understanding (n.)

No seriously, I know a dog is not a child. Rosie is not human.  (Not convinced she knows that.) But Rosie is the 77 pound silly beast of a baby that lives in our house.  Rosie is not a kid, but we feed her, groom her, walk her, play with her ...

And when she gets sick, we care for her and it moves us to tender compassion.  

Rose had a bad Saturday night.  She was up moving around all night and Shoes finally put her in the basement because no sleep was being had by anybody.  Sunday she was in obvious pain and having trouble sitting.  She was lethargic.  And a little irritable.  Due to her breed and the fact that we are losers who bought instead of rescued (guilt!!), we worry about her princess, inbred  hips and we called the emergency vet line.

Now.   I complain a mighty lot about this strange rural area I'm in, but it randomly does still have the PAC 12 university with a good vet school, and for that I am so gushy grateful.  

I took her in to the vet yesterday where her favorite doc and a sweet 4th year student were there to treat her tenderly and gently.  And blessings on them, because trying to get in a crazy one year old Golden Retriever's hurt rear end is no easy task.  They were all up in her business and she was appropriately offended.

Verdict is she has a sprained upper tail from swimming on Saturday.  Right.  She is a water dog.  She hated swimming.  Doc said these sprains are not uncommon for first time swimmers.

Awesome.

She had doggie pain pills now and is feeling significantly better.  No worries - I has the controlled substance talk with her and told her we would also work on alternative pain management techniques.

Now that she is back to bring naughty Rose, Shoes and I are lighter and happier as well.  Rosie is the being in our house that all of our nurturing care goes to.  Shoes is not a highly emotive man, but with Rose he's different.  Softer.  Loving. She brings out the best in us and, honestly, although for non dog peeps this sounds ridiculous, we want her to be happy.  

So she's not human. Not a kid.  And we have the luxury of kenneling her when we go out (I hear you can't do this with kids?).  But.  She is definitely a part of the Shoes/Lisa family.

Power to the pup.