Who Would Have Thunk It?

Seven years ago today a tiny black dog came squirming into the world.  I didn't know her back then but I have no doubt that she immediately started bossing around her littermates and making countless demands of her poor exhausted mother.

The hairy eyeball (and the drippy nose)

As she grew, she underwent the same training as all the other greyhounds in hopes of preparing her to race.  As usual, Bettina had her own ideas about what lay ahead for her.  She was sent out into the world for her maiden race and she didn't get much farther than that when they decided to close down her track.  I'm not saying that her arrival was the cause of the closing of the track, but we don't really know now, do we?

They opted not to ship her to any other tracks.  That's a decision that I have pondered for a long time.  At first I figured that she just must not have been very fast.  Except she IS pretty fast.  I have a sneaking suspicion that it has to do with her sassiness and her tendency to play a little dirty.  I've watched her hip check her brother on numerous occasions if he was on the verge of overtaking her.

I can also envision her spending her 20 hours a day in her crate making an unholy racket at the indignity of having to be in a crate at all.  She was known as "Crazy Mo" in the rescue kennel (a fact that absolutely no one disclosed to me until she was safely in my home for almost a year).  That was because it routinely took 2 or more volunteers to wrestle her back into her crate once she had been liberated.  Nobody puts Baby in a corner (or a crate).

She met me at a time when my heart was so broken I didn't know if I'd ever feel good again.  I'd lost Girly Girl.  The world was way less shiny.  And I didn't think I would be able to adopt another greyhound because I'd spend the rest of our time together unfairly comparing her to Girly Girl and

In Mumma's spot on the couch.

finding that she came up woefully short.  Bettina, of course, had her own mind on the subject.  She saw a gravy train and by god she was getting on it.

So at the ripe old age of 2, and after 6 months in the rescue kennel, the cheeky, bossy hound that is Bettina wormed her way into our household and my heart.  Now after almost 5 years together, I can't imagine life without her.  I've watched her go from a sleek black dog to a greying middle aged hound (she actually started turning grey about 3 days after she came home with me, so we've been watching the grey thing for a long time now).  She's lost none of her sassiness.  About the only thing that Bettina compromised on was the crate.  Occasionally she'll go in one voluntarily but she does expect to be rewarded handsomely for it.

Happy Birthday to you my tiny biscuit.  You're Mumma's diamond in the rough.  Polish though I might, you've remained as sassy as ever.  I am looking forward to the rest of our adventures together and to watching you grow into a bossy old lady.

Like Fine Wine...

On December 10th my Big Poppy turned 11 years old.  We've had a discussion and I've let him know that his goal now is 19 years.  I thought about 20 years but I didn't want to get greedy.  So 19 years it is.  And when we get to 19 years, what's one more year?

We celebrated that evening with a big birthday cookie and some presents including his most favorite of all, Greenies.  In honor of the 11 years Mumma decided to forego a silly birthday hat.  But I make no such promises for his 12th birthday.

The Big Cookie

About to punch the paparazzo in the face.

Bettina photo bomb.  "Ummm, where is my cookie?"

It's just a scarf Mumma.  Not a fashion shoot.

What's a girl got to do to get her own Big Cookie?  What?  I had one in October?
I'm QUITE sure I would have remembered that.

Six and Sassy

Bettina, the Crown Regent of Fussypants, had a birthday yesterday.  She turned six years old.  While she's calmed down a bit since she joined us at two years old, her Diva skills have increased exponentially.

Say now...could that be for moi?  Enchante!

Oh HELLS no!  That is MINE.  ALL MINE.

Why is there always a dorky hat involved?

First I'm going to deal with this cookie, THEN I'm going to deal with this hat.

Am I going to get one more cookie to grow on?  That's tradition right?  

A Dozen is a LOT!

Guess who is almost a teenager?  Happy Birthday 12th Birthday Fox!

I Remember...

I remember you my sweet girl.  Today would have been your 11th birthday.  

My Best Boy

2007

2008

2009

                                   

2010

2011

2012

2013

Happy 10th Birthday My Best Boy

Me, ME, MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!



Today is Bettina's 5th Birthday




I'll take mine rare please




Nose licking good!



It's ALL About MEEEEEEE!

 



Thanks for the marrow bone, I mean presents Mumma!



Magical Thinking

My love for you shall live forever. 

You, however, did not.  

~Lemony Snicket 

Today would have been Girly Girl’s 10^th birthday.  She’s been gone more than 2 years now and I still think about her every day.  Since she left, I have read countless stories of people who have lost their greyhounds to cancer.  Some of those people had even less time with their hounds than I had with my sweet girl.  I feel so angry and cheated about our short 3 ½ years together.  I can’t imagine what people feel like who had even less time than that. 

I confess to a certain amount of magical thinking where Girly Girl is concerned.  I often wonder just how far I might go to get her back.  I’ve thought about what I’d be prepared to give up if the end result were she came back to me.  An arm?  My house?  Blue?  Bettina?  Everything?  What if I had the option of a pet cemetery like the one in Stephen King’s novel Pet Sematary.  In that cemetery you had to bury your dead pet in the right spot and it returned to you alive.  The only problem was that it came back evil with the intent to kill you.  There is always fine print in any contract.  Knowing the result of a choice to bury her in a place like that, would I do it?  Would it be worth the eventual loss of my own life to have her back again? 

I think about having her cloned using DNA from the hair we clipped before she was cremated.  They say that you can end up with a dog that looks almost identical to the one you had.   Would it be enough to get a hound that looks exactly like her but is completely different in personality?  My cloned hound would not have a hock fracture, a hatred of snakes or a love for wild strawberries.  What if I got a hound that was similar to her in personality and mannerisms but looked nothing like her?  Would I be happy with either of those hounds? 

Lest you worry, I fully understand how insane these lines of thought are.  I know that these sorts of bargains can never be made and for very good reason.  The fine print gets you every time.  Would I be happy with a Girly Girl whose personality was completely changed from the Girly Girl I knew?  Probably not.  Would the thought of being able to fill the giant empty space in my heart tempt me to consider such an option were it actually available?  I would be a liar if I said it wouldn’t.  Would I give Blue or Bettina back if that were the only way to bring Girly Girl back home?   That’s a Sophie’s choice situation.  One big empty space might be filled, but two more spaces would be created. 

I think it’s the absolute powerlessness I feel over the course of events that led us to this point which causes me to explore these darker corners.  Once the diagnosis was given, the end result was a foregone conclusion.  We were sitting on those train tracks with no ability to get away, signal the driver or in any other way stop that train.  We ran around like crazy chickens with our heads cut off yet every time we looked up to see where the train was, we were somehow right back on the tracks and that train was so much closer. 

The truth of it all is that on any given day, I’m really not sure what I’d do if somehow presented with the option to get Girly Girl back at some great cost to me.  The thing that made Girly Girl so special was her soul and the experiences she went through that shaped her into the steel core magnolia she was.  It didn’t have to do with her mannerisms or her outer shell.    So here’s to Girly Girl’s would be 10^th birthday.  You are so very missed by your crazy Mumma.

Pleasure and Pain

Today is Bettina’s 4th birthday! When Girly Girl sent me across her path in November two years ago, she must have known on how many levels Bettina was going to help me move forward. Bettina’s birthday, coming a few days before the anniversary of GG’s passing, helps take the sting out of this time of year. Well, it doesn’t really take much of the sting out yet but I hope that one day it will and I expect that was GG’s intention as well.

Bettina is nothing like Girly Girl. I have never run into another creature quite like Miss Bettina Fussypants. She’s bossy. She’s demanding. She’s a princess. She’s all about her. She has no problem invading Blue’s or my personal space. She expects to be given everything she demands. She believes that all humans were put on this earth to rub her belly. Endlessly. She does not even try to comprehend why I don’t give her something yummy to eat every time she “requests” it.

She talks all the time. She has no patience. She’s smart like a fox. She’ll work whatever angle she can to get what she wants. She bullies Blue. She always wants to be first. She always wants to be the one calling the shots. She hates the word no and frequently pretends she doesn’t hear that word at all. She thinks her mumma should quit her job to spend all day amusing her. If mumma wants to go for a walk, she doesn’t want to go. If mumma doesn’t feel like walking, she doesn’t want to turn back.

She hates having her picture taken and refuses to cooperate with that process despite the fact she has a mumma whose avocation is photography. She believes the couch is wholly hers. She co-opts mumma’s bed and frequently her pillow. She gets a kick out of making outrageous requests for nail polish, woof clocks, purple coats and collars and cheddar cheese when we visit animal communicators. If Bettina’s awake, then everyone else should be awake.

Every toy in the house belongs to her. If it suits her, she will learn a new skill quickly. If it doesn’t suit her she’ll look at you like you have three heads (or stand at the top of the stairs and loudly protest your not agreeing to carry her down). She has a memory like an elephant except when it comes to things I don’t want her to do. She plays rough. She’s more stubborn than any mule ever thought of being. She misbehaves at Grammy’s house.

She always tries to rub her muzzle off when we go to play dates. She also tries to rub her collars and coats off. She never listens to me. She throws temper tantrums in the pet store. She shamelessly wheedles treats out of the pet store employees. She randomly pees inside (just for fun, I’m certain of it). She refuses to go outside if it’s raining. She jumps up on people when she’s really excited to see them.  She burps in mumma's face.  She kicks me randomly while we're on the couch.  There is a good reason why the rescue kennel nick-named her Crazy Mo.

There have been so many times when I have asked Girly Girl if she sent me Bettina as a comfort or a punishment. It’s been two years since my Beena-weena came to live with us. And she’s gone from a baby of 2 years old to a young adult of 4 years old. Her face and muzzle have gone from almost totally black to almost totally white. I’m sure if she could, she’d tell you that I made her go prematurely gray. I love this nutty little hound. I suspect Girly Girl knew that would be the case with the side bonus of being able to give mumma a little payback for the times I was less than perfect. Happy 4th Birthday Little Bit! And thank you my sweet Girly Girl (at least until the next time Bettina does something Bettina-like at which point I’ll be asking you Why!?! WHY did you do this to me!??!?!?).

I'm This Many....

Today is Bettina's birthday!  The big THREE.

 

Birthday girl!


 
 

Bettina with her cousins, Fox and Crandall






 




 

Ummm...what's that thing on your head?


 

A birthday pumpkin muffin








Muffins for everybody!  (Fox and Blue)

   

Muffin drunk








Seven is the New Four

On December 10th my big goofy lug Blue turned seven years old. According to accepted wisdom, for dogs of Blue’s size, seven years old is considered “senior.”

When Blue came to the house three years ago, he was the younger of my two hounds. And he acted it. He was always the one out running around like a crazy dog and being generally silly while his more dignified sister, Girly Girl, was the model of greyhound decorum. Though they were only ten months apart in age, her hock fracture and old soul made the contrast between the two of them all the greater.

Now that he has a new sister who is five years his junior, suddenly he finds himself the elder statesman of the house. A position he appears to be in no way pleased to occupy. Don’t get me wrong-he seems to like Bettina well enough and they are getting along fine. It’s just that Bettina is always moving. Always checking everything out. She frequently brims with so much energy that her 62 pound petite frame can’t contain it all. It just starts to spill out. Soon she’s squeaking. That generally leads to whining which almost always ends in some sort of barking. Usually because she’s wandered past a reflective surface and seen herself. Believing it to be another dog, one which refuses to be engaged and stares very rudely, she must put the dog in its proper place. We have a lot of reflective surfaces. She also finds things to take a sample bite of, like my book-shelves and my phone headset.

When she goes outside the first thing she must do is a series of helicopters. “I’m outside!! Yippeeee!” That is generally followed by upwards of seven circuits around the back yard. Our back yard is not small. Blue watches all this with a good measure of jealousy. He was the young one. He was the baby of the house.

When he goes outside now, he tries to prove his ongoing puppy hood by taking off running after his much younger sister, Bettina. “I’m still young!! I still got it!!” And he does have it, for about three circuits. Round about that time, he slows and Bettina pulls well ahead of him. By the fourth circuit he gives up the pretense of running fair and cuts across the yard to catch up with her. On the sixth and seventh circuits, he has stopped completely and simply waits for her to come around to where he’s standing. Then he half-heartedly charges her for a few steps and stops again. Usually by dinner time I have to give him some Arnica to relieve the old man aches and pains.

Suddenly Blue isn’t the young one anymore. He’s not the silliest, goofiest one in the house. He’s reached his seventh birthday and he’s now a senior citizen.

We celebrated his birthday with a special birthday cookie and one of his favorite meals. Mumma had a couple presents tucked away for grampy to. Though our vet has called him a “young” seven, he isn’t going softly into that good night. He is determined to keep up with Bettina. As though he would be suddenly obsolete if he settled into his dotage. My poor sweet boy. I would love to be able to tell him not to worry about it, but he wouldn’t understand me. Still, in his giant male greyhound heart, I know he fervently wants to believe that seven is the new four.

A Milestone Reached

Girly Girl has been very busy of late. She’s been learning to walk on three legs (and run on three legs, and pee while balancing on three legs, and hop up into the car with three legs, and…well, you get the idea). She’s also been visiting a lot of doctors. Surgeons, oncologists, radiologists, family vets, emergency medical personnel, orthopedists and on and on. 

She’s filled her days with chemotherapy. Adriamycin (Doxorubicin) which can be cardio-toxic and so she has also had an echocardiogram as well as blood tests with each visit and some times in between visits. The chemo causes her side effects (this happens in only 10% of dogs-oops). So Girly Girl spends much of her time between chemo visits dealing with nausea and diarrhea. She also has a pretty extensive regimen of a special high protein diet and a long list of supplements including Traditional Chinese Medicine formulas.

When she’s not doing any of these thing her mumma has been trying to get her back to some semblance of a normal life. In addition to visits to Grammy, whom Girly Girl adores, mumma has dragged Girly Girl to greyhound meet and greets where she has reconnected with all her favorite humans in our MGPS family. She also recently went on a week long business trip with mumma to Plattsburgh. This was a trip she used to make regularly “before.” She has been handling the return to regular activity like a pro.

With such a busy calendar it almost got lost in the shuffle. Daily life dealing with the “Big C” word can suck up all your time and energy. Focusing on the minutiae of serious disease has a way of excluding everything else. So much so that you lose sight of what is really important. This is why a big milestone almost got by unnoticed and under-celebrated. You see, Girly Girl turned seven years old on Monday February 15th while we were in Plattsburgh on our business trip. In December, I wasn’t sure we’d have any more birthdays together at all. Happy Birthday my sweet girl.