Jolie is doing just fine.
Not that that was likely to be the first thing on your mind for the last week, but on the off chance that it was in the top five, I thought that I would lead with it.
First off, I took another look at the shower leak, and realized that there was virtually no way that the water Jolie drank last week was actually tainted with the rodent poison (which is safely gone, all the same). And when I found myself stalling obsessively yesterday morning when we should have been strolling along to the vet’s, I began to suspect that the real problem was that I had some…mixed feelings.
Forget whether we may someday want to breed Jolie; operations are scary.
“Do they do the laser kind?” my mother wanted to know. “I hear the recovery time is shorter. You should ask.”
I would have. I swear. Except that our vet operates out of a dimly-lit closet in the back of a turn-of-the-century (and not the most recent one) mansion. They don’t even use dissolving stitches; I don’t think lasers are in the cards. I settled for clutching my puppy in the waiting room and asking the assistant if the operation is safe. I can’t say for sure all that she said, but it was very reassuring.
This time, I did feel more prepared. I certainly hadn’t slept the night before, but I did remember some of the little things that I had missed the first time around, including packing one of her favorite toys (a stuffed banana with rope arms and a squeaker inside). The assistant made the slightest of faces when she noticed that Jolie had removed the banana’s eyes and little thread smile, but bounced back fast, waving it around and encouraging Jolie to go for the nose. This all soothed me, and it was only about ten minutes before I was ready to let the puppy off of my lap.
I may still have been ready sooner than Jolie, who promptly hid under a chair, but that’s the way these things go.
Call it sympathy pains, but it felt like I had about three bleeding ulcers for the rest of the day. Fortunately, when I called (as instructed) around 3:00 to check in, and heard that she was doing just fine, the pain subsided. Which is probably more than I can say for Jolie’s, although the meds that she’s all looped out on right now must help.
Seriously. I had to wait a few minutes when I went to pick her up, so I started playing with the most pathetic animal I had ever met up to that point–a mini-Yorkie with one front paw completely covered in a tiny little cast. It’s a toss-up for the saddest part of the scene: the way its tongue appeared to be permanently stuck out of the side of its mouth (it looked really dry) or the fact that we were on a tile floor, so its cast kept sliding out from under it every couple of seconds.
The freakishly small thing’s title of “Most Pathetic Animal” didn’t last, though, past the moment when I looked up and saw Jolie staring at me from the other end of the hall. She waddled over with her ears flat down around her head, and I saw the massive bandage around her middle. She’s got another one on her paw (for an IV?) that Nick feels adds real nuance to the pathos. It’s just awful.
But she was happy to see me; I wasn’t exaggerating when I said she’s loopy. She’s always licked a lot, but the five full minutes she spent lapping at the back of Nick’s hand were just bizarre. She stumbles around wagging her tail in between marathon naps, and apparently has not yet discovered the fun that she will inevitably have in shredding up her bandages–between that and the potential for ripping stitches, we’re going to have to watch her like hawks for the next two weeks. Which all three of us will hate.
And now I want puppies.
Damnit.