Miss Ginger

I was supposed to write about this on Mothers' Day but I must have still been all caught up in the sleep stuff? I don't know. Last year we brought the dogs home on Mothers' Day and I can't even remember now if it was the 12th or the 14th...and I'm too lazy to go look it up. All along I'd known that I was going to get Ginger a new collar for Mothers' Day this year. She came with a stripy primary colored one that was provided by the shelter and I couldn't wait to get rid of it. I spent much of the last year oogling all the collars I'd see in the store and wondering what we'd end up with. I know this sounds stupid for a friggin dog collar, but for some reason it represents more to me that just that. And I have this thing with colors; I love them and am just so attracted to certain colors, I sometimes make decisions based purely on color options. Colors have meaning to me is basically it.

We were going to go on Mothers' Day to the store to pick one out (all of us together), but others things came up and it was Sunday so the store closed early. We ended up going on Monday (which might be the actual homecoming anniversary, but I don't know that for a fact without the calendar) and as it turns out they were sold out, in Ginger's size, of the one I'd really had my eye on and had been the first choice. Mango has this greenish one with little ladybugs on it so I thought we could go to the little pet shop down the road and get a butterfly one I'd seen there before to match. That was only available in small or large as well. I really wanted to do right by Ginger but I knew how stupid it was to make such a big deal out of a collar so we just ended up with another striped one (which I think is befitting because it's just a step away from what she had before, and I think it sort of honors what she came from). It's brown, green and orange (kind of the color orange you might even refer to as 'ginger'). I think it suits her, all dignified-like. Butterflies would have just been too silly for our girl.

OK, with the boring collar story out of the way (I can't believe I am making public these obsessive, childish thoughts that run through my head) I can move on to the hip problem. Here: read this for some background on the dogs. Actually, I don't think I got into the hip there. Gosh, maybe I never wrote about all the health issues with Ginger? Well she has a bad hip and also, we found out after an x-ray last year, a bullet in her pelvis. Our vet, the one we love to death and who disappeared last month, decided that she'd leave the hip alone - it might hurt Ginger more than it would help to try to operate. Well, so here we are a year later, and it turns out that she's going to need the surgery after all. I don't know what to make of this. I don't know if we'd get a different answer from our beloved vetrinarian, or if she would agree that now is the time to operate. I'm confused and really missing the good old doctor because whatever she would have said about this, I know I could trust it.

Well, so that's where we are. Ginger limps around all the time now. Sometimes she's in pain and we give her a little $3 pill to ease the discomfort. Why is it you can buy a whole bottle of human pain reliever for that much, but it only gets you one pill in the dog world? We're going to wait til after our trip to have the surgery because even though the recovery isn't supposed to be that bad, something could go wrong and I need time to research all the factors involved anyway. We need to find someone we approve of to do the surgery. Hey, we need the money too. We'll be able to afford it one way or another, but you know, it would still be nice to send Jacob to college. We're looking at up to $2000 for the surgery (that's just the actual surgery) and, to be honest, that's way less than I thought it would be. Last year our vet tried to get grant money, but she had no luck because a lot of the Katrina money was being used for things with more of an immediacy to them, and I think so much of that was still so new. Maybe this year we'll have better luck, but boy I wish she was here on this ride with us.

So as not to end on a depressing note, here's this little nugget: Last week when we were in the 'big pet store', I saw a jumbo pack of super-absorbent puppy training pads...and it gave me pause. Are you thinking what I'm thinking??