That Time My Dog Got Sick

Prior to 3rd year medicine, after class every day I would come home and play with Indie forever until I eventually had to study. Indie was totally cool with our arrangement until I started clerkship when all of a sudden it was no longer possible for me to skip off classes to instead chill with my dog. As the weeks went by she got more and more squirrely. I'd come home and it seemed like she was less happy than she used to be back in the days that I dutch ovened her for fun on the couch.

So the decision was made to get a second dog so that Indie could have a friend. If there is one lesson that having a puppy teaches you it's that looks are deceiving.


New dog gnawed on the table, on the stair case, on Indie's tail...and on me. And what's worse was he had the most never-ending bag of energy that no matter what you did he just COULDNT CHILL THE FUCK OUT. After a 17hr day in the hospital you can imagine how less than relaxing that was.

Not only that, but APPARENTLY puppies don't come automatically potty trained. And they are disease bags. And they hump everything. I was quickly reminded that puppies are more or less the spawn of satan. Never the less I was convinced that I am some kind of czar of dogs and therefore am totally capable of handling the hardest year of the MD program + a new puppy + a barely-trained 1yr old dog without the bat of an eyelash.

As I write this I am reminded that I wrote basically the same exact thing on here when I first got Indie.

I SHOULD GET A DOG HOW HARD COULD IT BE

I SHOULD GET A SECOND DOG HOW HARD COULD IT BE

About a week after I got Ezra, Indie fell super ill and ended up in doggy ICU (yes that's a thing).

OH GOD CAN'T HANDLE THE FEELS :( :( :( :(

 I convinced the vets that I could take care of Indie overnight, even if that meant changing her IV fluids and whatnot all night long. Whatever I had to do as long as she could sleep in bed with me so I could make sure she wasn't alone.


Turns out dogs hate having IVs in their arm and they REALLY want to have them out by any means necessary. Dogs also have legit zero memory and so then they get SUPER surprised and upset when their arm hurts after they gnaw an IV needle half out of themselves.

You know that thing Louis CK says when he's like "When I have a child I will answer ALL his questions and broaden his mind to let him grow "WHY WHY WHY "BECAUSE SOME THINGS ARE AND SOME THINGS ARE NOT"? That is my life with two dogs.

Controlling two small creatures that are 5X faster than me on my best day is close to impossible. Hoping a 11week old puppy who is a walking chew/bite/bark/pee/poop/fart/energy factory will behave long enough for me to sterilize an area, inject a 2-3min infusion into Indie every 30mins (plus clean up any profuse vomiting and diarrhea that came out of whatever orifice it wanted to) proved to be less than simple.

-J. dropped by that night Indie was home with an IV in her arm for moral support ...but not even he was immune to my stress-wrath.

Perhaps the real "straw that broke the camels back" occurred after Indie got better and I was back to having two energizer bunnies living with me. Ezra is smaller than Indie (for now) so his only real defence is "Bark forever and hopefully annoy everyone until I win whatever war I think I'm in with everybody else in this house".

Unfortunately for me, 'barking' is up there with 'the smell of diarrhea in the morning' for things I just do not want in my life. No matter what I did Ezra was just BARK BARK BARK and jumping and running away and being an all around dick. In the process of jumping on and off the couch while barking for all eternity both him and Indie knocked my laptop off the couch. I'm out in the kitchen just hoping he will STFU when out of no where I hear this huge CLANK BANG... then silence.
When I walked out into the living room and all the dogs were standing around like "shit Mom is gonna be PISSED" and the laptop is in a heap on the floor. It was a rough night.

After that event, I had a long hard think on what is my life and Ezra was banned forever from the couch.


But then... he got sleepy and everybody knows that sleepy puppies are the cuddliest puppies. So about an hour after being banned from the couch forever, the three of us took a nap where Ezra offered to be my pillow. The trio nap was so cute the owners of all 1980s Disney movies would have giardia-vomited with adorable-overload.

Anyway, long story short after all that... I'm sitting here on the couch writing this blog while sweating like a greasy pan of bacon on a family sunday breakfast cookout because all the dogs are asleep on my legs. And until they wake up... my life is totally perfect (as long as I ignore the fact that I smell like pee/sleep deprivation/am unshowered and still in pjs at 2pm because I haven't trusted the dogs alone long enough to go upstairs to get dressed).

LIKE A BOSS.