Ten… nine… eight…

Counting backward from 10 is supposed to keep you from blowing your lid, right?

My children are driving me nuts tonight.  (My children are my animals, for those of you that aren’t aware.)

Harley had surgery today.  He had a tumor removed from his tail.  When I gave him a bath last weekend I noticed a little bump about 2/3 the way down the shaft of his tail.  I didn’t think much about it at the time.  He and Bella are bully breeds and they play ROUGH and CONSTANTLY, and they both always have little nicks and scabs as a result.  I thought that’s all this was.  But within a couple of days this proved not to be the case.  This this grew in size very quickly and became red and scaly.  I made an appointment and took him in yesterday afternoon to be seen.  The vet said it was a tumor, which he believed to be benign but said it definitely needed to come off and be biopsied to be sure.  Surgery was scheduled for this afternoon.

On my lunch hour, I made a mad dash to the house to pick him up and took him to the vet’s office.  Although we have had him for almost a year, he still hasn’t gotten over his fear of unfamiliar men (He was rescued from an abusive male owner.), so Doc asked me, for Harley’s sake, to keep his stress level at the lowest possible level, if I could hang around until they gave him a sedative.  I so didn’t want to because I was afraid it would bring back the still-very-raw memories of being in the room when I had to have my baby girl Lucy put to sleep a couple of years ago.  Bet since the vet felt it was best for Harley, I stayed.  Turns out my fears were completely unfounded.  There was no comparison.  And let me just say… if you’ve never had the opportunity to watch a dog be sedated, put it on your to-do list.  It’s like watching Saturday night in a bar in extreme fast forward.  He went from stone-cold sober, to wobbling a little bit, to stumbling, to laying in the floor with his tongue hanging out within a matter of about three minutes.

With that, I went back to work.

I picked him up when I got off, and he was still pretty woozey.  Doc said he would be for a little while yet.  As soon as we got home, he jumped up on the couch (after one failed attempt–still drunk!) and tried to go to sleep.  My dear darling Bella would have no part of that.  She wanted to play, and it was driving her up the stinking wall that he wouldn’t.  She was barking and rooting around on the floor and moaning and just making a complete ass of herself and driving me crazy in the process.  I guess Harley finally decided she wasn’t going to leave him alone until he got up, so he got up and tried to play a little bit… and got sick all over the place.  (Vet said he would be nauseous from the anesthesia.)  I didn’t figure he could have much in his stomach since he hadn’t eaten since yesterday afternoon, but something came from somewhere.  Ew.

He laid back down and went to sleep.  I turned my back for a few minutes and next thing I know he appears at my side sans bandage.

Crap.

I looked at the wound thinking maybe I could just leave it off, but nope.  Doc wasn’t able to get good skin closure where the tumor was excised, so it was gaping a little bit in the middle.  I called him on his cell, and he said if he would leave it alone it should be fine.  But no.  He would not leave it alone.  Back to town to Walgreens I went to get the makings of a wrap.

And in the time it’s taken me to type this, he’s already thrown up again.

So today I’ve spent WAY too much money on unexpected bills, dealt with temper tantums from the jealous one, and been elbow deep in vomit, and played nurse on top of working all day, cooking supper for the humans, etc.  (No running for this gal today.)

And people wonder why I don’t have kids.