A New Man In My Life

Most of you know that Chris’ work takes him out of town sometimes and I try not to complain because I’m grateful for the work that he does have and I know that there are many other wives that have to deal with their husbands being gone for much longer periods of time and under much less desirable circumstances but it doesn’t make it any easier. I miss him when he’s gone and I get lonely. So I decided I was going to find someone to keep me company. His name is Turk.

Turk was born on 6/20/10. He is an American Bulldog and Retriever mix (what they call Bully Mix). He has gray and white fur and blue eyes.

I know some of you probably fell off your seat right now or are making sure you’re reading the right blog. Me, the one who has sworn up and down I would never ever have a pet, and inside the house none the less, has gone and done it! I decided I would surprise Chris with a pet (I make myself feel better by telling myself I did it for Chris)! He has a dog in Utah named Roxie. She is an outdoor hunting dog and I’ve always joked with him telling him it’s either her or me but in all reality it would just be cruel to bring Roxie here to Vegas and stick her in a box when she is used to having the room to run and play not to mention put her in the heat that she is not used to. Roxie is an outdoor dog and isn’t trained to be indoors. I wanted the company on those lonely dark nights when my head plays games with me and I hear noises that convince me someone is breaking into the house. With our track record when it comes to robbers breaking in, getting a dog to maybe deter those ladrones (robbers in Spanish-I like the Spanish word better) from breaking in seemed like a good idea.

Chris has been working in Utah for the last few months and two weeks ago work ran out so he came home. When he got home I told him I wanted to get a dog. He reaction was "yeah right"! I told him I was serious and that I had been looking on this website (a rescue shelter) and had found a dog I wanted. I pulled up the website and showed him. He was suprised to say the least. I have secretly wanted to get a dog for a while. In the beginning I wanted to do it for Chris because he loves animals and misses Roxie but the more I thought about it the more I was opening up to the idea myself, but I was never going to admit that to anyone, especially Chris. I showed Chris these dogs on the website that were just adorable and had such a sad story. There were four of them and they had been buried alive by their owner. Neighbors had heard some whimpering and started looking around and found the four puppies buried alive. Chris and I headed to the shelter the day after he got home. (I'm sure he was thinking we better go do it before Lani changes her mind.) By the time we got to the shelter the dogs I had been looking at on the website had already been adopted. We weren't sure how the process worked so we walked up and down the hallways looking at all the dogs. There was a cute little dog at the end of one of the hallways that I thought seemed like a good pick. We didn’t know that if you wanted a dog you were supposed to take the paper off the door and take it to a worker. So we kept walking around and finally made the decision to get the dog at the end of the hallway. We made our way back to his kennel and he was gone. I was surprised at how upset I was, and I remember telling myself “for peat’s sake Lani, it’s a dog”. I left feeling a little sad.

We kept checking the website on a daily basis and after about a week one of the four puppies that I had originally wanted was back at the shelter. The blurb under his picture had stated that the family that had adopted him had another dog and when they brought him home their dog had attacked him so they brought him back to the shelter. He had only been there one day. Chris called to see if he was still there and he was. It was too late that day to go to the shelter because by the time we got there the shelter would be closed. We showed up at the shelter a half an hour before it opened the next morning so we could be first in line (it’s first come first serve, you can’t put dibs on any dog). All the while I’m thinking to myself how ridiculous I’m being about getting this dog and that I used to make fun of people that acted like this with their animals. As more people would arrive I was getting nervous and to be honest a little irritated because I was positive they were all here for ‘my dog’. I kept saying to Chris, "Oh that family looks like they are here for my dog." I'm sure Chris thought to himself  'who are you and what have you done with my wife'. Finally they said we could go back and look at the dogs. We somewhat 'jumped' in front of everyone like crazed shoppers on the day after Thanksgiving, at least that's what it felt like. Now that I think back about it I’m a little embarrassed but we did end up with the prize.

There are four different hallways filled with the dogs in their fenced off kennels. While waiting for them to open Chris and I had already gone over our plan of attack... I would take a left and Chris would take a right and we would meet in the middle. I knew what I was looking for so it didn't take long to make it down the hallway and Turk was no where to be found. I was hoping Chris had found him. I went through three of the four hallways and had no luck. Of course Turk was in the very last hallway (the first hallway for Chris) in the very last kennel. Chris was standing there with a grin on his face and the blessed paper showing that he was ours. Turk was just sitting there looking up at us with those blue eyes and he looked so sad.  Chris stood there to fend of any other crazed shopeprs and I went to find a worker. The shelter had named him Johnnie and that was the name on his paper. The worker took him out and let us hold him so we could make a final decision . He didn’t do much but just sit there. No licking my face, barking, pulling away from me, trying to run off, just sitting there calmly. The guy came back and said, “so do you want him”? We of course said yes and the guy asked us some questions about our living situation, yard, kids, other pets, etc. He took Turk up front where we filled out some paperwork, paid, and became the owers of our first dog. Turk was ours! I couldn’t believe that I had actually consented to get a dog and that it was one of the dogs that I first wanted.

We went straight to Pet Smart where we got him a bed, food, collar, toy, kennel, and got his nails clipped. The lady's that were clipping his nails were ooing and ahhing about his blue eyes. Chris being the wise guy that he is told that ladys that he was a sucker for blue eyes. They were then ooing and ahhing at Chris. We took him home and started to get everything situated. Sure enough the moment we get home he has an accident. I start thinking to myself, oh no, this is why I didn’t want a pet! I really even considered taking him back but realized that wouldn’t really be fair. Well, unfortunately the next 24 hours didn’t go well for us or Turk. He threw up almost every hour, didn’t want to eat or drink anything. He just wanted to be held, almost like a newborn baby. I called the vet around 9:00pm and explained what was going on. She said that anxiety could be causing the upset stomach, he could have eaten something that made him sick or he could have Parvo (a fatal disease that animals get). I know he didn’t eat anything other than the food that he was eating at the shelter because we fed it to him and we had been with him ever since. I thought the anxiety could be the answer but the lady made it sound like he had all the symptoms of Parvo. We opted not to take him in to the vet that night because they would have to charge us an emergency visit fee which we didn’t want to pay (that's not too horrible, is it, if it were my child I would have) so I thought we would see how the night went. There were no changes. He continued to throw up every hour. At 7:00am we took him to the animal hospital. The vet was certain it was Parvo but she wanted to do the test anyways. When the vet left the exam room to get the test I got a little teary eyed thinking that my dog was going to die, I thought to myself “you’ve gone and done it, your attached, hook line and sinker”. Well the test was done and came back negative, what a relief. The vet was just as puzzled because Turk had all the symptoms of Parvo. So they ordered blood work and x-rays. Nothing was found with the exception of a hernia which will have to be fixed in a month or two (she didn’t want to do surgery on a pup) but she said that couldn’t be causing the vomitting unless his intestine was stuck in the hernia opening, which the x-rays showed it wasn’t. So we went home with nausea meds and a significant lesser amount of money than when we had walked in.

Turk is still sick but getting better. After we submitted a fecal sample to the vet they found he has coccidia. He is eating and playing around like a pup would although he tends to be quite lazy which is fine with me. We are getting along great and I’ve fallen in love with him. He’s such a good dog. He doesn’t tear or chew things, he lets us know when he needs to go out, he doesn’t beg at the table (too much), he doesn’t bark and yap all the time, he doesn’t wander all over the house, and he loves cuddling!

My boys!