Meet the Animals: Part One

I've had a hard time writing recently, so I've decided to steal some writing prompts from here.

As most of you know, I'm an animal person. I love all of the fuzzy wuzzy little animals, great and small. Except scary birds that bite. And megamouth sharks. (Have you ever seen one of these? I think they're endangered because the only natural reaction to seeing one is "Eeeeeee! Kill it! Kill it now!")

I like cats, dogs, horses, rats, turtles, and so on. When my husband and I own a house I'd like to have chickens and bees. I'm such an animal person that I worked at a vet clinic in high school. I even roomed with three veterinarians in college (I was the token liberal arts McUseless major.)

I have two cats and two dogs. This is the story of my one of my dogs.

When we were living in Texas, Batman and I wanted to adopt a dog. We repeatedly went to the Humane Society but every time we tried to fill out paperwork on one, it was already being adopted.

We stopped one day to look at "roadside puppies"--dogs being sold by random people on the side of the road. They were mostly fighting dogs or the breeds that were popular around there, like chihuahuas. In the midst of a bunch of tough looking pit bull pups was a lone puppy that clearly didn't belong. He was the last of his litter, he was whimpering, and he was being stepped on by the other dogs.

We were worried that he was going to end up in a sack in the river if no one bought him. So of course we did. Price: $30


He shivered in our arms as we went to Petsmart to get supplies. We bathed him to get rid of the fleas and ticks, fed him, played with him. We named him "Odin" after the Norse father god of war (and I love the book American Gods!).

In less than a week, he got sick. He kept vomiting and couldn't keep anything down, not even water. The vet in our town specialized in cows and livestock and seemed totally unimpressed--as if he couldn't imagine why we were so upset about a dog. He gave us calf medicine and told us that all we could do is wait it out. Odin started to get even worse, so we drove an hour and a half to get to an all night vet clinic and found out he had parvo. Odin was put on an IV drip for two days as he rode it out. Price? Incredibly expensive. But worth it.

Odin is our co-dependent, whiny baby dog. He loves to be near people and whimpers if he can't be. Some of our nicknames for him include, "Odin Pants", "Odie", "Handsome", and "Han-term" (a messed up version of "handsome") .

He loves our other dog, Athena, deeply and truly. He loves people and being pet. He sprained his neck last year and became a bit of a chunker while he was on doggy bed rest (outside on harness only) and also because of the steriods/anti-inflammatory medicine. He split his ear defending my mother-in-law's house from a stray dog. He loves swimming. He'll play fetch with a tennis ball. He knows "sit" and "lay down". He's terrified of the electric fence. He likes to sit on people's feet. He is horrible on the leash but will walk next to you without one.

All in all, he's a Good Dog.