Drug house!

Boscoe is in the kitchen right now, drinking water. He is constantly thirsty. The vet confirmed yesterday that he has a very bad and persistent urinary tract infection, which is apparently fairly common in diabetic animals; we're lucky that in his two and a half years of being diabetic this hasn't happened sooner.

It makes him very thirsty, and the result is, of course, peeing. So I have been sleeping on the hall floor downstairs with him in order to let him out when he needs to go. Last night it was 11:30 p.m. and about 4 a.m. So neighbors, if you see lights on in our house at odd hours, worry not! It's just an old dog doing his business.

He has so many meds now that we are charting like mad.

In the picture, you can see them: tramadol for pain, because of his bum leg; two different antibiotics (one of them is huge and green and I wonder how long he'll agree to take it); Metacam for his leg, and insulin. The coffee--that's my drug. And the pill pockets are invaluable. They're flexible and dark brown, sort of like brownies made of vegetable and meat. So far, he loves them but I know that could change on a dime. I hide the pills inside and pop them in his mouth.

Relief on the food front came from an unexpected source: Riley, who suddenly refused his breakfast on Saturday and then delicately puked on the carpet. (Always the carpet, never the floor.) So I had to make up a slurry of rice and ground turkey for him to eat for a few days, and discovered, by chance, the magic answer in getting Boscoe to eat his food: He loves the slurry. I've been mixing a few tablespoons into his diabetic kibble, and he wolfs it down like the old days.

Meanwhile, I don't want you to think that our life is all sleeping on the floor and scrubbing up pee, with all our disposable income going to pet medications; far from it. We've been having a lot of fun. I was featured in an article about book reviewing on Huffington Post.

On Super Bowl Sunday we went downtown to look at the Winter Carnival ice sculptures (and saw F. Scott Fitzgerald in a knitted cap). That evening, we went snowshoeing on the lake. The whole world was inside watching the Packers, and we had the entire park to ourselves.

The night before, Doug took me out to dinner at the busy little Italian place in our neighborhood, to celebrate that my book is up for an award. So you see? Life is good. The border collie is eating again, he's taking his pills, his brother has quit puking, and all's right with the world. I think that's from a poem by Robert Browning.