Apologies for lack of blog writing lately. A phase, maybe? Or I've just run out of words.

Yesterday we had an "incident" that has resulted in me being a bundle of nerves. I wrote down a few notes about the incident and emailed them to myself, so I am inserting those notes here for memorialization here.

Everything was fine yesterday until around 4 p.m. This is normally Belle's dinnertime.

Up til 4 pm all normal appearing.

4 pm. usual dinner time. She seemed a tiny bit disoriented and was nudging a large cookie bone on the floor, as if trying to tell me something, so I got her dinner but she was a little unsteady on her feet and was wobbly. She ate her whole supper right down, no problem.

After that, she got more wobbly and unsteady. I thought she was having a stroke. Her legs would not let her sit/lie down normally... she kept getting up and walking around, but was almost dizzy (vertigo?) and even would almost fall a few times. This went on for 45 mins.

I called The Landing in Marblehead, near where Paul sells his lobsters on Saturday and Sundays, and left a message with an employee to go out and ask Paul to come home now. He got here about 5:30.

Neighbors came over to look at Belle. She was excited to have "visitors" and Paul here finally, and she seemed more normal then.

The more they watched her... the more she didn't do any of what she'd done here with me!

She went out and peed.

Finally, when everyone went home, Paul took her for a walk down the street and back (their usual) and she pooped. Since she's been here, back home from the walk, she seems ok... but now after we've eaten, she is on the sofa lying on her right side and is doing some low-level moaning... like she does sometimes anyway... so I'm not worrying about this especially.

We are waiting to see what happens. No doctors available for the whole weekend. That figures!

Hope she will be ok.

That's a summary. During the process of this, I was freaking out. I had no idea why this was happening to her. I fed her right away and she ate her whole supper normally. I thought maybe she had low blood sugar (?) so the food might help that. But from 4 until Paul got home about 5:30, she was a zombie here. She would try to sit down or lie down but had loads of trouble getting her legs to do it properly. It's hard to explain it. She also was staggering sometimes like a drunk. Her ears don't seem dirty or infected looking. She just had them cleaned out when she had her dental work at the vet's.

I was in a violent body-shaking mode myself. I am not cool under pressure or in emergency situations. Paul is, but I am not.

We waited for what seemed like hours, but when Paul got here I tried explaining it but, of course, she was not doing it for him! She was so glad to see him that she seemed more normal. Paul went over and spoke to Peggy and then over and spoke with Bob and Katie and pretty soon they all showed up over here to inspect Belle. Bob and Katie said they would go to Woburn, the ONLY place we could have taken her, as our vet was unavailable for the weekend.

That place in Woburn is where I had to take Whitby back in 2007 and where she died the next day. I swore I would never go back there, ever! Just the thought of taking Belle there was throwing me into panic mode.

After about a half hour of her visiting all the neighbors up close and personal, and not across a long yard and thru a fence, she seemed a lot more normal and happy.

We finally decided to see what happens overnight.

This morning I got up early (it's not even 7 a.m. yet!) and Belle seems like her normal self. She is napping over on the sofa next to me now. She did not show signs of the dizziness at all.

What in the heck was all this?

I am hoping it's a one-off thing. Like what happened to Emmalee once when she suddenly could not walk in the middle of the night, and we took her into Woburn then and they never found anything wrong with her. And that never happened again either. Weird.

I am really not happy about the vet's practice of going away for the whole weekend with no one there on call and us having to go long distances with a sick dog. The only other option was Boston. Neither of us has driven into Boston in 30 years... it's all different now, too. No way.



So that's that. I am shaking now just talking about it.

All for now. Cheers,

Bex & Co.

I think I could turn and live with animals...
They are so placid and self-contained,
I stand and look at them sometimes half the day long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied... not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth.

~ [Walt Whitman, from "Leaves of Grass, No. 32"] ~

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