Breeders vs. DINKs: let's get ready to rumble!

Oh my gosh!

I was just thinking about this thread and I get back home and see all that has been covered and I'm.... amazed.

I was thinking about it today because we had a BIG meltdown.

When we woke up this morning something was very obviously wrong with the dog.

The minute the vet opened I called and they made Bird an appointment for 9:00.

Our vet is all the way across town and with rush hour traffic we had to leave at 8:15.

The vet announced that they would have to do X-Rays. This would take about an hour. Then Bird should be ready to go home.

Sooooo we went to do our grocery shopping. Lingering and goofing off to kill a full hour.

Then we went back. After waiting 30 minutes things started to go downhill in a BIG way -- we were already two and a half hours into this ordeal by this time. My groceries were melting, Mo was going maniac and I needed..... a break? ... a drink?.... a straight answer about when Bird could leave!

Finally I just had to yell "we're leaving, have Doc call me, we'll come back to get Bird".

I'm sure every pet owner in the joint applauded when we got out the door.

I was really torn. I hated to leave Bird there. She's a nervous dog and not feeling well. Poor baby.

But for my sake, Mo's sake and everyone else's sake we had to get out of there.

Which means I will spend an extra two hours, at least, on the road today.

<sigh>

Odd, isn't it, that what Mo needed and what the other people in the vet's waiting room needed was the same thing?

Boomer--

How is Bird?

Ha! You're right. I'm the only one who really needed something different!

I'm still waiting for the vet to call back. It is all really weird. She was fine up unitl about 9:00 last night when she yipped. Later on she yipped a few more times, nothing major. This morning I could tell she really felt bad and her stomach was swollen. I immediately thought "bloat" (even though she wasn't retching or gagging) and called the vet. We took her right in.

First thing, the vet noticed a heart murmur (this has never been noted at any checkup the 11 year old dog has had), then a bladder infection and something wrong with her belly - swollen and hard.

"Maybe kidney stones" is the last I've heard.

Have you ever noticed there is always someone sick on any given holiday?

It must be some kind of law. On my birthday this year it was the other dog, Bakker.

I just heard back from the vet.

Bird went on an excursion the other day when Mr. B left the garage door up. Usually my dogs won't leave the yard but apparently enough time of non-supervision got the better of Bird.

She has, it appears, filled her belly with bones and assorted other debris.

It is causing her quite some discomfort but it is not really too dangerous unless it turns into pancreatitis as she attempts to digest her rubble.

I'm glad she's on the mend and glad that I was not the person who let the dog out.

Oy.

Well, good news so far anyway.

(Remembering when Derby the Dobie (not My Dog!) ate his steel ear propperupper... and, oh, say a month later ate a whole devil's food chocolate cake. Those were swallowed; a list of unswallowed items would be very long..)

There's a form of the "debris sandwich" I've never heard of before. Get well, Bird.

I'm sure ole' garbage gut will be fine.

We don't even give our dogs table scraps. Well... okay they get hot dog pieces in the morning but that is only to disguise Bakker's meds.

Bird gets a placebo dog.

I was a DINK with dogs and cats and now I'm a pseudo-breeder with kids, dogs and cats.

(To get the thread back on track......)

I just remembered reading several years ago that the advertising for the fast food chains: MacDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's all concentrates on having A Good Time as opposed to having a gracious dining experience.

The kids see the ads and assume that all will be done for them, their way. Perhaps the parents also soak up this assumption and apply it to fast food, family restaurants, and eventually white tablecloth restaurants.

I think my niece was in Mexican (Oaxacan, Veracruzano, etc.) Thai, Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, Brazilian, Cuban, and the odd Denny's restaurants at least by four or five. She had a wonderful time and rarely caused a fuss.

I can hear that sounding obnoxious... I never had to deal with her as a constant presence for more than a week at a time, and we were all lucky to have a child around us who was so curious. When she stopped with the curiousity she tended to slump like a pillbug.

My rule of thumb for sit down restaurants at my kids' ages is no children's menu, no us. If it were just my older boy that would be different but there are two of them. They are really usually very well behaved and I've only had to leave a restaurant once because of them. I think you could probably pinpoint one age range for most of the troubles -- 18 months to 3 years. At that age, most kids are easily overwhelmed.

Well, at two, I can barely remember it. Probably as I've said, Denny's on trips with my husband, his brother, and wee daughter, plus whatever I cooked during the times their parents were hospitalized. We probably didn't get into Thai food, etc., until, say, 3 1/2. Noodles, y'know.

I may be exaggerating on age, it's hard to remember, but she was food adventurous and interested early. I distinctly remember having her help me make pizza at two. Don't remember children's menus, except I guess at Denny's.

I also have the impression that a lot more places have children's menus these days. I don't know how common it was say 10 years ago, but these days we go to Middle Eastern, Ethiopian, and Asian restaurants (among others) that have children's menus. Off the top of my head, I can't think of a single restaurant we've been to here -- including one very fancy one -- that DIDN'T have children's menus. (I keep wanting to put an "e" in that word, as in "menues" but that doesn't look right, either...)

Ummm, that ethiopan blankety bread would be good for kids...

Yep. Yay, you get to eat with your hands!

Our favorite Asian restaurant provides "training chopsticks", they're attached to each other and sort of springy, you just squeeze and release. Another big hit.

Yeah, and eating with their hands...

Most children want to be inconspicuous in public--but they depend on their parents to show them the rules.

Okay, I'm not defending "slow motion waitresses," I'm defending all waitresses-- we're rarely in slow motion, it's more often that we have 5,000 things to do at once, all for people who think they are the only ones who've asked you to do anything.

Now get your damn kid to shut up or go away.

All right, all right, I have a lot of unresolved feelings about this subject, I'll own that... (and I'm just teasing, freeduck)

But I really do find that parents so often seem to just ignore what the kids are doing, and I don't mean behaviors that are understandably difficult to stop and the parent just doesn't know what to do, like a full blown temper tantrum, or a fussy baby. I mean extremely easy-to-stop things. And yes, I'm not a parent, so maybe I don't know from easy-to-stop. But for example, yesterday I waited on a woman with a baby who had brought her own baby utensils. Well and good, but the spoon was metal and pointed like a little trowel (who designed a sharp metal spoon for a baby anyway, come to think of it? ), and the baby was literally gouging it into one of our newly refinished wood tables. So what on earth stops a parent from simply taking away the spoon?

I really do give parents a lot of slack in situations where a kid is just having a bad day and the parent can't really think of what to do. But I've had a lot of jobs that dealt with the public-- librarian, sales clerk, waitress-- and I think I've had enough experience to see when a parent is just not trying. It seems to me that it happens an awful lot.

Ooh, that ain't right. (The spoon thing.)