My Best Friend…is funny again!

It’s been close to a year since my best friend had surgery on her neck. She is walking much better but I have to support her with a “homemade” sling when she poops and pees. Her balance is pretty good for her age and condition but she still needs some help. She has lost a lot of weight, from about ten pounds to about seven pounds. Her spondylosis has not gotten much worse, and we have had many other health battles to deal with since her surgery. She had a severe vomiting reaction to the antibiotics and pain killers from her surgery, a urinary tract infection (e-coli) that took over six weeks to cure, kidney stones that we hope will stay in her kidneys, a blood test that showed her BUNs were really high indicating kidney weakness so we have to get her hydrated every ten days, surgery on her corneal dystrophy and now an indolent ulcer on her left eye. There are probably a few other medical problems that I have forgotten about in the last ten months. Thank goodness I have “pet medical insurance”. Pica will be seventeen years old in September. I will be sixty-five in October. She is way older than I am. She is even older than my husband who will be eighty-one next week. I think she is doing remarkably well. She gets me up each night between midnight and 4AM. I try to go back to sleep but can’t. It’s maddening that she sleeps most of the day except when she has to poop or pee or when I have to give her medicine and I have to go through the day bleary eyed unless I can take a nap and try to make up for sleep lost. Before her medical saga began she slept through the night, had a healthy appetite, loved to chew on her toys, and would play “dodge the human”. Of course the injury to her vertebrae changed everything. We were watching a film we made of her playing "tug the rope" with us when we lived in California. She was growling and barking and jumping around. It was a far cry from the frail “little old lady” she is now. But tonight, after such a long time of being sick, she seems to have gotten back some of her former “funny” ways. She came into the living room where we were watching TV, sat down and just looked at us while tilting her head from side to side. When she couldn’t get our attention she slowly walked halfway down the hall, turned around and barked. When we still didn’t respond she continued a few feet further, turned around and barked again. Before she was sick, this was her signal to us that it was time to go to bed. She would choose the time, usually around 10PM, and we would obey. So tonight it was like old times, following the orders of our seven pound Chihuahua (even though it was 9PM and our favorite series “Suits” was on the TV, and it was a little too early for us to go to sleep). These many months that she has been recovering have been difficult. But tonight’s return to Pica, “The Chihuahua Formerly Known as Boogie Boogie Choo Choo”, was such a special reward. I will get up with her at any hour she needs me to get up and take her out to poop and pee. I will hold an umbrella over her when it rains. I will shine a flashlight for her to see where she is going. I will gladly give up a few hours of sleep to have her with me a little longer. I can’t wait till she walks down the hall tomorrow night and barks her orders again that it is time for us to come to bed!