After the Hospital

It's been a funny weekend. I came home from the hospital on Thursday night and was so happy to be back to my couch and my moms and my big yard that I ran straight outside and took a nice big dump right by the pond. I ate a good dinner and took my meds without any trouble. We all felt better having our whole family together again. Moose joked that the night I was in the hospital her routines were so messed up that she didn't know quite what to do. After sitting through the parts of the late news that we normally don't watch, she finally turned to Goose and said, "Would you please go outside and pee in the yard so that I can go to bed?"

Saturday was not a good day, though. I woke up around 8 and needed to tinkle. Diuretics will do that to a girl, of course, but once I'd pottied I felt really strange. I went and stood by the pond but didn't drink out of it, even though the cool thing about having a pond is that it's like the world's biggest water bowl for dogs. It was a beautiful morning. Our koi, John, Paul, and George-Ringo, were darting around, enjoying the warmer water of early spring. There's nothing quite like a quick circuit around our yard as the morning sun turns the grass a golden green, but yesterday I just stood there. When Moose called me back in, I made my way slowly up the stairs and climbed back up on the couch. I felt woozy and disoriented for most of the day. I didn't want to eat or drink anything and fought like crazy when my moms tried to give me my morning meds. I even turned up my nose at Port Salut, my favorite pill delivery system. I don't like these new drugs or the way they make me feel, even if that sweet Dr. Braz-Ruivo does say they'll slow the progress of my heart disease. He doesn't know what it's like to be a small animal whose whole system is turned upside down by medications. Moose says that drugs do the same kind of thing to people and that doctors and the pharmaceutical industry are in a conspiracy to over-medicate the populace because they're greedy and that eventually over-prescription, particularly of antibiotics, will lead to cockroaches taking over the earth, but that's a long story that she'll have to write on her own blog someday.

I kept up my hunger strike til late on Saturday, though I did decide to drink some water in the afternoon. Moose and Goose tried to take me for a walk, but when we started to walk down to the trail I started pulling the leash in the other direction. I was breathing okay, but I knew I didn't have the energy to make it back up the hill if I went down there. It made me sad, and I knew my moms were really upset, but I'm a pretty smart little animal. I know what my limits are. They took me home, and I curled up under the loveseat in the living room while they took a Wayne walk. It was the first time in twelve years they walked on our trail without me.

Late in the day, my tummy calmed down enough for me to eat a little, and that helped me feel less fuzzy in the head. Goose got me started with a couple of treats, and then Moose gave me some beef broth. I lapped that right up. I was feeling perky enough that when Margie came by at 8 for pizza and a movie I ran to the door to greet her. I've decided not to eat anymore of the dog food I've been eating happily for the last ten years, but my moms are great about sharing appropriate human foods with me. I love anything involving cheese, although I'm continuing my boycott of Port Salut because of the traumatic associations with my icky new meds. For now, my moms are using peanut butter to try to force me to take my pills. So far, I've whipped peanut butter onto Goose's face and gotten it all over the couch in the great room, but they've managed to get the drugs in me.

Maybe I'm adjusting to the awful pills. Today has been a pretty good day. I had more beef broth for breakfast and bites of lasagne that Goose brought home from the store. I frolicked in the sun for more than an hour in the afternoon and helped Moose do some work on the pond. By "helped" I mean that I ate sand and rocks that she was spreading around to make sure the pond doesn't spring any leaks this year. I also did a fair amount of rolling in the grass and some barking at a neighbor who was out working in his yard. At times I almost felt like my spry old self, though I wobbled just a bit when I was coming back up the stairs.

We all hung out on the couch together watching the last few minutes of the ACC championship game between Duke and Boston College. For awhile it looked like BC (or, as Moose insists, "the Taliban"--because she hates Duke so much that if Duke were playing the Taliban she'd root for the Taliban) might manage to knock off the Blue Devils, but in the end the Dukies prevailed. My moms just hate that, but what they hate even more is knowing that tonight is selection Sunday and their beloved Terps will most likely be without a card to the Big Dance for the second year in a row. Poor Terps! Sometimes this season, they've been almost as wobbly as I've been recently.

So, maybe we can make this new routine work, my moms and me. Maybe I'll adjust to the drugs and get used to being a little less spry, and maybe that will mean I'll be around longer to sleep at my moms' feet and chew on their socks and lick their faces and bark at the mailman. I hope so. I'm not sure what my moms would do without me, and I sure do have fun being Roxie.