This was my e-mail to friends on Tuesday. Happily, it turns out to all have been worthwhile because Blondie is better! Yea!
OK, I’ve had the day from hell with my dog and it isn’t over yet. I am just now sitting down to answer my morning e-mail and Blondie is on her bed behind my desk howling at… well, nothing.
Got up at 6 AM, never my favorite time of day, and a friend came over who could drive in the dark to get her to the vet’s first thing for her anesthesia so they could x-ray her nose because, let’s face it, what else do I have to spend my money on. Got to the vet’s only to find out I’d written down 7 AM when I meant 7:30 AM. They weren’t even open yet. So we got coffee, brought her back at 7:30 and then I came home, cleaned and fed my seven birds and ran out to Bird TLC for my Tuesday shift. We ended up very busy, had to put an eagle down, convince a very recalcitrant tundra swan to not stand on the wood and exercise a raven whose right wing is frozen due to surgery. The raven was, like the swan, distinctly unamused. Then just as I was leaving we got a mallard in with a broken pelvis that had to be settled in. Got home, vet called to say they were going to have to take out two teeth which may be causing her sinus problem AND do a cell biopsy on some swelling at the tip of her nose where the bone and cartilage meet… kaching, kaching!… and that I needed soft food for her. Ran out and tried to get everything I needed to make her comfortable… and got me a Costco sized bottle of tequila… and by the time I got home, they called for me to go get her. Drove through rush hour traffic to pick her up and was halfway to the clinic when I realized it was getting really dark, so I rushed the vet through his explanation of her meds and bolted. I was waiting at the light a block from the clinic when I see this crazy man in shirt sleeves leaping snow drifts and waving frantically at me. It was my vet. I had forgotten her antibiotics. Meanwhile, Blondie peed in the car on the way home so I’m now washing the blankets and sheets that make up her bed in the car. And she’s totally goofy the way old people can get when they’ve had strong drugs. She alternates between howling on her bed and getting up and going into the hallway to look for me while I scream her name from behind her so she can see I’m still sitting at my desk.
And on that note, I’m going to go upstairs and start drinking.
Tomorrow will be a better day. And if it isn’t, I have lots of tequila.