Things I think about while walking

I really think that our priorities as a society are totally screwed up. The things we think are just so important often puzzle me. I wonder how we can get pushed so far off track and into this odd place.

One example of this is pets. I love animals. I think it would be great to have a pet that our family can properly care for. That said I have to wonder about pet owners. When Evan was in the hospital I love to watch Animal Planet with him. One of the shows that we like to watch is Emergency Vets. I enjoy the heart warming stories of vets saving lives. Sometimes my enjoyment turns to disgust.

On a recent episode an older dog was having heart problems. The vets then proceed to do an echocardiogram on this dog. This is the same test that has been frequently done on Evan to check out his heart and make sure things are OK in there. This is an expensive test and the cost for the equipment alone is insane. Why the heck is something like this being done on a dog? There are people that are not getting the health care they need and yet some owner spends the big bucks to get one for an old dog.

I know what it is like to have an attachment to an animal. When we moved to San Diego after my husband got out of boot camp we adopted a beautiful black cat that I named Norbert. He was to be my buddy while my husband left me alone in a strange city for three months. A few months before we were to leave the city and move up to our present location Norbert started throwing up his food.

Like a good owner I took him to the vet. A few tests were run and diet changes were made with out any effect. The next step was supposed to be an ultrasound to see if Norbert had cancer. All the easy fixes had been tried and we were down to this hard choice. I opted to refuse the ultrasound because of the cost. Even if we had done the test and it had shown cancer then I would have ended up putting the poor cat to sleep any way but then I would have been a lot poorer.

There is no way I would have wanted to try chemo for a cat. It only gets you a few more months and the animal would not even understand why you were putting them through all this awful stuff. I loved Norbert but I also loved him enough to end his suffering and not force him to hang on for my own selfish reasons.

I also can't believe how much pet crap there is out there. Have you seen the insane amount of pet clothing there is now? There are people that hardly have any clothing and people are wasting money on an animal that already has a fur coat attached to them. My mind is completely boggled. The biggest splurge I made for Norbert was to buy a Christmas collar for him. Dressing up an animal (unless you are a young child playing dress up with your dog *blushes*) is just nutso and demeaning to the poor animal.

I will get off my soap box now. Thanks for listening to my ranting.

Rest in peace Daisy

Monday the best dog in the whole world was put to sleep due to complications from old age and an autoimmune disease called Lupus. Daisy was a wonderful companion and a very good friend. She put up with a lot of silly things that kids do to dogs. She listened to me when I was sad. I missed her more than my own family when I left home to go to college. I could call my parents on the phone but there was no way to talk to her when I was away. She will be greatly missed and I hope that some day my kids will be able to have a companion that is as wonderful Daisy was.

Alas poor Larry

Well I just discovered a dead Larry in his cage just now. I should have figured something was up when he was so quiet last night but I was too tried to think. We are now hamsterless and not intending to change that just now. Evan did get a kick out of a furry little animal but I hated that he incessantly chewed the cage. I feel bad that he died so young, but then he did not come from the best breeding so a long life was not as likely.

I am glad that Evan is still young enough that this will not end up being a huge ordeal. I remember having guinea pig funerals when I was a kid. My sister E's was the first one to kick the bucket and we gathered all of his progeny and his "wife" (they had to be married to have kids duh!) together. My sister wrote out a eulogy and the other g pigs snacked on grapes. Poor Trixie (yes he was male and named Trixie. He was a she when s/he came home from the pet shop and by the time we found out the true sex the name was stuck) was interred in the back yard in a wooden coffin made by my father.

Other funerals were not nearly as elabotate, but a big deal was made every time one of our many animals snuffed it. I think my dad was glad once we got to be older and stopped getting so dramatic about the death of an animal. My personal animals did not die until I was in college so there were no funerals for mine. My rabbit Fleta had to be put down due to complications to old age. I held her as they gave her the shot and she was later cremated with a ton of other animals. One of my g pigs died when I was at school and I have no idea what my parents did with her. The mother of the family, my darling Squeaky was the last of them. She outlasted her whole family and died of cancer. My mother had her put down rather than see her suffer.

The saddest animal death for me was my cat Norbert. I got him right after we moved to San Diego. My husband was going to be gone for three months to pick up the boat that he had been assigned to. It was brand spanking new so the crew had to put her through her paces. The shipyard was in the south so they had to also get her to her home port. I didn't want to be alone in the apartment so we rescued a black kitten from the animal shelter. He became my buddy during a hard time in my life. He was truly a member of the family, sleeping with me in bed and having the run of the house. Shortly before me moved north he started throwing up a lot. He would eat his food and then throw it right back up. He has developed cancer in his stomach and it was preventing him from eating. It was a very sad day when we had to put him down.

Death is never an easy thing even if it is the death of a tiny annoying little rodent. Larry will be missed.

Argh!

This has been one crazy busy week for me. To top it off I think that Harry is teething. He has this white line in his gums and when I feel it I think I feel something tooth like. Should a two month old be teething? I don't think so! I though Evan was super early by popping one out at four and a half months. I go to the pediatrician tomorrow so I will have him look at it. It could explain why Harry had not been going to bed like a good baby. I had to actually let him cry himself to sleep tonight. I felt like such a bad mommy but nothing I was doing was helping so I did nothing and now he is asleep.

I am hesitating to give him tylenol until I talk to the doctor because giving drugs to kids under three months can be tricky. They tend to hold on to them since their bodies are still maturing and some of the systems that clean the blood tend to not quite work as efficiently. This was brought home to me when Evan was a baby and in the hospital. The nurse gave him some morphine for pain control and he stopped breathing. Talk about freaky. Luckily there was an RT right there and she started bagging him while the nurse called the doctor down to give Evan a drug that would reverse the effect of the morphine. It was pretty intense for me since I was not used to seeing that sort of thing.

Topic change: I swear I am going to squish Evan's hampster like a bug. The little turd is incessantly chewing on his cage. He actually broke one of the bars by pulling it off of one of the the cross bars. Luckily he was not strong enough to pull it back enough that he could escape because if he had I would have just had my husband set a rat trap to get the bugger. I am so not having a rodent running free in my house. He is not a very friendly creature, probably because we don't handle him enough but we have very busy lives and he is mostly Evan eye candy any way. Evan loves to watch him move around in his cage. His shrieks are incredibly piercing.