About a year ago I brought our dog, really she’s my dog, since I am the one who is in charge of her medical care (poor Allie) her exercise, and I actually brush her teeth once in a while hoping that it will prolong the onset of old person stink breath. At her appointment they discovered a growth in her mouth that needed to be removed.  My father-in-law is a retired nurse practitioner and I thought he could remove it for us for a minimal fee (a fifth of Crown Roayal) but when I looked at it in more detail I discovered it was a pretty resilient growth so I just let it be.  I’m a procrastinator by nature and as any good procrastinator knows, uncompleted tasks hover over your head like a vultures circling a near dead body.  Every time I looked into my dogs milky pupils (she also has cataracts in both eyes that would require $2,000 per eye to correct) I was reminded of the growth in her mouth that needed to be removed.  So, I finally scheduled a new appointment with a vet closer to our house hoping that it would be cheaper to get things done there.

When I arrived Allie immediately went into her “Oh shit we’re at the vet!” mode and resembled Dustin Hoffman when Tom Cruise attempts to get him to board a plane on  Rainman.  Ultimately, we ended up in one of the examining rooms in the back (it’s amazing how similar veterinary medicine is to human medicine)  fortunately they don’t make you sit in the examining room with your dog with no idea when someone is actually going to see you, thankfully they also don’t make you put one of those paper gowns on your dog either.

In my trips to the pediatrician (yes, my wife allows me to take the kids to the doctor once in a while and she always has a list of questions for me to ask but I  never do) I have been stuck back in the examining room with both Winston and Randolph (I just realized Randy is probably short for Randolph, have you ever met a normal Randy?  My apologies to anyone reading this who is  named Randy, I’m sure your normal)  and it is absolute hell.  One time my kids stumbled on the cheap toy stash that they give away at our pediatrician’s office, but those toys wouldn’t even placate Tiny Tim, and obviously the toys had no impact on my kid’s behavior.  It seems like every time I take the kids into the doctor I’m stuck trying to keep them from climbing all over the examining table while I direct my attention to the only thing that can maintain my sanity, my i phone .

The vet assistant got Allie on the table and proceeded to pull out the thermometer.  I’m not sure if dog’s have memories, but Allie’s reaction to the site of the thermometer (and she’s half blind)leads me to believe they do.  She had the same look of shame she gets when she drops a turd in the house and she can only eat half of it.  Ultimately after the routine examination where they obtained her temperature, weight, blood pressure, and her previous sexual history (I can’t believe my dog was such a whore)  they took a look at the growth and went back to crunch some numbers.

When the vet returned she told me I had two options, which I knew would be 1.Expensive 2. Really expensive.  I think both of the options involved a biopsy of the growth which seemed ridiculous to me.  I’ll be honest, I love my dog, but if she has cancer we will do everything we can to make her last days comfortable, but we aren’t putting her through chemotherapy.  The most expensive option included dental work for our dog.  I go to the dentist every year and a half or so, so if they think I’m blowing hundreds of dollars on my dogs teeth they are sorely mistaken.

While the vet gave me two options, I immediately thought of two more options.  My first option would be to do what I had already been doing, nothing and my second option would be to alleviate the guilt about my lack of attention to my dog’s medical care by having her put out of her misery.  Now, before you go getting all judgey on me, let me tell you this quick story.  This past summer Winston pulled his diaper off on our screened in porch, no big deal except for the fact that it had a giant turd in it.  So, I swooped him up and brought him to his changing table to put on a fresh diaper.  When I returned to clean up the turd that had fallen to the floor it was gone.  I started yelling to Shirley “Winston’s turd, it, it must be alive because it’s gone!”  then I saw Allie licking her lips and I knew where the turd had gone and that it was ultimately going to resurface in some shape or form.  As lovable and great as any dog can be, them eating a turd, especially your kid’s turd, really dehumanizes them.

I can just imagine coming home with a different Boston Terrier that looks somewhat like Allie.  Hey guys we are back from the vet.  Everything went well but from here on out you need to call Allie Rick, not sure why she wants to be called Rick but if you want her to respond to you either call her Rick or carry around some food.  But dad, Allie didn’t have a weiner, why does she have a weiner now?  Boys, I explained the whole  Kaitlynn Jenner thing didn’t I, how truly and amazingly courageous she was, well its the same thing with Allie, she just didn’t think she could be herself so we had to bring her in for surgery.  She not only has a weiner but she also has a truly amazing adam’s apple and a much deeper bark.  So, from this point forward she wants to be referred to as Rick.  (I’m hoping Allie, or I mean Rick can present an award or two at the Espys this year like Kaitlyn did last year, what a hero!)

Obviously, had this situation reared its ugly head when Winston and Randolph were in the picture, Allie would have a new set of eyes and that growth would be at the lab getting analyzed this very second.  Shirley’s sister and her now husband had a dog before we did and her sister was talking about how she wanted to get home to Phoenix with an extra day to spare so they could spend that day with their dog Davey.  Obviously, that sounds completely ridiculous now, but even more ridiculous if you would have known Davey, he would attack Shirley’s grampa’s special big black velcro shoes as if they were pieces of prime rib.  He didn’t meet a man he didn’t want to bite (except me and my brother Andy because we are dog people, we aren’t people people, but dogs love the shit out of us)

It’s funny how people will tell you that you will eventually grow to resent your pets once you have kids (they always seem to leave out the part that you will resent your kids as well) but you never believe them.  “Not me, I’m always going to love my dog the same no matter what, nothing can come between me and my dog.”  When we went to the hospital for the birth of our first child we actually forgot we had a dog for the first twelve hours of my son’s life until my mother-in-law reminded us that she had taken care of Allie.

I think it is similar to the mindset of men about to get married.  Men always joke with the future groom about the soon to be lack of sex, but every man thinks it’s not going to happen to them, they will always be irresistible to their future bride and then a couple years later they have this thought “shit, it happened to me!”

So it looks like it’s decision time, and as a procrastinator I hate making decisions, another Boston Terrier?  Or do I start looking into cocker- doodles?