A Special Old Friend

As everyone probably knows, I have been doing some volunteer work with Paws in the City, an animal rescue organization here in Dallas. This week, one of the co-founders of the organization lost her companion, Max. I learned this through Facebook, and it brought back memories of my childhood buddy, Ben. Here we are - just a kid and her giant puppy!!




I got Ben when I was in 2nd grade, and he was a wonderful, slobbery, goofy companion to my family until I was a sophomore in college. Losing him was so hard since we had practically grown up together - in fact, since I had no human siblings, I often thought of my pets as my brothers and sisters! When we got Ben, we were told that he was most likely a Beagle/Basset Hound mix and would be a medium sized dog when full grown. My parents noted his large paws and were a bit skeptical of this estimate, but nobody cared because 1. we are a family who loves LARGE dogs and 2. he was so darn adorable that we couldn't NOT take him home. I named him Benji, after the scruffy mutt in the movies, which were favorites of mine as an animal-obsessed kid!

As he grew, we could see that Ben was most certainly NOT a Beagle/Basset. He was more likely a German Shepherd/American Foxhound - with the deep chest (and later hip problems) of the shepherd with the coloration of a black, tan, and white foxhound. He had the best personality traits from both breeds, too. Quick to learn his tricks, protective yet gentle, and loyal to his humans...in short, absolutely the sweetest, smartest dog ever!

My parents and I always say, if only we could have cloned Ben and been guaranteed to get his loveable personality, we could have had a lifetime of wonderful dogs! It's too bad our pet companions have so few years with us, but the important thing is to show them all the love we have while they're around. I need to scan some old pics of two other wonderful childhood pets - Garfield the cat, who I adopted from a neighbor's litter of kittens when I was 5 years old (he lived until I was a junior in college) and Chief the horse (he was a gentle old man of 18 when my parents bought him for me at age 9, and he lived to the ripe old age of 26)!

Here's the ONLY pic I have scanned of Garfield - unfortunately you have to bear witness to me at a very awkward stage (brace-face) with a very ticked-off cat in a hat!



Who were your favorite animal friends when you were young?

Bella Update

So, the vet called on Monday to tell me the results of the lab testing done on the knot they removed from her leg last week. Results: not cancer or anything remotely scary! HOORAY! Jeff and I were so happy that our furry child is safe and healthy. Turns out the lump was caused by an inflamed tactile hair, which is essentially an infected ingrown whisker hair. Who knew cats also had whiskers on the underside of their front legs?! I sure didn't, until Monday that is. Anyway, one of them somehow got infected, and I guess it was bothering her enough that she chewed the hair off around it. Now that the whole lump has been removed, she should be good to go. She is definitely looking forward to having her stitches removed on Saturday so she can take the horrible cone off her head! Even though she has been such a good girl and adjusted to it so well, we will ALL be very happy when she is completely back to normal!

Bella's Boo-Boo

A couple days after arriving home from Hawaii, my mom brought Bella back since she'd been keeping her for us. Bella really loves the rug in our living room, so as soon as she got home, she flopped down on it and rolled over onto her back. I noticed something on her right front leg; it looked like a small wart or growth. She had chewed all the hair off around it, so I knew it had to be bothering her. My mom was surprised that she hadn't seen it, but she couldn't remember Bella really turning over on her back very often at my parents' house (and that is the ONLY way you could possibly see it).

So, I scheduled a vet appointment for the next day, just to be on the safe side. Let me just point out that Bella HATES going to the vet's office. As soon as we walk in the door, she turns into this hissing, growling gremlin-creature. After trying to calm her down, the vet finally had to roll her up in a towel, burrito-style, so she could get a good look at the lump. The vet wanted to do a biopsy, so she took a small tissue sample with a hollow needle. I felt so bad for Bella because she had no idea why she was being held down and stabbed with sharp objects! The vet went out and looked at the sample under the microscope, then came back and told me that she didn't like the look of some of the cells and wanted to do a full removal. So I am barely holding it together at this point - I hate to think that something might be wrong with her and that it could have been growing there unknown for months. I scheduled the next available surgery, which was on Wednesday.

All day Wednesday I was terrified that I would get a call saying something had gone wrong and she didn't make it through. (As Jeff can tell you, I often adopt a worst-case scenario mind-set)! Luckily I got a call that afternoon saying she had done great and could be taken home after 4:00. At 4:00 on the dot, I was there waiting to take my baby home. She looked so pitiful with her shaved and stitched leg! Worst of all, she has to wear an Elizabethan collar (e-collar) for the 10-14 days it will take the incision to heal! I know it is for her own good becuase otherwise she would chew her stitches, but she is so incredibly miserable! She is depressed and never "talks" to us like she used to. She mopes around and sleeps all day, barely eating unless I force her. I know it is only temporary until she heals, but it is killing me to see her like that.

The picture above is of my sweet kitty in her "sick box" that I made for her. She loves to hide inside boxes and under blankets, but she can't fit right now because of the e-collar. So, I made her this box with some soft blankets so she can feel safe.

Next week we will get the lab results telling us what the lump was. I hope and pray it isn't cancer and that it is now gone for goood. Please send Bella nice, healing thoughts for the next week or two!

Bella's Bad Behavior

Animals are a lot smarter than people give them credit for...our cat Bella is a great example of this. Every night, she sleeps at the foot of our bed, and every morning between 6:00 - 7:00 she tries to get us out of bed by meowing incessantly. I don't know why she has decided that this is the perfect time to get up, no matter what day of the week it is or how much/little sleep we got that night. Most of the time, we are not quite ready to get up at 6:00 a.m. - OK, we are NEVER ready to get up that early - so we take turns getting up and locking her in the other half of the house (extra bedroom, TV room and office). That's where her food/water and cat tree perch are, so she usually settles back down and goes to sleep until we actually do get up and let her out. Lately her methods have been evolving in her quest to get us up early, and this is why I say that animals are quite clever. When we first moved into the house, she would jump onto bed with us (usually with a toy like her fuzzy mice or a hair elastic stolen from the bathroom) and meow in our faces. It was easy to just grab her and take her to "her room" for the rest of the night. Then, several months later, she started sitting in the doorway or at the foot of the bed to meow. So then we would get out of bed, grab her and put her up. WELL, she figured out quickly that every time we got out of bed to come to her, it wasn't to praise/pet/play with her, so she began sitting outside the bedroom doorway and meowing until we got up to come find her. She would make sure that we saw her as we came around the corner before taking off running down the hall, where she would either hide behind the couch or under the dining room table. I guess she thought that if she could keep us at bay for longer, we might just give up stay awake with her for good. She quickly realized that it was still pretty easy for us to reach under the table or behind the couch, so now she has figured out the BEST morning wake-up routine. What she has recently started doing is positioning herself UNDERNEATH our bed in the very center where neither of us can reach and then meowing as we stumble around in the dark and try to figure out where she is. She did this to me a few days ago, and when I could not find her after looking in all the rooms, I went back to bed. She waited about 10 minutes and then started up with the meowing again from under the bed!!!! So now when she does this, I have to go sit on the living room couch until she decides that maybe I actually did get up, at which point she saunters in to say good morning and I grab her and send her to her room!! I just have to wonder...what will she come up with next??