Tosca's Troubles

My dog, Tosca, enjoys a lot of activities. She loves going for walks, sniffing around in the backyard, visiting Grandma and Grandpa, hiking in the woods, sitting next to me, and eating her bedtime treats. Although she's eleven years old, she has always acted much younger; I love watching her run in the dog park as she's chased by other dogs. However, several events have occurred in the past month which would lead her to term the beginning of this summer as "troublesome" if she could talk.

The first was her yearly visit to the vet on June 16. Nothing bad, just unpleasant getting shots and having the vet poke and prod. We did find out that due to her age she needed to have a dental cleaning, so we scheduled that for the following week. Tosca was definitely glad to leave the office.

She loves playing with the year old black lab next door. Grace comes running over and the dogs chase each other through the two yards. Unfortunately, as they were running just a couple days after our vet visit, Grace rammed into Tosca and apparently bruised her shoulder. Tosca spent the next week limping and holding her front right paw up as she walked. I felt so bad for her as she hobbled along, getting up to follow me each time I moved through the house. Anyway, we made another visit to the vet where it was determined nothing was broken, we got some medicine, and postponed the dental cleaning for another week. When she was still limping five days later we went back to the vet for another, more thorough checkup and got a refill of medicine. She finally began walking on all four legs again that weekend. I have noticed that she runs a little differently now, taking a little extra care with her right side, so maybe this will be a permanent effect. And she still doesn't want to run much with other dogs. Hopefully that will get better with more time.

After our heavy rain and basement flooding I first allowed Tosca to come downstairs with me as I worked to clean things up and out. However, after I realized the old tiles could contain asbestos, I wouldn't allow her in the basement anymore. Since she wanted to be with me she couldn't understand why I suddenly made her stay upstairs. The couple times that she did sneak down I made her go back upstairs, and she slunk up with her ears down and her tail between her legs. I know she didn't understand everything, but this was just another troublesome event.

We finally had the dental cleaning last week. Since this was our fourth visit to the vet in less than a month, Tosca began shivering as we pulled into the parking lot. It was very difficult to leave her as I knew they would anesthetize her for the cleaning and, after all, she is eleven years old. Her brown eyes looked at me with fear as I left her, telling her I'd be back in a couple hours. The procedure went well, although she was a little dopey when I picked her up. Her teeth now look beautiful!



The final straw was the Fourth of July. Tosca has never been bothered by fireworks or thunderstorms before, but I think after the past month she had just had it. She actually was scared during an extremely loud thunderstorm earlier in June and the neighbor's fireworks just put her over the edge during the day. I was worried how she'd react to the multitude of fireworks that night, but only the close ones really bothered her.

I'm hoping that this is the end of Tosca's troubles this summer. I'd like to take her hiking up at Sleeping Bear Dunes later; we'll see if that works out. It's interesting to me how simply matter-of-fact she is with everything. Maybe that's because she's a dog instead of a person; I haven't seen anger or even frustration, she simply takes life as it comes - the good and the bad. And no matter how hard things got, she'd come and stay close to me, knowing that I love her and will take care of her. I guess I want to learn from her and be that way with my heavenly Father.