One Sick Puppy

So it was the end of the week. I’m jumping ahead and will have to go back and fill in the details about the week, but for now recognize this all happened last Friday night.

Of a loooonnnggg week. We’d just gotten back from dinner and picked the puppy up from Martin.

I should have recognized something was up, because he (the puppy, not Martin) immediately came down the stairs home. Usually he’s the recalcitrant grandchild, screaming to stay with Grandma and Grandpa rather than come home with his parents.

Once downstairs, nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary. He was hanging around the food bowl – I called to confirm that he had, in fact, had supper.

Yep, he’d been fed. Nothing more here, besides a dried apricot (which are healthy for all of us and usually on the counter).

Up to bed to watch a little TV, and the furry child wouldn’t settle. He wanted down off the bed. Usually he just snuggles down and sleeps. This time, though, I had to retrieve him from downstairs by the heater vent.

That wasn’t unusual, as it’s one of his favorite places now that he’s learned where the warm comes out. It’s our first real cold snap of the season, and they’d all been on a long walk just before he came home.

That’s fine, though. He can come up on the bed to watch TV with us for a while and warm up there – electric blankets are the friend of anyone who lives in an old house with absolutely no insulation.

So finally, with some coercion on our part, he was lying there while we each read.

Then it happened. What every parent has experienced at some point – he sat up and gave us that look that says, “Dad, I think I’m gonna . . . . .”

No more words were needed. Cleaning towels, however, were. Quickly.

It’s amazing how two grown men can go from a prone position to upright, removing the dog from the bed and trying to grab a towel.

The problem with a 4 legged child who’s sick, of course, is that it’s not clear what you do with them.

With a human child, you shove them in the bathroom, hopefully somewhere in the direction of the toilet. With a dog-child, that accomplishes nothing other than at least keeping the mess confined to the tile floor.

Like so many kids, once the “bad stuff” was out, the rest of the night was relatively calm.

For him. We had extra laundry to deal with, however.