Puppy Cones

My poor puppy is wearing a plastic cone. The cone of shame. I tried to take her photo to share with you here, but she looked at me with such sorrow and disappointment – as I was trying to capture her disgrace for public display, and I couldn’t do it. I put the camera away. She needs the cone for a full 7 days, at the very least, following emergency eye surgery which she needed after my other dog ripped her cornea off during a period of intense puppy play. The vet stitched her eyeball shut and sent her on her way with this opaque Elizabethan collar, which extends way beyond her nose, in the hopes that she won’t be able to scuff her eyeball across the carpet and rip up his handiwork. The first night, I had to feed the poor baby kibbles out of my hand because...

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Do you know your totem?

My husband is recovering from ankle surgery, and, as both a competitive athlete and a business owner, it’s excruciating for him to sit still. Meanwhile, our dog, who accompanies him on his 10 mile daily training excursions, is bored to death. My 3-mile jogs just aren’t doing it for him. Early in his recovery, we are standing at the back door, and I am trying to say something that will make him go and elevate his leg and not go to work or do any of the other things he wants to do. While we are talking, our Labrador keeps scratching on the back door. It’s not a full-scale plea; it’s just a rhythmic reminder of his restlessness: scratch, pause, scratch, scratch, pause. So my husband says something that makes me think: he says that sometimes he...

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