Monday, January 25: Going to the Vet

Because of yesterday's drama, I took my humans to the vet this morning very early, so that the vet could reassure them to calm down. Which he did.

We also had a long discussion about vaccinations. My birth mom's human is very opposed to it, both for humans and dogs, and doesn't do it. The vet said there's parvo around and it killed 10 dogs in my area last year. Sarah and Charles are caught between those two opinions. They want to do the best for me but they don't want to give me too many vaccinations. Sarah just wants me to be safe. Charles keeps grumbling about the vaccination "industry" and the cost of these things he calls scams. I haven't met a scam yet, but it sounds like it would be fun to chase and possibly herd into a pen.

Anyway, the main news is my paw is Ok and I've been given some holistic medicine (or as Charles calls them, "snake oil tears") to make my bruised paw hurt less. But I'm doing better and better so maybe they work.

The holistic medicine doesn't require refrigeration but must be kept away from "kitchen radiation", which Charles thinks proves exactly what it's made of and why we probably shouldn't have spent a lot of money on buying it. There were instructions on how to squirt it into my mouth but not touch my gums with the dropper because that would spread germs to it and then it would have to be rinsed in special water. So Charles tried to give me some and proceeded to touch my gums with the eye dropper right away, so Sarah and I decided she should do it from now on. And Charles snorted and said that was fine with him.

Charles doesn't like needles, he is afraid of them. I don't know what a needle is just yet, but if Charles doesn't like them, that's good enough for me. Sometimes you need a human to help you make these decisions.

In the track Charles shovelled in the backyard there are often deer and they carry something called lepto, which is also bad. But so far I haven't seen a deer.

I guess all dogs also have worms, according to my breeder. The vet says that doesn't mean it's good to have worms, and then he said something about worms making little kids blind, which made me sad. My breeder gave me a diet with a lot of a special dirt in it. The vet suggested that maybe a de-wormer might be more effective. Charles said he needs to do more research on the internet. Sarah wasn't crying, so that's the main thing there, she was happy I wasn't hurt.

I weigh 5 and half pounds. This means my human weighs 48 times more than I. I think he needs to lose weight. I am going to have to work out an exercise plan for him so that he will be able to take good care of me. So far he seems more motivated. Although he does make that funny "whuuh" sound each time he gets down on the floor to play with me (or up afterwards), he is walking on the trail with me, so that's something. So far I've helped him lose 1 pound. My goal is to help him lose about 16 more. Then he should be more lively and maybe not make the "whuuh" sound as much.

At the vet I also saw a cat, which I didn't find particularly interesting. After that, I had Charles take me to his work so I could meet his co-workers. They seemed very nice and were of course very glad to see me, because I'm a good boy. Then Charles took the rest of the day off because he was so tired from not getting a good sleep for three nights in a row. We went home early and then Charles' Dad showed up. In the summer we are moving into an apartment and now Sarah is giving away a lot of furniture to some people at the church who need it. This is an example of how Sarah's prayers get answered, because Charles said she wanted to get rid of the furniture anyway, but he didn't, but then when Sarah came up with giving it away to needy people, that meant God was on her side and Charles didn't have a leg to stand on and that's how he lost his favourite couch ever and is stuck with a stupid leather one which doesn't have a drop down table with cup holders the way all couches should. Sarah says that the old couch was ugly and had a tendency to come open suddenly and that if I was around it would have just been a matter of time before it catapulted me across the room and seriously injured me and hadn't we learned anything from last night. It went on like this for a while, but in the final result the couch got taken away. So this is an important lesson for my fellow dogs: when your man human and your woman human spend a long time talking about something, it's probably just a matter of time before the man human stops talking and the woman human gets whatever it is she wanted. This, for example, is why I'm here in this house and not my brother, and look at the secondary lesson there, which is: when it doubt, it's best for everyone if we do what the woman human wants. That's what I think, anyway.