pokeyed puppy

Staring at the tiny white hairs that comprise tiny chumley's ever expanding milk moustache, I can't help but feel our time left together here on Earth with Baxter is already short enough.  If we are lucky, if things are as I hope them to be,  we will celebrate at least another ten Christmases together, another ten birthdays, another ten but hopefully more years of yippee skippee squirrel chasing, hole digging, poopie snake making eventually just snooze all day happy go lucky joy.   Ten years that in my mind have never felt so short.  So I hate it when things happen now that detract from our ability to enjoy one another's company.  But maybe it is because we have over enjoyed each other's company already that we find ourselves at this point, where for the second time in his life, Baxter's neck pain has flared up.

Although Baxter's symptoms are much less significant than his friends who have suffered from IVDD bouts recently, I have spent more than a few sleepless nights worrying and researching about what to do, and if or when to do it.  Talking with vets and friends and crawling through dodgerslist and the rest of the internet, hoping that there would be an instant cure for the intermittent yips-if-he-moves-the-wrong-way cervical pain that ails my little tiny boyfriend. Wishing that everything didn't have its risks.  Wishing that he could be made of the bouncy rubber that he thinks he's made of, rather than the fragile glass that I've been treating him as lately.

But I've come to realize and mostly accept that at this stage in the game, and with the help of anti inflammatories, pain meds and cage rest, it is really the passage of time that will hopefully help my little kielbasa.  The very time that I already feel I no longer have in abundance.  But, no matter where this might take us, I know I will take what I can get from my time with Baxter here on this planet. Whether we spend it together frolicking in the sun, or lying quietly side by side, separated by the walls of an ex-pen, this time, our time no matter how it is spent, will always be mine to treasure.

Three weeks in the pokey, my little friend.  And I will be with you all the way. :)