A couple months ago, my dog started to limp. And no, that is not a euphemism for some kind of sexual dysfunction. I mean it literally. I have a German Shepard named Sky, and she started to hobble on her left front foot.
When we noticed her limping, my wife and I took Sky to the veterinarian to have her foot examined. Unfortunately, as soon as the vet saw my dog, she started saying things like, “Wow, I’ve read about this before, but I’ve never actually seen it,” and “I’m going to have to call my friend at UC Davis to figure out how to treat it.”
I felt like I was talking to a car a mechanic running up the price of the repairs. “I don’t know what you did to this car, but it’s going to take a while to fix it. And I don’t have the right parts in the shop, so I’ll have to special order them.”
Long story short: I knew this was going to be expensive. Sky has a congenital defect that caused calcium deposits to form in the pad of her foot, and it was going to be about $1000 to open up her foot and remove them.
The vet gave us an estimate on the surgery, then sent us home to discuss it. At home, I suggested to my wife that it would much cheaper to simply shoot Sky and go find a new puppy that looked exactly like her. Bullets are cheap, and I had a couple extras lying around in the closet. We could even name the new dog Sky to make the transition more seamless.
My wife didn’t talk to me again for three days.
When the subject of Sky’s surgery came up again a week later, I advised my wife that maybe amputation would be a better way to go. I have a brand new circular saw in the garage that I am dying to try out, and I have seen several three-legged dogs that seem perfectly happy hopping around with a missing appendage. I think my wife took this suggestion a little better than my first one, because I only got the silent treatment for two days this time.
Finally, reluctantly, rather than going on vacation, buying a really nice new television set, or paying the monthly mortgage on the house, we decided to take Sky in for surgery.
The surgery went well (for a thousand bucks, I should hope so), and we brought her home with a brand-new plastic cone around her head, and a bright pink bandage on her foot. The bandage was pink because Sky is a girl and the veterinarian is, apparently, a bit of a sexist. She just assumed that a girl dog wanted a pink wrap regardless of the dog’s actual preferences. Maybe Sky wanted a blue bandage, but we will never know because the doctor didn’t ask.
Also, dogs can’t talk.
When Sky got home, she promptly began to bang her plastic cone into every damn thing in the house. My wife said she was crashing into things because she couldn’t see where she was going. I, however, think she was doing it on purpose. I know if I had a plastic cone around my neck, I might throw a bit of a tantrum and break some stuff. Especially if someone had wrapped my foot in a ridiculous pink bandage.
Sky isn’t supposed to move around too much until her stitches come out in a few days. Too much activity might cause her to tear out some of the stitches and cause the injury to bleed. This means that she is stuck indoors most of the time, and when she goes outside she must be kept on a leash so she doesn’t try to run on her bad foot. She doesn’t seem to enjoy this very much. Sky spends her day lying on her doggy bed in the living room glaring at me because her foot hurts, she’s bored, and she blames me for all her problems. And I glare back at her because she’s the reason I’m completely broke.
My wife is upset because her dog is injured and her husband is acting like a child. Basically, everyone is unhappy. In fact, the only one in the entire house that seems to be enjoying this situation is the cat.
She had better not gloat too much, though.
I’m still looking for an excuse to try out the circular saw.
Steve is so jealous that your wife didn’t talk to you for three days! Now he is wondering what he can do to get the same results from me!