Furbabies

Meg's scare with Gordon today really got me thinking about my dogs and how even with all the stupid stuff they pull we still love them to pieces. Both of our dogs have had weird things happen to them where they very easily might not have lived to chew up another shoe.

Brodie walked through the railing and off our second floor balcony when he was only about a year old. Then a year or so later was hit by a car in front of our house. Both times he walked away with pretty minor injuries if anything.

When Harley was about 13 weeks old (3 weeks after Rusty gave him to me) he got really sick to the point where he peed the bed multiple times in one night, wouldn't drink or eat and was completely unresponsive. We rushed him to the emergency animal hospital and a few hours later he was back to his old self. Albeit with a sack of fluid sloshing around on his back, but still back to being a puppy.

Last week I posted about how Harley chewed up that green highlighter. It was pretty funny at the time, but the next morning, we woke up to find that he had actually eaten quite a bit of the plastic pieces from the marker. He had thrown it up in the middle of the night, but we can't help but wonder what might happen if he does it again. Will we be so lucky that it won't damage any internal organs? Our family dog, Jaxx, ate something when he was about 4 years old and ended up needing a really expensive surgery that resulted in him losing about 18 inches of intestine. We were all grateful he made it through to live another 5 awesome years.

I guess where I'm going with this, is why do we do this to ourselves? I'm an enormous animal-lover, so its no question why I love having dogs. But we all know that they eat things that aren't supposed to go into their bodies and do stupid things that have the potential to make them sick or even worse. We know that with having pets there is an inherent risk that something could go wrong at any moment through no fault of our own. Yet, we still bring these animals into our lives and then blame ourselves when things do go wrong.

I shouldn't have left the door open.

I should have cleaned up the house better so there would be nothing to chew up.

I should have paid more attention.

Shoulda coulda woulda. There's really no point. These animals are in our lives to make them better for the time they're around. We all know that dogs don't live as long as we do, so we adopt these little furballs knowing they're only going to cause us heartache in the end. But it is so worth it when you get moments like these...

Hang in there, Gordon! We're all pulling for you!