So, here's the deal. Around here, there are several grades of animal shelters. There's the one run by the county that is filled with pit bulls and dingos and feral cats. There's the Humane Society, where they have 3-legged goats who fell off tractor-trailers, abandoned pot bellied pigs, bunnies galore and a handful of adult pit-bull mixes, a rare puppy or adolescent dog, and 1,000 cats and kittens. Finally, there is the well-funded boutique shelter that flies in Golden Retrievers from Taiwan and mutts from Utah. They have a large selection of puppies and young dogs who won't eat your chickens.
So this is what I imagine went through Lars' head several months ago on one of the occasions that I tried explain to him, without whining, that I can't help it that my body keeps telling me more children are in order -- it's my biology, and he's a biologist after all. He of all people should get it, no? Ok, where was I, oh yeah . . . back up to that almost sentence at the start of this paragraph. Here's what he was thinking (I'm paraphrasing): "One time I saw on TV how at a zoo in China a mama chimp had just had a still birth and the mama panda in the next cell over was rejecting her offspring so the zoo keeper brought the baby panda over to the mama chimp and darn it if that panda baby didn't latch on and darn it if that mama chimp didn't love that baby panda like her own and then she was okay and didn't want anymore babies. Heyyyyyyy, how about I go buy my wife a puppy!"
Later, we drove out through the prickly heat in America's wealthiest zip code to that boutique shelter and we picked us a puppy. And by we, I mean Lars. Lars drove us out there and Lars picked himself a puppy. Per his specifications the dog needed to be chocolate in color and lab-ish in breed. Per my specifications, she or he needed to be young enough that we could train her not to eat the chickens. Chase those spoiled rotten fat birds, yes. Eat them, no.
Enter Nutmeg Buster Brown Viking, our chocolate Chesapeake Labrabeagle, our not so cheap boutique shelter mutt puppy. She's smart as a whip, as sweet as an unripe lemon, precious as a diamond. For the first week, Magdalena Humphindinkelheimer ignored her and us. Beginning of the second week, she tolerated her. And now, after months of Viking living, Nutty and Maggie are BFFs. The romp together, bark together, pee on trees together and over-take our master bed together. Now, nightly Lars takes the two dogs for a walk to the 'big park' in our subdivision where all the neighbors bring their dogs. Everyone knows her pitiful orphan story and has fallen in love with her and her floppy brown ears.
Remember when I said she was smart as a whip? Well, it's mostly true. For example, Maggie demonstrated proper doggie-door use to Nutmeg a handful of time and BOOM! we've got a potty trained puppy. Dinner time in the Viking home? Look under Tova's chair, there's Nutty sitting under it with an open mouth waiting for Brussel sprouts and pie crust. Want to have a good time? Sure, go ahead and join my mutt-pup up on the trampoline where she likes to jump with and without the kids.
Now here's the part where I tell you about how she doesn't have the sense that God gave geese. You may recall how our bee population in this country plummeted. In response Lars and I planted a bunch of water-wise bee friendly plants and bought lots of vanilla Haagen-Daaz. We were gonna bring those bees back, by golly. Truth be told, our front and back yards are buzzy in the afternoons with lots of mostly aloof and historically gentle honey bees.
Unlike the bees, aloof is not something Nutmeg does well. Nutmeg wants to know what everyone is doing all the time, and if she can sit on your lap and lick your ear lobes at the same time then she is truly happy. Too bad for Nutmeg that she can't on the bees' laps. Too bad for Nutmeg that she doesn't speak English, because when I told that twerpy pup to leave those honey bees alone I didn't know that her response to me was "fat chance woman."
Had I known, I would have given her a time-out for being sassy. That usually fixes 'em right up. Like I said, I didn't know that she was not minding me.
25-minutes before we had to leave to get Petra and pick up equipment for Lars' new soccer team, it's always in the 30-minutes before you have to be somewhere, Nutmeg came running in to the house from the backyard. She was a little bit yelpy and a lot snorfly and very much pawing at her face. I said her name in a scolding manner, to which she looked up at me. Holy moly, call the ambulance this dog has turned into a bobble head. Her face was beginning to bloat and swell right in front of me. I grabbed her in my arms, screaming my bloody head off for Lars, who came running. Panic stricken he ran to the next door neighbor's house, who after his own unfortunate bee sting incident always keeps Benadryl on hand. While my puppy's eyes were swelling shut and her snorfling grew more pressured, her little nostrils were closing in, and her face was now 2-times it's usual size. I called our friend Mike who knows a little bit about everything. In less than 5-minutes, Lars was back from the neighbor's and Mike was here with some liquid Benadryl, and EMT kit with oxygen and his extensive veterinary knowledge (former vet tech cum computer geek). With a syringe full of children's Benadryl, Mike shot it to the back of her throat. I grabbed my stethoscope, only to hear tight wheezy lungs and a pounding heart. Mike monitored her color while Lars scolded her in his nice-daddy voice. Gradually, agonizingly slowly, her right eye began to open. Then the right side of her face began to unswell. Her left eye came next, the wheezing stopped and her heart rate returned to normal. The side-effects of the Benadryl kicked in, soon enough Nutmeg was zonked out on Mike's lap with all of us surrounding her sitting on the kitchen floor. When Mike left, her droopy and swollen jowls resembled pendulous hippo testicles. But she was alive, Mike had saved our dog's life.
This morning, Mike called me at work to check on Nutterbutter. Back to her normal puppy pokiness with only a bit of swelling on her left cheek, our dog had gone from being an orphaned puppy in a kill-shelter in Utah to a mutt with the love of all our neighbors and computer geeks who will leave their families at bed time to go do an emergency house call. Right now, she's laying on the grass watching the bees buzz from afar and practicing being aloof.
