Life Lesson from an Old Dog

I couldn't blog about this last week because we were too close to losing Tanner. I was pretty sure the sobbing would have shorted out the keyboard if I had even tried.

Our old lady has several fatty tumors around her body. They run from marble sized to about double that. None are cancerous. But one got infected. It got infected by a nasty bacteria that looked like it was rotting her leg. It was growing at an alarming rate. At this point the vets mumble things like "necrotizing faciitis" and "sending sample to the CDC" and you hear it but you don't.

Go ahead and say it. We know. Nothing NORMAL happens to this family when it comes to medical emergencies.

Once it ruptured (yes, she was at home and yes, it was as gross as you might imagine) I ran her to the vet for her third visit in three days and this time she stayed there. Moose and I were having phone calls about getting the kids from school to go and say goodbye to her. The vet called almost in tears. Every tech I talked to throughout the day kept telling me that she is the sweetest dog they know. It all felt like a dramatic build up to a sad ending.

And then the radiographs showed no bone involvement which was great news. This pocket of goo was the size of half a baseball on her leg and she was swollen from hip to toes but the redness was decreasing and there were no new areas of necrosis which was great news. And one wonderful tech sat with her all day hot packing and massaging her leg to keep the blood circulating. They flushed and cleaned out the huge hole in her leg and she turned the corner.

She has been very tired and very sore for over a week. But this morning she was bouncing around the living room when I got home from dropping off the kids. So I took her for a walk. And you know what? She was pulling me the whole time! This is the dog who would rather nap in the sun than go for a walk. Any other day she would weigh the pains that generally plague a 14 1/2 year old dog and opt for staying home.

I think that in comparison to how truly sick she was and how much pain she was in that the grinding arthritis didn't seem so bad.

What an optimist.

I tell my kids that being optimistic is not the same thing as pretending there is no risk in life. That is called being stupid. But the existence of risk doesn't mean you have to get bogged down by it either. True optimism is when you can see a situation as a whole--every side of it--and still believe, with all your heart, that something good will grow from the experience.