Pickles & Dimes

It’s been two years since we adopted you, and I can’t believe we’ve had you that long. It seems like just yesterday we strode unsuspectedly into that Petco to buy cat food and came to a skidding stop in front of your crate, knowing seconds after seeing your wrinkly, concerned brow that you were coming home with us.

You’ve learned so much this year. Last year, we taught you to sit, shake, leave it and lay, and now you know how to stay and roll over, and what’s even better is that we don’t even have to say anything because you recognize the hand signals, too. You also know the following words: toy, treat, hot dog, blanket, hop up, outside, walk, Sunny, Abby (you look around warily when we say her name in case she’s about to paw-slap you), bone and because you’re so smart we can’t even spell it out anymore, b-o-n-e.

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We are on Day 7 with the Strip (of gel!) Applying to the Dog’s Eyes, and you know what? Shorty actually sees Jason grab the tube of gel, utters a small, let’s-get-this-over-with sigh and plops himself down on my lap, patiently enduring Jason prying open his eyelids to apply the strip without even flinching, and then trots expectantly to the fridge, where he sits without being asked and waits for his reward hot dog. Meanwhile, when I use a washcloth to wipe the residual goop from his eyes every morning (from the gel – his eyes are looking perfectly fine now), he thrashes and tosses his head, and basically acts like I am tossing acid in his face instead of gently wiping it with a soft green washcloth.

Abby has been an extensive hunter lately. Every night when we go to bed, she’ll hop up on the bed for a few minutes, kneading the blankets as though she’s tucking me in, and then hop back down. A few minutes later, we’ll hear her caterwauling downstairs as she grabs one of her toys out of the basket (Beanie Babies). This caterwauling continues for a few minutes, as she navigates the stairs with the stuffed animal in her mouth (which is 1/3 her size), walks around the living room, pinpoints our position as we call out to her: “We’re in here, Abs!” and finishes her muffled meowing by depositing the toy either on the bed with us or right in the doorway so one of us is sure to step on it at 4:30 a.m. By the time we get up in the morning, there’s anywhere from 3-10 toys on the floor, proudly displayed for our benefit. She is still partial to her ribbon-decorated rabbit’s foot (which I accidentally sucked into the vacuum a few months ago and Jason repaired), but usually brings us a giant stuffed baseball, a Halloween bat, a Halloween ghost, and a few rabbits. Thankfully she does not meow for every toy, and I am also thankful that these “dead” animals are not real.

Sunny has been particularly annoying in the mornings again lately and has realized that the earplugs and pillows over our ears means we can’t hear her meowing or batting at the dresser handles, so she has developed the habit of coming right up to me and repeatedly headbutting me in the arm or head – hard. She also spends a lot of time looking out the window at our driveway, so the first thing I see when I get home is her in front of the curtains, mouth open in a disapproving meow, like a parent upset over a missed curfew.

Every morning when Jason leaves for work, I’ll stand at one of our windows and wave goodbye. This morning I was in our bedroom making the bed and right when I stepped up to the window, a damn grackle flew right into it, making me shriek and flap my arms in some kind of weird sympathetic gesture. Meanwhile, the bird immediately recovered from its head bashing and stared back of me, crazy bird eyes all agog, wings flapping, probably wondering what the hell MY problem was.

What odd animal behavior have you seen lately?

Last week, a day after we returned from camping, Shorty developed a runny eye. We thought maybe he scratched it playing with the four other dogs that were camping with us, but once his eye got redder and he looked more and more pitiful, I made an appointment with the vet.

It turns out he has an eye infection, which the vet determined after putting eye drops into Shorty’s eyes (gah!) and looking at them with a fluorescent light, which made them glow a bright, demon-dog green. It looked like the poor dog was crying radioactive tears.

The vet then told us we could treat it by putting a strip on his eyes 2-6 times a day for 7-10 days. That’s exactly how he put it: “a strip.” And Jason and I are both idiots apparently, because we both assumed that meant we had to put some sort of strip of paper onto our trusting dog’s eyes, the dog who was attempting to conceal himself under one of the small exam room chairs all, “Nothing to see here, folks. I believe there may be a little kitten outside who needs veterinary assistance, but I’m all good here, thank you and goodnight.”

“So…what happens to this…strip?” I asked, wondering if maybe the medicine was on a paper strip that dissolved.

“It just disappears into the eye,” the vet replied, looking at us like we were stupid.

“So how do we put it on the eye?” Jason asked.

“You just place the strip on the eye without touching the surface of it,” the vet said, clearly wondering how we were capable of keeping this dog alive, you know, because of our idiocy.

“Could you show us how to put the strip on the eye?” we asked, clearly not understanding this process at all, and did I mention we were supposed to do this 2-6 times a day for 7-10 days?

So a vet tech came over while we held a scrabbling Shorty in place and put a strip (of gel!) in each eye. Gel, strip of. Do you think they could have mentioned the word “gel” at any time during our conversation? No.

Anyway, because Shorty is a dog made out of obedience, trustfulness and love, he sits calmly in my lap while Jason pries open his eyelids and puts the strip (of gel!) on his eyes three times a day. He doesn’t fight us, he doesn’t move, and the whole thing takes less than 30 seconds.

And then he gets a piece of baked hot dog.

That’s how much Shorty loves hot dogs.

There has been significant progress made in the Canine-Feline Space-Sharing Treaty talks.