I adore my little dog Yogi Berra. I got him the summer after I was injured and my life was thrown into chaos. He was my cheerful little recovery partner. And he’s been the giddy little gremlin who gets me out of bed when the depression or PTSD is winning.
Sometimes when I walk him I feel like I’m just his escort. I’m just there to keep the law off him. The people feel more compelled to interact with him than with me. He is the one making everyone laugh and smile. He’s 27 lbs. of concentrated sunshine. He’s what happens when you take the best things about being alive and compact them into a small amount of space.
So it was a punch in the gut when he played too hard at daycare and slipped a disc in his back, and it pinched his spine, and he couldn’t walk. The goofy little bastard, I constantly complain about, but I wouldn’t ever change, suddenly cried in pain if I touched him. He dragged his legs and couldn’t pee without help. His regular vet couldn’t see him for five days so I ended up taking him to the emergency vet. Where they played mind games with us, gaslit me, made light of my emotional turmoil, and as a closing act made me feel like a monster because I wanted to wait before doing a $10,000 surgery. The other option was medication and six weeks of crate rest, and my gut said that could work. And THANK GOD, it has. We’re halfway through his six weeks and although he demonstrably needs to keep resting, his spirit has returned. and he’s got cabin fever. It’s hard to keep him still. The experience has taught me Five things:
1) Despite being a grumpy hermit by nature, I’m capable of loving another living thing so much that I will manually express his bladder three times a day. When I try to think of a person that I would squeeze like a lemon until all the pee comes out, I can come up with three people… maybe. But I hardly hesitated for Yogi.
2) I don’t have enough veterinary insurance. My policy has a maximum benefit of $5,500. But I keep seeing GoFundMe fundraisers in the $10-12,000 area,
3) It is possible to miss someone that is two feet away. The first two weeks that Yogi was recovering, his spark was gone. It was like I was living with a different dog. And I missed him so much. It was hard to wake up without his kisses. I would go to offer him a French fry only to realize he was too glum to eat it.
4) Don’t Google, Unless I want to freak out. I needed information. But although information is power, it is also poison. And I filled my head with the worst possilble outcomes and didn’t want to sleep, because I convinced myself it was only my constant vigilance that was going to make Yogi walk again.
5) Call it instinct, call it a gut feeling, call it witchy, but I am rarely wrong when I listen and trust myself. I won’t pretend coming up with the money for that surgery would’ve been easy. But the surgery didn’t feel right. The vet suggesting it didn’t know Yogi, I just knew that he would get better if I gave him love, care, and time. And he has…And I’m probably going to baby him going forward. No more letting him live his life like he is equal parts stuntman, ninja, and wolf. He’s just a little dog, And I love him so much.