It’s Never Easy

Tags

family, friends, life, memories, Nick, sheltie

This week, the world said good bye to a renowned book critic, a gifted evaluator known for his coveted Dookie award, last awarded to some guy who writes from some place in Oregon.  It is often said that the world could always use one less critic, but I disagree.  This one will be sorely missed.

Attempted humor aside, I am struggling to write down what I feel right now because it really did happen.  There really is one less canine book critic in this world.  Miriam and I took our loyal companion, Nick, to our veterinarian to have him euthanized.  That is a decision that is never easy, no matter how common it is and no matter if one has made the same decision for another family pet before.  Even though it has been obvious for months that our dog’s health had been rapidly declining, we put off the final decision until now.  A tumor on his lungs had caused his breathing to become labored as it grew.  Seizures, until recently reasonably controlled by medication, suddenly returned and took on new forms, affecting him in different ways, some seizures coming on gradually and gripping Nick with fear of what was about to happen to him.  Voracious hunger turned Nick into a senile pig who wanted to eat constantly, so much that he often laid next to his food bowl for long periods of time, licking it.  Often, he lost control of his bowels inside the house, a humiliation to our fastidious dog, a dog who never did his thing inside the house.  More often than not, Nick required our help to stand up.  Usually eager to greet everyone at the door, more often than not he wouldn’t stir from where he rested in the downstairs hall or dining room.  I found myself checking to see if he was breathing.  His mane was matted from seizure induced drool most of the time, a brushing required daily just to remove those mats.

Most telling was the dull look in his eyes, resignation that showed that life had become a struggle for him.

Nick was a dog who required a lot of affection, one of the characteristics that may have endeared him to me more than any other dog that we have had.  Our first dog, a welsh terrier, was.. a terrier.  Anyone who has lived with a terrier knows what I am talking about.  Terriers live more for themselves, affection doled out seemingly when it’s convenient for them, a singular mind that often borders stubborn defiance.  Shelties, which is Nick’s breed, live to please with a loyalty that I have yet to find elsewhere.  Nick lived on affection, our routine each day required several snuggles with his head against my chest, usually the first thing I did each day when I got home from work.  He also held steadfastly to his job of guarding the family, never leaving his upstairs post each morning until Miriam was out of bed and through with her shower.  Somehow, even with the difficulties of walking, he still managed to make it up the stairs for that duty each morning.  He also came to me for those snuggles, tried to get up on the couch with me.  I either helped him up on the couch or I sat on the floor with him.

Last weekend was bad for Nick.  That’s when the resigned look reappeared and stayed.  We knew it was time.  After some discussion on Sunday night, it was decided that Miriam would call our veterinarian the next morning about having Nick put to sleep, which she did.  I got a text from Miriam on Monday morning, asking when I was available on Tuesday.  Our appointment was for 9 AM on Tuesday.

Monday night was spent saying good byes.  Miriam caught me sobbing as I held Nick on the kitchen floor, Nick licking my hand in an attempt to comfort me.  I felt like calling off the appointment, try to find a way that we could make Nick’s life more comfortable.  But I knew it was time.  So did Nick.  The resignation came over me as well, filling me with the gratitude of being able to properly say good bye to my friend and companion, a gift from God for many years, his warmth something to be remembered for the rest of my life.

Tuesday morning came and it was time to take Nick to the vet.  After our cat, Chester, said his good byes, we carried Nick to my car, loaded him into the back seat, our tears flowing.  I turned on the radio as we pulled away from the house, hoping for a distraction but (I am not making this up), Elton John’s “Funeral For A Friend” was playing on the station.  I turned the radio off.

We have a very good vet, who greeted us at the door to escort us to the room where the injections would be administered.  Nancy made sure that we had as much time as we wanted with Nick.  She reminded us of what he was like when we first brought him into our home, a nervous pup who had been passed between two different households, and how he had changed into a confident dog who had been given a secure home and purpose.  Once again, she assured us that we were doing the right thing, confirming by listening to his heart and lungs that he was struggling to hang on.  She hugged Miriam several times, giving her the comfort that Miriam needed.  Then the vet took Nick away to add an injection port to his leg and to give him a sedative.  A few minutes later, she brought him back where I laid next to him as Miriam sat close by.  A pain killer shot was administered, which made Nick lower his chin to the floor cushion, then the lethal injection was given to him.  He barely gave a sigh as his heart and lungs ceased to function.  We said our final good byes and stood up to leave.  It was eerie to look at Nick one last time, his bicolored blue and brown eyes showing only the brown, lifeless.

It hasn’t been a week of tears, but boy does it seem different in our house, especially as Nick’s things have gone out to the garage.  There are times when I swear that I hear his nails clicking on the laminate in our hallway.  The last two nights, I have gone to the kitchen after 8 to get Nick’s pills ready, our normal routine.  When I finished my dinner, I put my plate on the ground, waiting for Nick to perform his dishwashing task.  It’s going to take a while to get used to not having him around.

Dogs are a great gift to their owners.  We all know that there is likely going to come the time when we have to say good bye to them, but we almost never are ready to do that.  I can honestly say that there was a lot of joy mixed with the sorrow of saying good bye this week, the joy of celebrating a true friend.

“Licky Nicky” always needs to communicate with me with a lick of the hand. The guy is so loving.

Patient Nick waits for the game to start.

Saturday Wait

Tags

bicycle, life, Nick, parenting, sheltie

It’s Saturday morning, the end of February, almost March.  I live in northern Illinois, the bottom edge of the northern United States.  Winter is indeed winter here, not as harsh as one might think, but this time of year means a mostly indoor existence unless one is willing to take the steps needed to keep warm outdoors.  Daylight hours are short but getting longer, sunrise showing up earlier and sunset extending towards 6 PM.  Cabin couch fever is beginning to get some relief.

This morning started with some worry.  Nick, our Shetland sheepdog, has had a relapse of seizures in the past few days.  Miriam slept downstairs on the couch last night, worried that Nick would venture upstairs if she slept upstairs.  His seizures have made it difficult for him to negotiate the stairs.  A frantic Miriam woke me out of a sound sleep at 5:30 this morning, announcing that Nick was in the back yard — dead.  She needed my help to get him inside.  I pulled on some clothes, went down the stairs and grabbed a blanket on the way outside.  Nick was on his side in the middle of the yard, still breathing, his eyes hollow in the middle of a seizure.  Thankfully, he was alive.  This is the first time that Nick has had a seizure while awake.  It was scary.  We carried him inside to wait for him to come out of the seizure.  He took a little longer than usual to recover, struggled to breathe, lying still on his large pillow bed in the kitchen while we sat next to him and stroked his fur, talked to him.

He came out of it.  It took him a bit more to be able to sit up.  When he begins to struggle to get up, I know he is starting to come back to consciousness from the seizure.  That is a good sign.  He needed help to get up this morning, seemed grateful when I helped him get to his feet.  Nick was ravenous, ate a drank more than usual, but he was fine.  I made a pot of coffee, told Miriam to go get her Saturday sleep upstairs, have been with Nick downstairs for the past few hours.  He has alternated between keeping me company at the kitchen table and posting guard at the bottom of the stairs.  Our dog won’t be happy until he is sure his family is awake and well.

Today is going to be another nice weather day.  This afternoon promises temperatures in the 50 degree range.  Temperatures have been 30 degrees or colder this morning, but in an hour it will be above 40 degrees.  My bike and bike clothes are ready for me.  I will get a few hours out riding the road today.

It’s funny how life has transitioned from busy Saturdays, filled with youth basketball games or practices that I either coached or watched.  Some Saturday mornings I would get up to ride bicycle compu trainers with a friend or two, something my budget would not allow this year.  This winter has given me Saturdays with little responsibility beyond myself, my daughter away at college, my son almost 17 and out of his youth sports stage.  My life is in transition as well, a mystery at this moment as to where life is taking me.  I seem to be at a point where my focus can go towards myself a little more.. and that feels strange.  It’s not that my focus is all that different or that I never had time for my own things.  I definitely had time for my own “stuff”, my bicycles and sports and activities never ceased getting my energy.  I just don’t have to devote as much energy outside of myself at the moment.  My kids don’t need my direct focus as much as they did (at least it seems so).

My son claims he is getting up to play golf this morning.  Say what?  It’s February.  We’ll see.  He was awake past three A.M. playing Xbox games with his friends online.

I am sure that a month from now my Saturdays will be a little different, a little more focused on getting on my bicycle, doing things outside.  For now, though, I spend Saturday morning waiting for the weather to be right to ride, sipping coffee, sharing some time with Nick the Sheltie.

 

January Doody

Tags

daughter, family, humor, marriage, Nick, sheltie

It’s the last day of January.  The quest to find the type of true meaning that keeps me off of the couch is still in full swing.  Last weekend the quest found me removing the danger of avalanche from my walk in closet, in the process I found myself.. weeping over lost tee shirts.   Then I came out of the closet.  I needed something to keep me out of the closet this weekend.

Over lunch, I made an announcement to my wife and daughter, one I am quite sure they were not expecting.

“I think I am going to clean up the dog poop in the back yard this afternoon.”

My daughter gagged on her lasagna.  Miriam looked at me quizzically (dang, I like that word).

“What are you going to do with it?”

Our daughter gagged on her lasagna again.

Dog poop removal has been a bone of contention in our household for many years.  My wife had asked a loaded question, one might say it was a crappy question, a reason for me to call her a turd.

Are husbands allowed to call their wife a turd?

She had really stepped in it this time.

I should probably take a quick step back, catch my breath (or hold my breath) for a moment.  Today was a very mild day for January in Chicagoland.  It was fifty degrees, cloudy and a bit damp, but otherwise balmy.  There is no snow on the ground, but the ground is still frozen, and Nick the Sheltie’s modest droppings are still solid ice.  That’s perfect shit scooping conditions, my friends.  Considering it has been since November since my last forage for feces, the build up was considerable.  Left on its own, the volume of dog muffins might just get out of control.  So, with proper urgency, my quest alarm went off as I observed the back yard while we chowed down on our lunch lasagna.  It sounded a bit like this in my head….  DUNG!!!!

Can you tell that I looked up synonyms for poop?

As I said, dog poop removal has been a bone of contention in our household for many years.  Mostly the job of removal has been on my shoes, especially since I am the one who carefully care takes the lawn.  During the summer, I usually scan the back yard for dog mines before mowing the lawn, although often enough I just hope that the mower chops it up.  There have been a few times where I unexpectedly found something squishing up between my toes.  Those were the days when I mowed in my bare feet, the brown mixing quite nicely with the grass stains on my feet.  Occasionally, though, Miriam will pick up poop.  I think she does it just to show me the proper way to forage for fecal matter.  In her mind, I don’t do it right.

Don’t go there…

That has happened before.  Garbage duty used to be my responsibility, but at some point I discovered that she was going out and rearranging the way I had arranged the garbage and recycling for pick up.  I let her, so much that somehow garbage duty became her doody.

There are so many synonyms for poop.

When she asked what I was going to do with it, what she was really asking was whether I was going to gather the frozen feces into plastic grocery bags.  That’s what she does.  Her idea is to throw those bags into the trash.  That doesn’t always happen.  Many a 90 degree summer day have I opened the door to our back yard shed to be knocked over by the stench from bags of dog poop.

My method is simple.  I browse the grassy knoll with spade in hand, scoop the deadly excrement until the blade is full, then carry it back to the corner of our garden.  I fling it up against the stockade fence where it scatters into the corner.  Dust to dust, one might say.

I answered the question of what I would doo with number two by saying that it would be the usual method of manure manipulation.

“That stinks!”  she exclaimed.

Our daughter took the rest of her plate of lasagna to the sink.

In the end, my method won out.  It was my job to do, after all, and I was going to poo it my way.  I didn’t give doodly squat what my wife thought.  As I started the job and observed the amount of accumulation, I can understand why Nick the Sheltie always tiptoes daintily in circles around the yard, fluffy tail held high in the air, as he performs his doody.  He’s trying to avoid the piles.

Another quest for couch avoidance has been accomplished.  I have done my doody duty.

Any suggestions for next weekend?

Tee Time

Tags

house cleaning, life, sheltie, winter activities

Winter activities can be fun.  The frivolity can be endless — snowmen, skiing, ice skating, streaking, ummmm…. you know, snow and ice and exposed skin type of stuff.  I’m certain that I only touched the tip of the iceberg with my list.  Winter also lends itself to opportunities that Summer does not present, indoor activities that may or may not be so filled with frivolity.  I’m talking about something that I only do every twenty years or so..

It was time to clean out my closet and get rid of decades of tee shirts.

That’s right.  This past weekend I went into the closet and came out…with a whole lot of old tee shirts.  I piled them in the middle of my living room hoping that they would get up and walk away on their own.

Not really.  They are shirts after all.  They don’t have legs.  I think I heard some of them trying to strike a deal with the pants.

I know what you are saying.  Wait, no, you’re asking.  I know what you are asking — how could someone throw away a perfectly good Angry Birds tee shirt?  That is a good question and I feel a bit guilty for separating the tee shirt from it’s matching red Angry Birds fleece pajama pants.  Sometimes one has to be cruel in order to be practical.

There was also the issue of personal safety involved in my decision to cull the tee shirt herd.  Most of my tees were stacked on a long wire shelf along the ceiling of my walk in closet.  I was buried under an avalanche of tee shirts the other morning, rescued by the ever faithful Nick the Sheltie.  Of course, it was his barking that set off the avalanche, so the dog had better have rescued me.

I had a lot of tee shirts.  I still do have a lot of tee shirts, even after getting rid of a lot of my collection.  Getting rid of many of those tee shirts was more difficult than I thought it would be.  Tee shirts are an item than hold a memory — an accomplishment, races or bike events or bike tours, vacations taken, little league baseball teams coached, softball or basketball teams that I played for, gifts from my kids that tell me what they think of me.

There is that Save Ferris tee shirt that my daughter thought was so cool, picked out one day from a bin at Target after we had watched Ferris Buehler’s Day Off for the umpteenth time.  Or the Perry the Platypus tee shirt that she brought back for me when she came back from Walt Disney World, a tribute to our favorite cartoon (Phineas and Ferb — CURSE YOU, PERRY THE PLATYPUS).  There is the NaNoWriMo winner tee and the “Let’s Eat Kids.  Let’s Eat, Kids.  Punctuation Saves Lives!” shirt that remind me that I like to mess around with words now and then.

Amor Ministries shirts are reminders of the three weeks that my wife and I took our kids to Tijuana, building small houses from scratch in the hot August sun.  I was never so proud of them for the hard work and compassion they showed on those trips.  They also got to see me try to work when I was violently ill on one of those trips, maybe the best opportunity I have had to be a good example to them.  I kept one of those Amor tee shirts, threw two away.  I need to keep one just because.

I think the trinket tee shirts that the blood donation centers give are cool.  Those are shirts I don’t wear too often because I feel like I am drawing too much attention to myself, announcing what a good person I must be for donating blood.  Truth is that I go for the free Little Debbie brownies and cold Coca Cola.

It’s hard to say how many tee shirts that I have from riding bicycle events.  When I went through the stacks of ride tee shirts, there were several as old as 1994.  Yeah, I have been riding for a while.  There was a time in my riding life when I would ride several events a month.  I had a lot of friends that rode those events with me, with a ton of stories that go with riding those events, especially the tours that we rode together.  There were at least 20 shirts from RAGBRAI (Des Moines Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa).  Since I have participated in RAGBRAI seven times, I should have a lot of shirts from that ride.  There were three shirts from the event that I am the most proud to have completed, a ride called The Assault on Mount Mitchell, one of the most grueling one day tours that I have done.  A lot of my tee shirts from rides are gone, worn out and thread bare.  I like to talk about riding and wearing a ride tee shirt is often a conversation starter.  There are also the bike safety clinic “rodeo” tee shirts that I have, another source of pride simply because I like that I have the privilege of promoting cycling in my community.

Even after throwing away a lot of ride tees, I have a lot left, judging by the stack of shirts I put back on the closet shelf.

I was a bit in awe at the number of shirts I had/have from coaching youth sports.  Having a son who loves sports will do that to you.  Between baseball (the sports logo tees are from those teams — and I was missing one shirt), basketball, softball (Alyssa) and soccer, I was a very busy man from the time Nate turned 4 until he was 13.  Wow, are there a lot of memories from each of those tees!  Our park district issues the same tee shirt with the city logo on it, in the team color.  I have a large number of those shirts in all kinds of colors.  Then there were the years that I served on the youth baseball association board, with tees from the tournaments that we sponsored.

I liked thinking about coaching my 13 year old daughter when she decided to try playing organized basketball.  There were two tee shirts from that time of my life.  One condition of her deciding to play on the park district team was that I would be one of the team coaches.  I had to quit a production that I had been cast in so that I could coach that team, one of the best decisions that I have ever made, even though the producer of that musical was so angry with me for dropping out that he told me that I would never be cast in a play or sketch or video ever again.  I had been one of the founders of the theater company, a lot of myself was invested in it, so it was a big deal.  An even bigger deal was witnessing my daughter invest herself in the sport of basketball, proud and happy that I was a part of it.  Our girls park district basketball program was designed to prepare our girls for the middle school basketball program.  The park district season finished right before tryouts for the school team.  Alyssa not only made the middle school basketball team, she was a starter on the school team.

There was the tee shirt that my church gave to me to wear when I baptized my son at church.  That one will never be thrown out.

One shirt that held a bittersweet memory for me was a shirt that was awarded for winning a basketball league tournament, a team that was undefeated.  We had to wear those shirts for the first game of the next season.  That basketball team was organized by the director of sales for the company I worked for, my boss’s boss.  Paul was one of the most genuine people I have met, a man who never treated me like he was his superior.  He recruited me to play on that team when I was in my basketball prime.  I don’t think I want to elaborate on that.. but I was very good at the time.  I remember clearly the night that Paul’s wife and children came to watch us play and how proud Paul was to introduce me to them.  I played on teams as a boy that played in the Illinois state championships, placing third at the state tournament one year, but playing on that club basketball team with Paul was as good or better experience than playing on those teams.  Every member on that team played well together, largely because of the guy who led that team.  Basketball developed a close bond between us.

I also gained a true friend in Paul those two seasons I played on that team.  He became someone I could talk to at work without fear of consequence, a supportive leader who brought me back to the company when I left for greener pastures.  Paul also talked to me about the spiritual side of life, about God, in a way that no one else has with me.  What made that part of our relationship unique was that Paul struggled with believing in God.  That struggle led to a conversation that I will remember with sadness for the rest of my life, the day where Paul asked to talk to me about what I believe about God and salvation and what needs to be done for salvation.  He had a sister who believes the same way I do, had shared the same with him — and Paul looked at me straight in the eye, with sadness, as he told me “Steve, I just can’t believe the same way that you do.”.  He couldn’t bring himself to be baptized, couldn’t quite say that he needed to do that, was not quite sure he really believed in God.

A few months later, on a cold January day, Paul parked his car next to a river, walked to the river and committed suicide by stabbing himself multiple times with a knife.  He was found dead in the river.   At his wake, I sobbed as I stood in front of his ash white face in the coffin.  His wife pulled me aside and told me what I had meant as a friend to her husband.. and that he had told me about the conversation I had with him in his office.

I couldn’t bring myself to attend his funeral the next day.  I could not bring myself to accept that good bye.  Looking at that tee shirt last weekend, I knew that it needed to go.  It was a way to say good bye.

Really, I did not think that something as simple as a tee shirt would bring back so many memories.  There were more, plenty more.  Most not as bittersweet as Paul’s story.  Most very happy, proud memories of some of my best days and moments.  They are my trophies, I suppose.

Now that the closet is done, it’s time to move on to an even more daunting task.  Yes, it’s time to clean out my underwear drawer.

That should be a brief task.

 

 

First Snow Saturday Morning

Tags

mountain biking, Nick, sheltie, snow, work

Here in Chicagoland, we are having our first snow of the season, one of those spectacularly beautiful and quiet storms that allows the snow to stick to the tree limbs.  Saturday morning is a pleasant time, in the warm weather months the day that I get a ride in with my friends.  When the snow hits our first instinct is to lament that the snow has put the brakes on our regularly scheduled ride.  Snow before the first freeze makes the trails muddy and slick, not good or appropriate for riding.  Not only does the mud cover the bike and damage shifting components, but riding muddy trails damages the trails.  Additionally, riding in mud is not as much fun as it sounds.  I could ride the streets, but it really is not worth the uncomfortable mess and the clean up required afterwards.  No.  I will likely give myself a few days rest from the bike, then set up the indoor trainer.

That means I need to get the rear wheel of my road bike rebuilt.  I rode my old Neuvation wheels one season too many, paid for it by a spoke nipple cracking the rear hoop and breaking through.  I need a new hoop.  Problem is that my car and family have required more than my bank account can handle, so I have put off replacing the wheel.  With my back up wheel loaned out to a friend and my back up bike sold for car repair money back in September, I may be forced to break out the old steel hybrid to ride on the trainer.  Such is life.

Until the end of December, I have access to the work out room at my office complex.  It’s equipped with bikes and nice big TVs, as well as a full weight room.  I will go there too, probably working out at the end of my work day.  Between Christmas and New Year’s, our three person office is moving out of the Regus center where we are renting individual offices.  We are leasing our own office suite, a very nice suite with our own lobby, glass fronts to each office, a large office for our managing director with room for a conference table.  It’s exciting for us because it feels like we are taking the next step to growth.

My little company is growing.  Well, it’s not “mine”, it’s the USA subsidiary to a Hungarian company, but since our subsidiary is just three people — managing director, office manager, and me (owner of many hats/responsibilities) — each of us feels like the subsidiary is ours.  In my first year with the company, our subsidiary won the global sales award and exceeded our sales goal by quite a bit.  We just signed a 2.3 million dollar contract with a company who wants to private label one of our products in the USA, as well as locking in several $100K orders with a few more cooking.  I am one busy man.  I like that.  I am getting credit from my boss for being a busy man, rewarded on a regular basis, and the three of us are working very well together.  It shows.

I could pick out the negatives of working for a Hungarian company.  There are several that make my work days challenging, but those challenges also are part of what makes my job interesting.

So I sit at the kitchen table, listening to the music I like, writing, waiting for my slumbering 16 year old to trudge out of bed in a few hours.  He will likely wake up in time for me to fix breakfast/lunch for him.

There is another person with me who likes the first snow of the year.  I absolutely love watching him dive into the snow as soon as I let him out the door.  Nick the sheltie is a little kid when it comes to snow, mesmerized by the white magic outside.  His thick coat of fur is perfect for this snow, so much that he is more comfortable outside when it snows.

This is an old picture, but I have already been greeted several times by a snow covered Nick.  He looks just like the picture right now!

 

Seize the Night

Tags

Nick, panic, seizure, sheltie

“Steve!  Come down stairs right now!”

Miriam was yelling at me from the foot of the stairs, anxiety making her voice quiver.  I could hear her mumbling to herself oh what do I do?  what do I do?  Oh my gosh, the quick shuffle of her feet told me she was pacing in confusion in our down stairs hall, likely the palm of her hand pressed against her forehead.  I rolled over, groggy and not quite awake, wondering if I was dreaming.  The clock on my nightstand said 2:00 AM.

“Hurry!”

“I’ll be right there.”  I replied quietly as I pulled a tee shirt over my head, the one I keep next to my bed, as I stumbled out of our upstairs bedroom, my own hand running through the hair on my temples in an effort to wake myself up.  Besides the shuffling of Miriam’s feet on the laminate in the downstairs hallway, I could hear something else, something that sounded out of place.

Nick, my faithful furry friend, was lying on his side in our hallway, convulsing in the throes of a seizure.  Miriam was in hysterics, murmuring oh my gosh, ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh as I bent over Nick, my hand on his side.  His body was hot and tense, his hindquarters twisted as each leg quivered and shook.  Bloody foam ran from the side of his mouth, eyes glassy, sides heaving as if Nick was struggling to breathe.  There was nothing that could be done, I knew, except wait it out.  I have never seen an animal experience a seizure, but I found my boss in a seizure twice.  Once I even had to crawl under a bathroom stall to rescue him as he had gone into seizure while on the toilet in the mens room, driven forward into the stall door and had cracked his head on the tile floor.  I went to get someone to call an ambulance, then pulled his pants up while waiting for the ambulance to come and kept people from coming into the restroom.  Both instances had told me that you could only wait out a seizure.

I handed Miriam her cell phone, led her to the stairs to sit down, asked her to look up what to do when a dog is having a seizure.  Giving her something to do helped calm her down.  I was calm, but I was scared.  I knew Nick had probably bitten his tongue but seeing his blood was still unsettling, his catatonia eerie.  All I could do was put my hand on him and wait.

The seizure was relatively short, probably five minutes.  What Mir could find on the internet was comforting, basically telling us that multiple seizures or long seizures were reason for concern.  Nick is a Shetland Sheepdog, a collie breed, and seizures are common for collie breeds.  We discussed taking him to an emergency vet, an expensive proposition, deciding we would wait to see how Nick reacted to the seizure.

As the convulsions stopped, Nick began trying to lift his head.  It looked like he was blind, had a bit of paralysis in his hindquarters as he seemed to only be able to move his front legs.  He struggled for a few minutes, eventually able to gain control of his back legs and stand up, then turned towards the wall behind him.  I winced as he walked straight into the wall, stood slowly back up then like a zombie dog began pacing.  He bumped into walls, chairs, got stuck in a corner.  We called to him but he didn’t respond, confused and disoriented.  For fifteen minutes, Nick paced steadily in a circuit through the downstairs hall, kitchen, dining room and living room.  There was nothing we could do but watch, wait, and hope.

Eventually Nick recovered his senses, came to me when I called his name, accepted a few pats on his head, paced a little more, then went to Mir for comfort.  I retrieved an old comforter, laid it on the floor in front of our couch.  Nick collapsed there, accepted my hugs as I laid down next to him.  I slept there for a while with him until the floor became too hard for me to stay asleep.

Nick was back to normal the next morning, dove into a snow drift when I let him out to the back yard.  Today, I became his mortal enemy as the bath torturer, a necessity after the ordeal from Friday night.  Nick hates baths, snaps at me as I pick him up to put him in the tub.  From the way he acted during his bath, he definitely is suffering no ill affects!

I love my beautiful and loving companion.  If he had died Friday night, I would have lost a faithful friend who never withholds affection, his constant cuddling and loyalty something I depend on.  Nick, outside of bath time, is a patient animal, a comfort.  When I lost my job, he was the companion who calmed me.  When I was home recovering from surgeries in 2013, he never left my side.  I was not ready to lose him last Friday night.

Now if the seizures had only made him lose his voice….

How many dogs do you know that are patient enough to read drivel like that? Nick doesn’t need glasses. He just think they make him look smart.

Milking It

Tags

couch, Daniel Tosh, Nick, sheltie

(pause for a moment before I start writing this blog — I’m watching Daniel Tosh on Netflix and this guy is so freaking realistically funny that a conservative suburban midwestern middle aged guy like myself should NOT be laughing this hard)

Nick is not giving up the couch.  No way.  There are pillows there.  Steve is sitting next to me and allowing me to have his space because he feels guilty for yelling at me.

Yeah, I did.

My sheltie does not like for anyone to leave the house.  As soon as the shoes, or coat, or keys come out, he goes into freak out mode.  He has separation anxiety, I guess, and from what I read it’s not uncommon for his breed.  Nick has an excuse to be the way he is.  The dog was born that way.

I guess I could make a Lady Gaga reference here.  But I’m conservative midwestern middle aged Christian.  I am supposed to hate Lady Gaga.  I do, but it has nothing with the way she chooses to entertain.  I don’t like having my intelligence insulted.

Back to Nick.

When I decided to venture out into the world outside of my two story home this morning, Nick freaked.  I was sitting on the couch while I put on my shoe.  Nick jumped up next to me, barking, then jumped from the couch right on my surgically repaired foot.

Yes, it hurt.  And I yelped.

Nick was immediately at my feet, apologizing and shivering.  He also is very much a human pleaser and his human was not pleased.  Gone was the separation.  In its place was sorrowful remorse.  HIs ears were flat.  If dogs cried tears, Nick would have been weeping.

“Come on up here, Nick” and I patted the couch next to me.  I cried a few tears with him as I put my cheek next to his muzzle and petted him between the ears for a few minutes.  “It’s OK.”

I waited a few minutes until he calmed down.  Man’s best friend let me leave in silence.  Nick earned a few minutes of comfort on the couch.  I even tossed him a few potato chips.

Christmas treats for our furry family

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Nick, orange cat, sheltie

Chester the cat and Nick the Sheltie always look forward to the treats they receive in their stocking each Christmas morn. This morning was no exception

Dog and Daughter

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alyssa, sheltie

My daughter, Alyssa, with my parents’ new sheltie puppy, Nikki. The puppy is two months old.

Thought this would bring a smile to someone’s face. It does mine.