But the big tragedy of the weekend, while expensive, cost more in terms of fear and suffering than dollars. Cowboy, bless his little heart, got snakebit right between the toes on one of his front paws. We didn’t know at the time that it was a snakebite, because we didn’t see it happen. At first we thought he stepped on a thorn. But when his paw swelled up to look like a cow’s hoof and all the poor animal could do was lay on his side in a fever and moan, you didn’t have to be Steve Irwin to know something more had happened. By this time it was Sunday night, though, so we veterinarianized him ourselves, with some advice from my Dr. Dad. Mostly this consisted of rubbing his tummy, cooing to him, and soaking his paw in hot water. The paw went poof in the hot water and a cloud of yellowy gunk came out. I let Eric take care of that part, because it made him feel manly. And because I nearly vomited.
The next morning, the swelling had gone down considerably, but he still sported a fever and wanted us to know it. My gosh, that dog is talkative, even when he’s sick. He couldn’t put weight on it, and it looked awful. We were really worried about him. So I took him to the vet.
Now, long history makes me terrified of the financial implications of entering a veterinary office. This whole Cowboy-snake fiasco reminded me of vet visits gone by, with Layla and with Karma. The vet we took Karma to in Houston had a way of not only overcharging us, but also making us feel like the lowest form of dog-and-cat-owning humanity on earth when we didn’t want to upgrade every service they offered to the limousine-and-caviar level. We are awesome pet owners. We love animals. However, we do not think they poop gold bricks. They’re our pets, not our children. With apologies to people who believe their pets are their kids, we find it unavoidable to spend a much greater portion of our income on the human offspring than the canines and felines. That’s just the way it has to be, because of that whole not pooping gold bricks thing. Sometimes we like the canines and felines better than the humans, but still we have no choice.
That night, I went on a desperate internet search for a new vet, but I didn’t get very far Googling “veterinarians who don’t think your pets poop gold bricks.” Eric came to the rescue. He had noticed a small house with a veterinary clinic in it about fifteen minutes from our house, in a more rural and less high-income area. The online reviews of the vet were of the “walks on water” variety. I was at their door at 7:30 the next morning after lifting 125-pound Cowboy in and out of the back of our Suburban to get him there. Man, I’m glad I took up swimming and weight lifting.
The only comments they made when I walked in?
Nurse: “Oh my, that’s a very big dog.”
Vet: “Oh wow, your dog is large. I’m glad he’s friendly.”
“Why, yes. Yes, he is,” I said.
This vet rocked. Seriously, y’all. If you need a vet in Houston, I’m the one to call for a referral. I felt like the by-God queen of all pet owners when I left, and I gave them only $165.37 for the visit, his antibiotic shot, and a bag of painkillers, ointment, and amoxicillin. Add to that the $4.39 cents I spent on chamomile-scented spa-footbath Epsom salts, and throw in a smidgen for a pair of cotton tube socks, baggies, and some masking tape, and that’s it. No unnecessary platinum-plated treatment suggestions, and no “you must buy a doggie treadmill for this tub of goo along with a $2 million special prescription available-here-only diet dog food immediately or you will go to hell” lecture. Yes, he’s chunky. He can’t help it. Lady Gaga told me he was just born this way. Oh, and the vet said it was a poisonous snakebite.
Liz’s boyfriend offered that he thought it was from a water moccasin, because Cowboy bounded into the shallow pond and started limping immediately thereafter. Not to gross you out too much, but that weekend, the normally two-acre pond was down to about a hundred square feet and was a teeming, concentrated, writhing black mass o’moccasins. Ick.
So, he didn’t like the footbath. Not even a giant beef-basted rawhide bone could make it more attractive to him. His foot looked like a hoof, and it was half the size it was the night before. He was too sick for a full body scrub, so he looked pitiful and muddy from his weekend in Nowheresville.
Poor tootsies. By now, he was hurting so much and feeling so betrayed that he wouldn’t even look at me. Or touch his bone. I applied the ointment, and gave him his meds tucked in a hotdog. I masking-taped the tube sock on over his foot. He turned his head even further away. I put him outside, but he had wear to a baggy over his sock and that did not go over well. And all of this we have to repeat twice a day.
Finally, he hid on his pillow with his bone. After a two-minute chew, he fell into a traumatized sleep. Sick kids and sick pets are heart-wrenching, aren’t they? The vet warned us that if his foot didn’t heal, Cowboy would have to have minor surgery to explore whether there was anything stuck up in his foot. But the chances of that were slim.
Weekend tally for that little Nowheresville jaunt? Close to a thousand dollars. How do I love thee, Eric and Cowboy? Let me count the one thousand ways.
~~~
Chapter Thirty-seven: Felinity
Excerpt from the novel Going for Kona23:
The alarm on my phone didn’t know that Adrian had died, and it dutifully chirped at 4:45 a.m. “Adrian, Charlotte, get up! Time to train! It’s going to be a great day!” it seemed to say. I considered smashing it to bits.
But what day was it, even? I thought back and realized that it was Sunday, but for the life of me, I didn’t know what had happened to Saturday. Wait, yes, I could remember: tears, sleeping, hugs, sleeping, and my mother taking care of all of us.
Sabrina didn’t know that Adrian had died either, and I could hear her helpful meow outside the bedroom door. She took her role of morning drill sergeant to the Hanson family seriously, and she seemed to derive great joy from it, in a restrained manner befitting her felinity.
I pushed snooze. I hadn’t planned for this moment. The melatonin I had taken the night before still fogged my head. What a paradox. My heart felt dead, and my brain felt like a plate of scrambled eggs, but my body tingled and itched to get up and do it; it was Sunday morning, and that meant bicycling was on the agenda.
Maybe it was the right thing to do: keep training for the Ironman, manage my anxiety, and take care of myself. Other than the fact that it felt wrong to be alive—much less doing this without Adrian—it was a normal activity. If I stayed in this bed any longer, in these sheets that smelled like Adrian, I would not want to get up at all.
The alarm blared again. I gave in to the obsession in a way that Adrian would have understood and appreciated. I snuck into the living room, put my beloved pink road bike on the training stand, and hopped on. The spin of the pedals and wheels matched the spin in my head. Whursh whursh whursh whursh whursh. Faster and faster, into a trance. The schedule dictated that I ride two hours this morning. I concentrated on my form, on my cadence, on not thinking at all. Whursh whursh whursh whursh whursh. I didn’t have the TV on. I didn’t have music. Just the sound of my own breathing and the bike going nowhere in my Houston living room at eighteen miles per hour.
Into my “not thinking at all” broke a thought. No, not a thought, more like an image that became Adrian’s face. Then a sound: Adrian’s voice. The image grew vivid, the sound grew louder, and they transported me back to a moment that morphed into the present.
“Get your speed up, and then lay yourself over, one arm at a time. Find your inner cat and just relax. Balance. Don’t get in a hurry about it,” Adrian said.
I remembered this. Adrian had been teaching me to use the aerobars on my bicycle.
“I’m off-kilter, Adrian. I’m going to fall.”
As I looked back on it, I could see myself overreacting to the subtle balance shifts. A car zoomed past and surprised me, and the gust of wind nearly knocked me over.
I squealed.
He said, “You should probably sit up when cars pass us for now.”
“I can handle it.”
He chuckled. “Yes, I know you can.”
Sabrina hopped up on a bookshelf and watched me expectantly. Adrian’s image flickered and died. I turned my attention to the cat.
“You’re the only one I didn’t tell, aren’t you, Sabrina?” I asked. “I’m sorry, you’re part of the family, and you have a right to know. Adrian is not with us anymore.” Tears joined the sweat dripping off my face. “He’s not just on a trip. Don’t be mad at him.” Sabrina would bite our ankles whenever we had the gall to leave the house overnight. “I’m going to need you to snuggle Natalie and Sam a whole lot more. Remember that dog in Peter Pan? Nana? Well, you need to be like that dog. Protect them.”
The cat’s demeanor didn’t change, but she didn’t break eye contact either.
“I don’t think I’m going to need your help, though. I’m a strong woman, Sabrina. Worry about the kids. I’ll be fine.” I needed to practice saying this. Why not start with the cat? “Really, I will. I will be fine. I will be fine. I will be fine. I will be fine.”
I kept whispering the words over and over, fast in time with the pedal strokes. I am so very not fine.
23 Not a sequel to anything at this point, but I’m not above pulling a George Lucas and doing some prequels. Prepare yourself for new characters, people.
~~~
Part Three: Zombieland
~~~
Chapter Thirty-eight: Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please?
It turned out that two dogs just weren’t enough.
Weighing in at a full 6.5 pounds, Petey at three months was a dead ringer for Dumbo. He is a Boston terrier, although we suspected a Chihuahua got in on the action at some point in his lineage. I gave him to Eric—who was in the dumps in the wake of his youngest birth-child’s departure for college—to cheer him up, after he hinted for only four months. Eric also tried to snow me into a miniature potbellied pig. I didn’t feel that sorry for him. He had to settle for Petey.
We’d selected the Boston terrier for its short hair and size, but I had to find the perfect specimen for Eric: a calm and diminutive dog with a white face and a dark body. Calm was a must, because Eric had once had a Boston terrorist. Bowie was the Tasmanian devil, and an escape artist to boot. Petey is super calm24 and a world-champion snuggler.
Cowboy and Layla took their time forgiving us. Petey is smaller than Cowboy’s head, so we wooed Cowboy first, hoping to make Petey a friend, rather than a snack. We presented Cowboy with a giant yellow squeaky duck and a few treats, and that seemed to get him over the hump.
Eric wanted everyone to know right off the bat that, no matter what she thinks, this will never be Susanne’s dog. He whispered, “Susanne’s a big meanie,” in Petey’s sleeping ear over and over. It didn’t help, but it made Eric feel better.
24 Everyone who has ever owned a Boston terrier is laughing their asses off here.
~~~
Chapter Thirty-nine: Bitten by the five-second rule.
I adhere to the five-second rule—not because I have children, but because when my brother Bruce and I dropped something edible on the ground when we were kids, my father would say, “It’s Vitamin D.” As in dirt. “Good for you.” In hindsight, I know that he instructed us thusly because he is a tight-ass cheapskate frugal soul who worried about starving children in India his wallet our planet.
For my twenty-seven years alive (plus a few), I have put the five-second rule into practice with no mishaps. This recently ended in tragedy.
I was writing. I like to reward myself with snacks while I write. Write one hundred words, get a cookie, write one hundred words, have some ice cream, write one hundred words, book my liposuction. And so on.
I was noshing from a bag of expensive school-fundraiser whole salted cashews. Not only were they worth their weight in gold, but the little suckers tasted much better than my generic brand cashew pieces. Heaven.
When a cashew spurted out of my hand and hit the floor across the room, I thought, Hmmm, I’ll get that next time I’m up. Later, I did just that. I looked down at the floor and saw what I believed to be a broken piece from my whole, yummy salted cashew. I popped it in my mouth and chomped.
Only it wasn’t a cashew.
It took only one chew to know for sure THIS WAS NO FREAKIN’ CASHEW. It didn’t crunch like a cashew, it stuck to my teeth, and it didn’t emit that oily, salty goodness of cashew.
Gwack. Gwack. Gwack. I started gagging before I reached full speed as I careened through the house. Gwack. Gwack. Gwack.
“Mom, what’s wrong?!?” Clark asked.
Gwack.
“Honey?” Eric said.
Gwack.
By now a three-foot-long drool trail streamed behind me, and I foamed from the corners of my mouth. I reached the kitchen sink and started splashing water up into the accident site. Splash. Swish. Spit. Splash. Swish. Spit.
“Pamela, what ARE you doing?” Eric asked.
I tested my progress by gently closing my mouth until my teeth met. GWACK. It was still there. It was like I had bird poo—crunchy on the outside, gooey-sticky in the center—molded and stuck against my tooth. GWACK.
I reached back to my molars and scraped frantically with my fingernail, trying to get whatever it was off my teeth. Something that tasted nothing like cashews (don’t think about it) fell from my tooth onto my tongue. GWACK. Splash. Swish. Spit.
Clark and Eric both stood beside me now, their eyes wide, helpless to figure out what was going on, unable to assist, Eric with one hand on speed dial for the wacky ward.
“Five second rule—not a cashew—stuck to my teeth,” I gasped.
I dashed to the bathroom, desperate to unload the full force of my Braun Oral-B Triumph and half a tube of Colgate Total on this bad boy. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
By now, my devoted husband and son were also in the bathroom. You might imagine them expressing concern or running for the ipecac, but no. I think Eric actually peed himself laughing, and Clark, all 5′11″ of him, rolled around in the bathroom floor howling, crying—real tears, I swear—and pointing at me.
When Eric had changed his drawers and resumed his composure, he said, “I’ll bet you wish you hadn’t gotten rid of the cleaning service two months ago.”
Yes, that is how long it has been since anyone cleaned the floor in question. I’m a writer, a mom, a wife, an attorney, a consultant, an athlete, but I am NOT a housekeeper.
“Mom, what if it’s from one of the dogs or Juliet?” Clark asked.
Gwack.
I know what my dad would say: “Hopefully it was a good source of protein.”
~~~
Chapter Forty: The Pain of Puppy Love
How quickly Eric’s little Boston terrier became the canine love of my life. It took, what, one week? I knew I loved him madly, but I did not grasp the depth until one Thursday at 6:45 a.m.
I was in the kitchen with Petey, who had stopped bounding around the house like a bunny rabbit with his ears pinned back long enough to gobble his Fromm’s gourmet puppy food, milk, and chicken, that I’d warmed up to the perfect temperature for his eating pleasure. Clark and Susanne were shoveling muffins down like zombies. Our big dogs were wolfing their breakfasts about thirty feet away, down a long hall and in another room.
And then I heard one angry snarl, followed by a squeal and frantic, breathless crying.
Petey. My sweetie Petey.
I ran toward the big dog area, my mind whirling. Hadn’t Petey been at my feet? How could he have made it back there so fast with none of us seeing him?
When I got to the room, I saw that Petey had scrambled under the electric piano, and his cries ripped through my gut. Our beloved Cowboy was on his belly, crawling toward me in supplication.
“BAD DOG,” I yelled, and whacked him. I didn’t have to see it to know what had happened. Petey had come between 125-pound Cowboy and his food bowl. If there’s one thing Cowbo
y loves, it’s food. Layla normally waits to eat until Cowboy is done, because she doesn’t want him to even think she’s after his chow.
“Petey, Petey sweetie, come here,” I cooed, and crawled after him as he ran from me, crying, under tables, chair, and piano. I was faster, and I soon scooped him up to soothe him. I held him to me, and his cries lessened.
“What did he do? What did Cowboy do to him?” Clark yelled, and he grabbed Cowboy and held him to the floor.
“He got upset when Petey tried to eat his food, but I already took care of it.”
“Don’t hurt Cowboy,” Susanne yelled at Clark.
Clark couldn’t help it. Petey’s yelps were tearing all of our hearts. Cowboy took another few lumps, and Clark put the big dogs outside.
That’s when I saw it.
The room was dark—it was early, there were no lights on yet—and I had not seen any damage, so I assumed Cowboy had been all bark and no bite. But I was wrong.
Petey’s bloody eye had popped out of its socket and was hanging from his face.
I screamed. I sobbed and ran for our bedroom with Petey in my arms, yelling for Eric, my mind white with panic. I don’t remember what I was saying. I think I said, “Cowboy’s hurt him. Cowboy hurt Petey badly. He’s hurt. He’s hurt bad.” Something like that. Over and over.
Eric was in the shower. He ran out in a towel, and the look I saw on his face matched the anguish I felt.
“I don’t know what to do, Eric,” I cried.
“I don’t either.” He pulled off his towel and wrapped it around our whimpering, shivering baby.
Puppalicious and Beyond Page 9
