I took a week off work last week, and while yes, I did have some projects that needed tending to (a craft project I'd been putting off, weeding my garden, baking perfect chocolate chunk cookies to share with small children), mostly I just wanted to spend some quality time with my pooch before the craziness really starts.
Whenever I take a vacation, Rosie is a bit confused for a couple of days. Dad goes off to work but mom's still in her pajamas? Confusing but I'll take it! I realized exactly what Rosie does all day long while we're at work: sleep. Sleep deeply, like, she sleeps the sleep of the dead. We wonder how it is that Rosie has so much energy when we get home at night but man oh man if I slept that deeply for that long, I'd have a fresh pile of energy built up too. She's actually a bit boring during the day. By day 3 or 4 she'd gotten into the routine of having me there, but having me there during the day meant she slept less or more lightly, and so in the evenings she was all floppy and would crawl into the back room for some alone time. That dog can sure sleep.
I was lazy about walking her. It was kind of hot and in the middle of the day the butterflies are out in full force and that makes for a crazy Rosie. She bolts after every one, and if I'm not ready for it, she could easily pull me along with her. It's not so safe and I curse those butterflies, especially after she charged one one day at the end of May and I ended up on all fours at the side of the road, having what I was pretty sure was my first Braxton Hicks contraction. Not good. So I walked her at weird times. She didn't get walked as much but she spent much more time outside and more active time in general so I don't feel bad. Also, it's summer, so last Saturday and this past weekend we were up at the lake, where she runs free and swims all day so her exercise needs are being more than met.
Speaking of the lake, for some reason (and I'm trying to think positively on this one, and not let my brain go to its worst conclusion) we have a bit of a glass problem at our beach. As in, there is several broken bottles' worth of glass shards in the shallow water and washed up on shore. Now, where our beach is located gets all the waves from the lake, but I wouldn't expect shards of glass would travel too far in the water. I'm not sure how long these things have been there, but I'm not impressed. On Saturday afternoon I noticed poor Rosie licking the back of her paw and then saw the blood clouding the water, and saw that the carpal pad of her front left paw was sliced right open. She's lucky it wasn't sliced right off. She bled like a stuck pig, and so I rushed her up the hill (which is fun when you're 8.5 months pregnant) to the trailer, where I brought out my never-used first aid kit and attempted to stem the blood flow and administer first aid. She really didn't like that very much, preferring to lick it herself, so I just tried to keep her quiet until help (hubby) was told what had happened and came to provide back-up. We restrained her and put a bandage around her paw but she didn't like it one bit. The bandage only lasted a couple of hours, after which we were forced to remove it, and she bled all over again.
If we ever find out that someone's been partying at our land, smashing bottles on our beach, or even worse, dumping them there on purpose for some twisted reason, heads are gonna knock, I will tell you. It will not be pretty. Currently there are two adorable small children living up there for the summer and if their feet get cut, after what happened to Rosie, we're going to have to take some action, carefully raking the lake bottom or installing cameras in the trees or something. We combed it with our eyes and found the jagged broken bottom of a bottle, and about 10 decent-sized shards of different bottles, all within child-and-dog wading distance from shore. Nothing is sacred. I feel like we're constantly surrounded by assholes, no matter how peaceful the surroundings may seem. Humans suck.
Anyway, this entry was not supposed to become a treatise on how disgusting humans can be, but rather a love letter to my dog, who is presently laying low in the back room of our house. She went to the vet this morning and came back with a bunch of antibiotics (cream and pills and a shot) and a cone collar to stop her from licking, but frankly she's too tired to lick so the collar is not yet in use. I hate those things, I wish they could just bandage it up.
Pair that with the fireworks that our Austrian friends bought on Saturday and Rosie did not have a stellar day. Fireworks freak her out even if she hears them from a distance. I put her in the trailer before the show began but still, when we came back up afterward, she was laying way under the bed and panting heavily – she panted for about 2 hours before finally falling asleep. Granted, after our relatively small fireworks display the neighbors enjoyed their own, and so the booming went on for about an hour in total, poor thing.
Anyway, the moral of the story is, Rosie is the best dog ever. On Canada Day those wee Austrian kids came over for dinner and were all over Rosie. One would be tugging on her collar to come and play and the other would have her cheeks in his hands making faces at her, and all she did was give me the eyes. The "Mom make it stop" eyes. We'd taken her into Wakefield for the daytime Canada Day activities (no fireworks), so she'd already spent a few hours being freaked out by the parade (in our town, the parade starts with kids on bikes and ends with the big trucks – the garbage truck, fire truck, and a bunch of dump trucks – and they like to blow their air horns down the main drag. Not to mention that the parade also included a motley marching band, some dressed-up goats, a team of sled dogs, a bunch of horses, and other things that make Rosie crazy), the steam train at close range, meeting lots of other dogs, being petted by lots of strangers and small children, eating hamburger remnants and the bottoms of ice cream cones, and just crowds in general. By the time the kids came over she was already bagged and probably at the end of her rope, but she took it all like a pro. She slept for an entire day after that.
Next up we will see how Rosie reacts to having a newborn in the house. In my ideal scenario, she has been staying a couple of days at my brother's with her brother Tonka, and comes home before we do. She has already smelled the baby via a blanket that we somehow send home. When we arrive, we give her a brand new toy (already packed) to distract her and she ignores the baby – maybe she will be freaked out by her crying for a day or two, and curious enough to lick her, but hubby will give her loads of affection and walks and hopefully she won't experience too much disruption. After that, my hope is that she'll get a bit of maternal instinct going and start following us around, protecting the baby, sleeping near the crib, etc. I can see Rosie doing this. She has good instincts and a kind heart so I am not at all worried.
Man, I love my dog.
