The Tale of the Dog, Part 1

What to blog about in the days between Halloween and Thanksgiving?

I don't have Christmas stuff out, not till after Thanksgiving so I won't be showing you amazing holiday decorating, and really I don't do much besides cook myself silly at Thanksgiving.

I know what you're thinking.... 'Bliss surely you have some piece of furniture that you have recently transformed, to blog about?'.

Why yes, yes I do.

But I have a couple guest posts coming up and rather than give them a post about, say.... something like dog food and glowing collars, I'm going to use the furniture for that.

 Dog food and glowing collars you say?  Umm hmm.  Meet Mo.  The ranch dog.

He started life out just like any puppy in a home with a bunch of kids.... being smothered with attention.

Till it came time to pick up his *stuff*.  Then he always belongs to Brawn.

It was in our vows, I don't do dog doo and apparently neither do most of our kids.

One year we gave #3 child a pooper scooper for his birthday.  Aren't we considerate parents?  He didn't think so.

With six kids running through the yard, a *stuff* free zone has always been very important.  Especially when the *stuff* was larger depending on the breed of dog that lived here.

Below is Capone who moved on when Mo was about 2 years old.

This is our youngest, #6, with the oldie but goodie.

How the story goes is #2 daughter, (#4 child) asked me if she could get a dog.  NOPE, go ask your dad, knowing full well he'd say no.

Well that bit of advice along with the answer given, came back to haunt one of us.  Since I love that dog almost as much as my husband you can guess which one of us regrets saying yes to daughter #2.

Brawn built Mo a dog house.

We had to trick Mo to get him in it.

His home has since been turned into a duck house when the crapping quackers were just chicks, and Mo has a prominent spot at the end of our bed.... my side of course.

But Mo isn't really my dog.  He is suppose to belong to #4.

Right about the time his predecessor moved on, Mo got really sick.  Really really sick with kidney failure.  I didn't even know dogs got things like that.

Our vet sent us to the last hope animal hospital where they gave us the grim news.... we "might" be able to save him, but it would be costly.

Mo stayed over night to re-hydrate and we collected him the next day, basically taking him home to die.  The approximate ten thousand dollars they figured it would take to "maybe" keep him alive was not in my budget, so my daughter and I cried our eyes out and took him back to our local vet the next day.

Our vet knew the outlook was bleak but she gathered some supplies to send home with us and my daughter and I listened to the instructions on how to nurse him back to health in the rare case he could make it.

We fed him a special liquid through a tube in his nose.

We hydrated him by injecting a bagged solution into him - yes with a big long needle - into the skin at the top of his neck.

I learned a lot, mostly about what I was capable of doing when I was determined.

A month passed of this routine as care giver to the hound.

He wore the cone shaped hat all that time so he didn't pull out the tiny tube that was first taped on his forehead, then super-glued to his fur so it would stay in.

He had no appetite.  All he did was sleep, he was like an old soul waiting to take his last breath.

During that month he got very comfortable as a house dog.  I was on a mission to nurse him back to health but we knew he couldn't go on forever eating through a tube in his nose.  We offered him his favorite things, but he looked depressed and had no interested in eating.

Then one evening he started to sniff the air as we grilled steaks and that night someone at the table dropped him one very tiny bite.  He sniffed it just a bit and gingerly ate it.

That gave us hope that his appetite might turn around.

And it did.

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Tune in tomorrow for part 2 of the Tale of the Dog where you will see Mo's amazing glowing collar and an electric roaster full of home made dog food that looks pretty gross.  You don't want to miss that!

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