How much is that doggy in the window?

Some days, I notice it more than others. Those are the days when I see somebody out walking his dog or when I a photo of one comes across on the computer screen saver. I miss having a dog in the house. And I want another one, but the blatant reality of why now isn't a good time soon becomes clear and I go on with my day to day routine until I collide with some other image canine-related and the cycle starts all over again.

Really, though, we could have a dog. It's just that G doesn't want to take the necessary steps to keep the dog safe in our yard. We can make excuses, like that the kids are too small and we are too busy and we don't have the time or proper resources to again become a dog family. But excuses come and go and there will always be one and then before you know it, the kids are grown, we're both working full-time and what would be the point to go out and get a puppy?

Here's another reason why now is as great a time as any: we are beyond the babyhood years in our house which means no pacifiers, a.k.a. 'bopbops'. So, no change that an overly excited dog would risk swallowing a bopbop and then require surgery to have it removed.

It can happen, you know. It happened to us, in fact. We lost our beloved dog, Mousse, just days before Thanksgiving in 2002. And like many other people do, rather than allow ourselves to mourn his loss, we rushed out to get another dog in the Labrador family. Same sex, same color. Bear, our chocolate Lab joined our home just before Christmas that year.

Fast forward a year. A crazy one, at that. Bear was everything Mousse wasn't. Attempts to have him trained were exhausting and proved futile. No matter what we did, Bear's presence and energy exceeded our home and abilities. But we pushed on, hoping that age would eventually calm him.

One day in early December, Bear started to get sick. It was obvious something was wrong and eventually, his illness prompted a visit to the vet. We suspected he had swallowed something, but had no idea what it could have been, as he was known to gobble anything within sight and at the time, there was always a lot of small baby toys around the house. The vet confirmed there was definitely something in his intestine, and x-rays showed a mass to verify this finding. We could wait and hope that IV fluids would flush the object out, or they could go in and remove the object surgically.

When your pet is like a member of your family, many times the cost is not an issue and you would do anything to make everything right. But when for the past year your pet has caused you nothing but grief, it is very difficult to make such a huge financial decision. Still, I love animals and could not justify letting Bear die because we didn't intervene when we should have and I couldn't have his blood on my hands. The guilt would be too great.

G ultimately let me make the decision, and so I gave the vet my approval to do the surgery. At the very least, I was dying to know what on earth that dog had eaten that his body was not able to digest or pass! When I talked to the vet after his surgery, I asked what they had found. "It was the top to a baby bottle," the vet told me. "It's a good thing we got it out, because there is no way he would have passed it on his own."

The top to a baby bottle. And I knew instantly what it was. It wasn't a bottle nipple, but one of Joey's precious bopbops. We never missed it because he had several and they were always getting lost and found.

Bear made a full recovery and returned home. The vet was $1500 richer. Bear was as full of energy as ever. By the time Christmas came around, we were more or less miserable and poor Bear was in his dog crate more than not, which wasn't fair to him, but safe from ingesting anything he wasn't supposed to.

I opened a box from G that morning, completely unaware of what it was. When I ever saw that bopbop in the box, I nearly cried. I think at that moment, my resentment towards Bear dissipated and I was genuinely relieved he was still alive.


In February, we wound up giving him away to a family that had older kids and a very large yard where he could run and play and get rid of all his doggy energy.

We don't have bopbops anymore in the house. So why can't we get another puppy?