Puppy in Book Seven: Reconstruction 2020

Nala started this week with a limp and that limp seems to be getting worse but only towards the end of the day. Otherwise, she seems typically capable of her daily life. But for her deep lack of eating. However, last night she began vomiting. She has a vet appointment tomorrow and I am trying to limit her adventures out of my eyesight (so that she doesn’t eat something that might increase a chance of vomit.)

From a First Time Dog Owner perspective, this is clearly a medical issue that requires sincere attention.
But I have been involved in Dogs for most of my life (7 dogs and counting). The owner-based checks on dog injury and illness provide zero results. No yelping at touch, no whimpering while walking, no lack of zoomies at expected times. Furthermore, it is obvious that Nala’s life has been subjected to significant upheaval. Mamma is gone, Daddy is home… but Daddy doesn’t play with me like he used to and Daddy spends hours in the basement on a computer. Pay me attention!!

Thus… half of me is concerned that there MIGHT be something wrong and half of me is concerned that this is just a willful dog who is going through some emotional or mental difficulties. Of course… the half of me that is concerned that there might be something wrong is worried that even if there IS something wrong, it might not be caught.

It’s me of course… so nothing happens in the now factually that does not also connect emotionally with some past item. You see, for most of my life everything wrong with me was chalked up to emotional or mental and not physical. The fact that I cried incessantly instead of sleeping was a cry for attention. The fact that from 2 to 3 years of age, I did not grow at all concerned my folks enough to hospitalize me but as the hospital could find nothing wrong, it was deemed that I was somehow being willful or seeking attention. In later years, when I would explain pain in my testicles preventing me from sleeping, they would think it a ploy to stay awake. Until they had to rush me to the hospital, mere hours away from both of my testicles dying. When I would tell them in later years that I could not sleep and struggled for many nights to sleep due to pain, they would consider it a psychological issue and take me to “the shrink that sees Angel’s and prays vigorously.” Ultimately, it came to light that I had a physical condition that created chronic pain and often prevents people from reaching a form of restorative sleep. So, ultimately, I hold within me a history of the ones charged with my medical care being individuals that DID care but always suspected my issues were not physical but were somehow contrived by my emotional needs or mental peculiarities. Trying to get attention, wanting to stay up, being willful. And these are words I have already used for Nala. Not strictly as a “this is how I was raised” but also from a genuine and sincere partial belief that perhaps Nala IS simply seeking attention. And I struggle with that.