she cooed at him. “Can I pet him?” she asked without stopping to see if it was ok. We were fine with it anyway, we wanted to test out our training, see if he could behave appropriately when greeted by strangers.

She pet him, cooed at him, marveled at him as he jumped up and down in front of her like a spring. We just stood and watched, amazing at how excited she was. She might have been more excited than he was, actually.

The power of Buddy: stopping people dead in their tracks!

Buddy Vs. The Front Step

Buddy is a toy poodle. For those of you who don't know the breed, they are very small. The place you seem most likely to see them nowadays is in the oversized purse of a young fashionista. As I am not aware of fashion I don't carry Buddy around in a purse, I take him for walks.

There is one big obstacle to this: the front step to our house. It’s about- a foot, maybe? Maybe even 14 inches? Not that tall for humans- but very, very tall to tiny little dogs like Buddy. At first he couldn’t even get up on his own- he would sit on the ground and whimper to be lifted up over this giant obstacle. We, being concerned dog parents, eagerly complied.

Over time, however, Buddy has grown. He has gotten bigger, taller, and more capable of getting up this step. So we started to suspect that the whimpering wasn’t so much for assistance as for attention. Not wanting to coddle him more than we already do we didn’t lift him but simply gave him a boost with our foot. Then eventually we didn’t do anything, but simply called him. He would jump, pull himself up, and mount that terribly tall step all by himself.

It took about one repetition of this for Buddy to get confident. Instead of carefully stepping down from or jumping back up the front step he started taking flying leaps off of it and flying leaps up. It’s quite a site to see- Buddy doing a miniature superman pose off the step.

There’s only one problem: Buddy is a giant klutz. The dog can lose his footing hoping over a sock let a lone a 14 inch step. So immediately upon starting the flying leaps, he started the giant crashes. He would get a running start towards the step, jump, and land face first against the step. You know those cartoons where the character will run head-on into a wall and land with their arms and legs splayed out? Yeah, he looks like that.

Just about every day there’s a new scene for us to behold as he makes his leap. He’ll land half way up the step, flail and fall backwards. He’ll land sideways on the step and flop over on his side. The best one I’ve seen yet: he took a running leap off the step, turned in mid air- and landed directly on his back! I have no idea how he managed that particular feat, but I know the laughter nearly killed me.

I know eventually he’ll get over the novelty of the step and just step down like it’s nothing. But for now it’s about the funniest damned thing I’ve ever seen.

Buddy Goes for a Walk

When buddy first got home he was without any of the defenses one needs in order to go out into the big, bad world. So there were a couple of months where all of our walks were just in our backyard. Needless to say, when his vaccination series was finished and we took him out on his first walk we were pretty excited- but you should have seen him!

Oh the smells, the sights, the other dogs! His world suddenly got a whole a lot bigger. And we got verification that the insanity we’d experienced over just how damned adorable he is was not reserved to us.

We were on the street corner, Buddy sniffing and me standing, when I heard a woman’s voice exclaim “Oh my God!”

I turned to see a middle aged woman in business casual leaning over to the passengers side of her car with the window open. She was sitting with the car in idle, in the middle of the road.

“What kind of dog is that”? she asked excitedly. (This question, by the way, has become the trademark question for Buddy. I guess people need a way to categorize his cuteness.)

“He’s a toy poodle,” I said proudly, walking over so she could get a better look at him.

Buddy, as if on cue, started jumping and barking and going crazy like the attention whore he is. The lady’s jaw dropped open.

“Oh my god! That is- that’s the cutest dog I’ve ever seen!” she said, smiling widely. “What’s his name?”

“Buddy,” I said, feeling a little smug. This was the first time I’d seen anyone outside our little family melt so much over him. It wouldn’t be the last.

“Oh, Buddy!” she cooed. And sat there for a little while longer, the sheer force of Buddy’s adorableness pulling her into him like gravity. And then another car pulled onto the road behind her and stopped, someone stepping out to get his mail.

She didn’t seem to see them, just kept staring at Buddy. I looked over at the car behind her, trying to indicate that she might need to move. She looked back and saw them too, then reluctantly took her foot off the break.

“Oh, well- he is- he is just the cutest!” she said as she started to pull away.

“Say ‘thanks,’ Buddy,” I said, and waved at her.

The power of Buddy: holding up traffic.

Buddy's Evil Twin

Having a puppy is most similar in practice to having a newborn. Like human babies, puppies are supposed to be relatively confined early on in their lives- babies stay in a crib, puppies stay in a pen. Neither one should be wandering around of said areas without you watching them every second.

So when Buddy started to wander around our living room we were, needless to say, anxious. We had puppy-proofed the area as well as we could but he was constantly surprising us with things that he could still find to chew on. And we were constantly surprised with the number of things that frightened him. Like our entertainment system.

It’s got these nice-looking doors with the glass cover- you know the kind, so you can see the stereo and whatnot inside without having it sitting right out in the open. And those glass panels are, like most glass surfaces, reflective. And so it was that Buddy discovered another version of him looking back at him one day- and freaked out.

We were alerted to the situation when Buddy’s loud bark erupted and echoed through the room. He was standing in that aggressive way dogs do- front shoulders down, lips curled, ears perked up. And he was barking like crazy.

“What’s the matter, Bud?” I asked. He just kept on barking.

We got down on the floor next to him to inspect and that’s when we saw it- his reflection. As we realized what was going on we both burst out looking. Buddy got a terribly injured look on his face- as if we were somehow making light of the terribly mean dog barking at him.

“Oh- is that mean dog scaring you?” we asked in condescending tones (because we’re both sort-of mean like that).

A bark from him confirmed that yes, that mean dog barking at him was very frightening and he would very much like for to go away. We gave him one of his treats to distract him and thankfully, because he has the attention span of a gnat, he forgot all about it.

But every now and again that mean little dog comes back, looks at Buddy, and starts barking at him. I anticipate they will have quite a rivalry over the years.

The Many Adventures of Buddy

I am way too in love with my dog not to write about him. And since I’ve got 211 posts due this year I can certainly use the muse. I fear that this series may be a little self indulgent and not enjoyable to anyone other than avid dog lovers like myself. But I’m hopeful these little anecdotes will be worth a little more.

If nothing else it’ll be an opportunity to hone my descriptive powers as they’re all true, first-person observed events. But they will also hopefully be worth a smile or two.

So, without further ado I present to you a new continuing series here at The Beveled Edge: The Many Adventures of Buddy!
Enjoy!