Dog days

If one dog year equals seven human years, as they say, Kadi and I will be the same age next week when she turns nine. Both of us are past our prime, a little worse for the wear, but still feeling pretty good.

Lately I've been kind of worried about Kadi because she's been drinking excessively and waking me up in the middle of the night to go outside. That's all behavior that started within the last three weeks or so. On two occasions, she didn't even bother to wake me up (maybe she was offended by my profanity when she woke me the previous night) and just quietly peed in the hallway. Considering Kadi's strong sense of propriety, she must have been in desperate straits to do that.

Otherwise, she's seemed perfectly normal, but I took her to the vet this morning just to be sure. It's the first time she's been in the car since I got a new one last August, so she was ready to ride. In the old car, she'd have a barking fit everytime I used the turn signal. This one's quieter and didn't seem to bother her. Other than having to tell her repeatedly to stay in the backseat, our ride into Baton Rouge was fine.

At the vet's office, Kadi ran ahead of me on her leash as if she were going someplace really great and couldn't wait to get there. Apparently, she only likes the lobby, because she started balking when we headed down the hall to the exam room. We had to wait in there for ten or fifteen minutes, during which she quivered and panted and tried unsuccessfully to climb onto my lap. She did find someplace to climb to, though, and the vet laughed when he came in and saw her big yellow body sitting tall in the straight chair next to mine. No cold floor for my girl.

Fortunately, we got good news: no sign of diabetes, which was my main concern. The vet thinks the likely problem is a urinary tract infection. He told me that an animal's instinct, when it feels discomfort "down there," is to drink a lot of water to try to flush it out. Unfortunately, if bacteria are present, the flushing doesn't always do the trick. He put her on antibiotics and said we should see a difference within the next three or four days. If that doesn't work, we'll do blood tests to check for kidney problems. I'm feeling optimistic at this point.

While we were at the vet's office, my younger daughter and her husband came over and cut my grass. They and my older daughter take care of that job for me, and I can't begin to tell you how grateful I am. Heat gets to me in a very short time (one of the many things I have in common with my sister), and fresh-cut grass, although it's one of my all-time favorite fragrances, activates my allergies big-time.

By the time Kadi and I got home, the lawn looked beautiful and there was a brand-new doggy pool in the backyard. We waited until the grass settled down and the temperature dropped a few degrees, then filled the pool for the pupsters. Kadi likes to run as fast as she can from across the yard and jump into the pool with a big splash, and the doggy-smile didn't leave her face for the whole half-hour or more we let them play.

Not an exciting day by anyone's standards, but a nice one nevertheless.