A Day Off

If you are new to this blog, please scroll down to some of the other stories first. This is not my best writing; it's been a long day.

My husband had some outpatient surgery in Nashville today. Nothing serious, but he did have general anesthesia and that's always a little worry. Fifteen years ago I was an RN working in the Operating Room and Recovery Room, so I do know that complications in minor surgeries are rare, but my head could not get through to my heart.

There wasn't time to walk all of the dogs before we left, and Bill understandably didn't feel like walking, so I had a great plan. After their breakfast, I put them all out in the yard, while I mowed the strip outside the fence, between the sidewalk and the street. It was a great plan! It took me a half and hour, and the dogs ran back and forth, took care of all their morning potty issues, and it rained while we were gone (finally) so it would have been too wet to mow tomorrow.

It's a good two and a half hour drive to Nashville, so of course we had to allow three hours. The dogs are used to being crated when we go out to dinner, or if I have to run errands, but not from eight thirty in the morning until six or later at night.

That's when you know how lucky you are to have friends who happily and without hesitation volunteer to let your dogs out for you. Not your dog or your two dogs but your nine dogs. And you thank your lucky stars when you get home with your sleepy husband who had no trouble at all. He so enjoyed modern anesthesia that he proposed to three nurses and Bob the anesthetist.

And thanks to your wonderful friends, the dogs are just fine.

I settled Bill in, and enjoyed the Excessive Greeting Disorder of nine wild dogs. They were wildly happy that we found our way home. They ate while I made Bill some soup for dinner, and then they collapsed.
I would expect them to be full of energy and play, after being cooped up way more than they're used to being. But looking back and forth between my post-anesthetized husband and my comatose dogs, it was hard to tell which of them was the one enjoying the benefits of Versed and Propofol with an IV Demerol chaser for the ride home.

I think they spent the day thinking we were lost. I think they worried that with our pathetic senses we could not find our way home. I bet they tried as hard as they could to tell our friends who let them out that their Servants might need help. That their Humans were out there somewhere without them. I think they listened for our car all day.

We will all sleep well tonight. Bill's surgery is over and he did just fine: I'll sleep well. The Humans managed to find their way home, despite having no sense of direction or smell. The dogs are sleeping like, well, dogs. Bill is still enjoying the effects of all that anesthesia. He's sleeping like a baby.

Thanks to good friends, good doctors, good nurses, and good dogs -

Life is sweet.