Frustrating day, not much to say
We had steak for dinner last night. Lucky loved steak. When I ate upstairs by myself--we tend to fix the food and then wander off separately to watch TV or do whatever--he'd run up with me and whimper, and I'd pull off a very few small, lean pieces of meat for him. And then I would say "CHEW IT," and he would make very deliberate chomping motions, rather than swallowing it whole. I'm not sure he actually chewed it any more thoroughly, but somehow I had trained him (through repeated demonstrations on my part) to believe that moving his mouth a lot would result in more steak. He was a very, very smart dog.
A different vet, whose name I can't even begin to spell, was on duty when George brought Lucky in, so the primary vet, the one who usually treated Lucky, called my mom to find out what happened. Somewhat to our surprise, even he was shocked. Mom says that he had her go through the entire story all over again--I kind of wish she'd had him to talk to me, because I was the one who was there; not that she got the details wrong, but the story was getting progressively he-said-that-she-said-that-he-said. And the primary vet, the one who owns the practice, was really sweet and said that Lucky had been a good dog--he must see our dogs at least once a month, if only for their skin problems and much-needed baths, so he knows them pretty well. In fact, he had just seen Lucky two weekends before to give him a steroid shot for his itching, and he's baffled as to what happened. Not like it's a mystery to medical science or anything; he says it probably was a clot or, to add a new theory to the pile, possibly a heart anomaly. But it's just one of those things that, no matter how many years you've practiced, apparently, and no matter how many times you've seen it before, you never see it coming.
In other news, my sister has finally consented to let Lucky be cremated. She was kind of trying to avoid the entire issue altogether, even though cremation was pretty much the only option that made any sense. So now it's a fait accompli.
I cried for a couple of minutes Friday morning, but the weekend has been tear-free. It's not that I want to bottle it up or anything, but I did a lot of crying the night it happened and a good bit more the next day, and I can't stop thinking about him as it is. I'm just hoping that if I can ease into some kind of acceptance and not cry, I'll have a shot at functioning in some normal fashion, constantly distracted or not.
I can't believe it's only been four days. It feels like it's been weeks already.
The ending to the "three missing kids" story is so terrible that I'm not even going to link to it. You want to know, go to cnn.com. Seriously. It's awful.
Something I want to ask y'all, although I suspect it's more of a rhetorical question at the end of the day: there are things I can't get into because they're family business, and not even my business at that, so it's not really my laundry to air. So that's why I'm being vague about this. But, that said: why are so many women so psychotic about their grown sons dating? Why? My poor sister has run into so many utterly psychotic women with such death grips on their sons. I mean, I understand a lot of the psychology behind it, but at the end of the day: you can't marry him yourself. LET HIM GO, WOMAN.
