It Ain't Easy Bein' P.

This is my best friend.

The trouble with her is (as is the trouble with so many women’s best friends) she is a hot mess.

In the six years that Piper Penelope has been on Earth, she has been proving to us that she is the worst dog ever. 

For starters, she is the bossiest and most demanding dog on Earth.  Seriously.  If she was a person, no one would like her.  She woofs at us whenever she thinks we should be feeding her (which is all the time), and she does not take no for an answer.  She has no respect for people’s personal space AT ALL.  She will force her way onto a lap, or under the covers of our bed, or wherever else she thinks a pug belongs (like under the Boppy pillow while you nurse a baby) – usually uninvited, not that she cares. LOL

She has some kind of dog eating disorder, I think.  She will eat anything.  ANYTHING.

She nearly died when she was 16 weeks old because she ate two boxes of rat poison. We didn’t know that she had gotten into anything until it was almost too late, and she was on the brink of death.  We were really lucky, and our last ditch effort to save her (huge doses of vitamin K and an emergency blood transfusion from my mom’s chocolate lab, Lottie, who happens to be my lab, Sawyer Brown's, mother) worked and she lived to eat many more things she wasn’t supposed to.

She loves to get in the trash, and once ate an entire carcass of a rotisserie chicken, bones and all, not a scrap of it left.  She has eaten a million diapers (I know, so gross) and even knows how to empty a Diaper Genie.  WTH?  What other 18 pound dog can drag a full (30 pound) Diaper Genie into the next room and empty it?  Aren’t those supposed to be impenetrable to dogs?

 I can’t tell you how many times we have come home to find that she has been on the dining room table and emptied my purse, to eat some  mints or a pack of gum – and thousands or Chap Sticks and lip balms have been eaten.  Her favorite – Burt’s Bees.  It is like peppermint flavored crack to Piper.

She has stolen and (consumed in their entirety) steaks and apples and boxes of uncooked macaroni and cheese from the grocery bags.  She is so fast at this, it happens in the blink of an eye.  And I can’t even begin to tell you what she has stolen off of unattended plates or from the hand of a kid whose guard was down. 

She once ate a 1 pound bag of cocoa mix – in my car.  Talk about a MESS.  There was cocoa EVERYWHERE – and she made sure to lick it so that it became a gross brown paste on the upholstery.   Lovely.

When I was 38 weeks pregnant with Hayden, she ate an entire package of Golden Oreos, which she pilfered off of the kitchen counter during some crazy covert operation which involved jumping from furniture to furniture and pulling a giant cardboard box on the floor and  opening the sealed package of cookies before she could gorge herself.  The results of this were a late night, weekend, emergency trip to the vet and an overnight stay for acute pancreatitis from eating too much.  Oh, Piper, why that didn’t send me into labor, I will never know.

Through all of this, I maintain an undying love for this dog.  Hot mess or not, she is my baby.  I have a socially unacceptable love for a socially unacceptable dog.  She drives Garrett crazy, and I defend her every action and try to remind him how cute this face is.

How can you stay mad at that?  She is  just so cute and sweet and pathetic.  I just love her.

Aside from just having bad behavior and bad eating habits, about a year ago, my girl started having seizures.  This is truly heart breaking.  There is nothing worse than watching your best friend/first baby having a seizure and being able to do nothing about it but be there, comforting her and keeping her safe until she comes back to you.  Well, nothing worse except maybe the knowledge that sometimes it happens when no one is here to be with her. :(

When we came back from Rome, Piper was acting really weird and not like herself.  So yet another emergency, weekend trip  to the vet was made (Of the one million times that Piper has been to the vet, only one or two have not been an afterhours visit – read: twice as much money owed to said vet… oh, Piper. LOL) and we assumed that she hurt herself during a seizure and she got a shot of muscle relaxer, an antibiotic, and some anti-inflammatory for us to take home. 

*cha-ching* That will be $300, please.

Well, she got better, but had two relapses of this mystery ailment in the last month, so I started to get concerned again.  The more I watched her, the less I belived it was her back or neck or something having to do with her body.  Part od what made me second guess the injured back was that she was still able to get up on the table or into the trash to eat things she wasn’t supposed to the second I stepped foot into the garage.  Again, oh, Piper.

Well, I took her back to the vet yesterday and he did some blood tests.  Her full blood/chem panel came back totally normal – no infection, poison, liver or kidney issues.  In fact, other than the Seizures, she is as healthy as a puppy.  We are waiting on the results of her phenobarbital levels – we think that maybe her meds need upped.  The too low levels are making her have more seizures, and they must be happening in a part of her brain that affects balance or gives her head aches.  Poor little thing.  I hope it all gets figured out soon, with no more trips to the vet.

Yesterday cost us another $204.  That means that we have spent more than $500 on Piper in the last month.  LOL Honestly, this feels like nothing – if we were to add up all of the costs we have incurred at the vet’s office over the last six years of having Piper in our family, it would be enough to make you sick.  We try not to think about it.

We try to look on the bright side.  As I type, she is cuddled up next to me, snoring her sweet little puggy snore, happy as can be. She is always here to snuggle, she is like a hilarious little clown, and Hayden loves her beyond words – she is a huge part of this family.  We chose to bring Piper into this family - badness, seizures, insatiable appetite, vet bills and all.  Some people may have given her away or taken her to a shelter or the pound by now.  But that is not how we work around here – we don’t just discard family members when they are not what we thought they were going to be.  We made a commitment to Piper – we committed to loving her and taking care of her for her whole life, no matter how many times she nearly ends that life with her antics.

And the way I see it, as I look at the smooshed little face resting on my baby bump, I am the one who is getting the sweet end of the deal.