Heart Like a Dog

The Good, the Bad, and the Oh My God of living with dogs!

The Sweet Things in Life

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This week, I had the hardest, saddest day I’ve ever had in my entire life. Friday morning, I watched my grandchildren get into their parent’s cars for the 700 mile ride to their new home.

All their lives, my grandchildren have lived within 10 minutes of me. At some point every weekend, I would see my grandchildren. We did Home Depot workshops together, were together every holiday, I’ve hugged and kissed them on their birthdays, seen them off to their first day of school, picked them up on half days.

To say I’m wrecked is an understatement.

My grandkids grew up around the dogs, but I have to say, my granddaughter is the one who is closest to them.  One of her favorite things to do is to walk Sampson.

On Thursday afternoon, my granddaughter walked Sampson for her last time. On the walk we talked about the very real possibility that Sampson might not be here when she comes up this summer.

Just a girl and her dog.

One of the things I love most about Sampson is his ability to draw people to him. He’s gentle and easy-going and most people fall in love with him. My granddaughter is no exception.

Wednesday and Thursday night my grandchildren and their parents (my daughter and son-in-law) stayed at my house because their furniture was loaded onto a truck.

That is how I happened to witness my granddaughter kneeling down and kissing Sampson on his head and telling him goodbye. I’ve kissed him on his head thousands of times myself, but my granddaughter never has.

Even in the midst of my sadness, knowing my sweet boy has touched my granddaughter as deeply as he’s touched me, made me smile.

What did your pet do this week that made you laugh or smile?

You make me laugh (or smile.) The sweet, funny, loving things dogs do that make us laugh or smile.

About That Husky Puppy…

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Back in May of this year, I wrote a post titled, “Dear Neighbor- Part 2.” It was a post about my experience with a neighbor who had just gotten a Husky puppy.

You can read the entire post HERE. If you’re not up to the task of re-reading the entire post, I’ll summarize.

A neighborhood family got a Husky puppy. After a few months, the responsibility of the puppy fell to the children. The kids weren’t really training the puppy, but what they were doing was giving the puppy some less than stellar traits. I tried to explain this to the Dad, and it didn’t go well.

Now that you’re up to speed, here we go.

After I spoke with the Dad, I thought we were ‘friendly.’ We’d wave to each other in passing. Him in his truck going to work, and me walking my dog.

Occasionally I’d see him or the wife walking the dog, and some mornings he would be out with his dog while I was walking Sampson.

One morning, when it was quite dark, he was out in the yard with his dog, and Sampson happened to stop across from his house to potty. I was just standing there when suddenly Dan shouted, “What the hell are you looking at?”

Naturally at 5:15 AM it startled me. I assumed he was talking to his dog, but I do so wish I’d spoke up and said, “My well-trained dog, what the hell are you looking at?”

I’m looking at you, you big, dumb, knucklehead.

Oh well…opportunity lost.

After a while he stopped waving at me, in fact, he stopped looking at me when he passed me by. I also noticed, I wasn’t seeing him outside with the dog. I started to worry because the behaviors the dog was being taught by the kids, could have the dog in real trouble.

But with the Bonehead not speaking to me, there was no way of knowing if they still had the dog, and if not, what had happened to it.

Then fate stepped in and I ran into Dan’s next-door neighbors. They are both animal lovers and always stop to pet my dogs. As a matter of fact, a few years back, they had a Husky of their own.**Delilah and I ran into them a couple of Sundays ago, and we were catching up. There was a lull in the conversation and I asked, “Does your neighbor still have the Husky?”

Nope.

Turns out they were too busy for the dog and had apparently kept in touch with the breeder, so when they realized they couldn’t handle him, they reached out and the breeder found another family for him. He is currently enjoying life on a farm in New Jersey.

I breathed a sigh of relief and shared how worried I was that he would have been given to Animal Control or euthanized, at which point my neighbors assured me they would never have let that happen and would have taken the dog themselves.

At the time of the original post, one of my readers (Meagan) said, “Dan also needs a swift kick to the groin.?

God ole’ Dan still needs a kick in his private parts, but maybe not so hard as hard as would have back in November. If he couldn’t provide a proper home, at least he found someone who could.

Holter Monitor – Take 1

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When Delilah first saw the canine cardiologist for her heart arrhythmia, it was recommended she wear a Holter Monitor, to see if we could get an idea of what might be contributing to the arrhythmia, and what we could do to help her.

Initially I said, “No.” Mostly because they wanted me to sign a waiver saying I would replace the $1,400 machine if Delilah broke and it, but the other reason was I couldn’t see bundling her up in the heat and humidity of the summer.

As luck would have it, we went in for a check-up August 29th. Delilah’s arrhythmias were down to six in a four minute period, which was really good. Dr. Morris mentioned the Holter Monitor again, and since it was fairly cool with low humidity, and I had already decided I was working 1/2 a day, I said, “Go ahead.”

First Dana had to shave Delilah. Then she put six leads on her, three on each side of her body. Once that was done, Dana attached wires to the leads, and taped the leads and wires to Delilah’s body.

After that was done, the Holter Monitor was placed on Delilah’s back, and more tape was added.

Once everything was taped good, Dana put Delilah in a Thundershirt.

She advised me when removing the device, to not use scissors because I could inadvertently cut the wires.

Delilah didn’t seem to mind wearing the Holter or the Thundershirt at all while I was with her, but I was nervous about leaving her.

Still, I had to go into work, and so I did.

I was pleasantly surprised when I got home, that Delilah was still in her Thundershirt, and she didn’t seem put out in any way.

In fact, there was a lot of this going on.

She had two walks and two meals, and when we hit the 24-hour mark, it was time to remove the Holter Monitor and leads.

Houston we have a problem.

The first thing I noticed when the Thundershirt came off was a wire, just hanging there.

I realize the wire is hard to see, so I added the arrow.

The connector wasn’t there. Just a wire.

Well shit, that can’t be good!

There was nothing else to be done, I had to remove the leads.

Dana had mentioned rubbing alcohol on the adhesive, but I was hesitant to use it just in case any of the leads had agitated Delilah.

Hubby and I thought maybe some Vaseline, but I thought I’d take the tape off first, then determine how to remove the leads.

Unfortunately, the leads were coming off with the tape. I felt bad pulling on the tape, and while I was very careful removing it, I was pulling on poor Delilah, but she was a real trooper, she did flinch a couple of times, but she still let me remove them.

After they were all removed, I found the connector. It was still attached to one of the leads.

Hubby was able to attach the connector to the wire, and I packaged the whole thing up and sent it back to the Cardiologist.

Once they had received it, I called up and explained what happened to Dana. We just couldn’t figure out HOW that one lead became disconnected from the wire. Our hope was the wire came off towards the end of the 24-hour period, and there would be enough data to give the Dr. what she needed.

The best laid plans, sometimes just don’t work out.

Dana called me last week to let me know, the entire 24-hours was complete static. They got absolutely nothing.

We will have to repeat the test. I have her scheduled for the middle of October, but I’m going to see if I can get her in earlier.

Dana has assured me, we will NOT be using the same monitor and there is no charge to repeat the test.

Let’s hope that connector stays where it needs to.

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