This month has been an odd one. First off, it has been really, really hot here. Mommy and I don't have air conditioning so it gets really, really hot in the house. Normally we would spend time out in the backyard under the trees, but the mosquitoes are so bad this year we can't be out for more than a couple seconds before we are swarmed. Mommy uses deep woods bug spray on herself, but it doesn't help her at all. These skeeters also come for your eyes and fly up your nose and in your ears. They are very very bad bugs. So we are spending time on our porch with the fan on. Mommy does go out and do yard work, but I stay on the porch unless I have to go potty or Mommy is taking me swimming. On one of our walks a stranger pulled up in a truck and asked Mommy if she wanted some boxes of cookies for me. Mommy said, "No thanks." and suggested he bring them to the local shelter. She then told me that you should never take cookies from strangers in trucks.
I gave Mommy a big scare this month. Mommy came home from work one night and I was very sore. My back hurt A LOT I whined and paced and drooled. Mommy gave me a pain pill but I still whined and paced until midnight. Then I slept for two hours and woke Mommy up to tell her I still hurt. She gave me another pain pill and I slept for two more hours and then I woke Mommy up. I didn't want her to touch me, but I wanted her to help me. When the vet's office opened Mommy called her and told her what I was doing. The vet said it sounded like my back and that I should go to the chiropractor, but she would give me some muscle relaxers if I couldn't get an appointment right away. I couldn't so Mommy went and got me the pills. They helped a bit, but not a whole lot. We got to the chiropractor and she said she couldn't find anything really wrong with my back so she got worried that I had a tumor on my spleen. I guess they can grow really quickly and if it starts bleeding it could cause me to act like I was acting. She told me to go back to my regular vet and get x-rayed ASAP. My regular vet saw me right away and took me into the back room for blood tests and an x-ray. I got really scared when they put me on the x-ray table, but my vet pet me and asked me to lie down, and when I realized that all they wanted me to do was lie still on my side I decided that wasn't so bad and I cooperated. Well, after all that the x-rays came back fine. No tumors. When the blood tests came back they were fine too. So we were back to it only being my back. I was on a no walking, no swimming, no climbing, no running routine for a week and high doses of pain killers and muscle relaxers, but after about a week I felt fine again. The vet thinks that because I broke my back last year, I now have a bad back and I threw it out. She said she knows how that is because she once threw her back out reaching for a cup of coffee.
Even though my back still hurt a bit we did get to go to see the fireworks. We went to our usual spot with the usual old timers, but then right before the fireworks started a whole bunch of new people showed up and crowded around us. It ends up that the neighboring communities weren't doing fireworks this year so they decided to come see ours, and when they saw us all set up in the feed store parking lot they figured it was a good spot.
Mommy acted weird this month too. It was another really hot day after my back was better and Mommy took me swimming. Then we came home and she took a shower, made a ponytail out of her wet, uncombed hair and put on her really hot day clothes (oversize wife beater and boxer shorts). You can imagine how she looks in this outfit. Luckily when she puts those clothes on I know we are not going out anymore. So I curled up on my kitchen bed while Mommy washed dishes. There was this CRACK! noise and Mommy started saying bad words. Then she grabbed some paper towels and went into the bathroom. After she fiddled around in there she went and got her go outside clothes and changed holding the paper towel, which now smelled really yummy. Then she opened up the garage and I thought we'd go for a car ride because, after all, she hadn't combed her hair out so where could she be going? So I ran out onto the porch, but she got mad and said I needed to come in NOW!! I did because she was using her "or else" voice. She didn't come back until after midnight and she had a yummy smelling hunk of cloth wrapped around her thumb. I wanted to take it off and chew it, but she told me no. She said she got 5 stitches in her thumb. I remember getting stitches when I got fixed. They itched and I had to wear a cone to keep from chewing on them. The people vet didn't give Mommy a cone, but I think they should have because on the second night Mommy took all her bandages off in the middle of the night while she was asleep and she made her stitches bleed. Back to the people vet she went, but they still didn't give her a cone. She has left the stitches alone since then and they should come out on Saturday if she continues to not chew on them.
Finally this month, Mommy and I went to Auntie Naomi and Uncle Fred's house in Wisconsin for a three day trip. We had a good time even though it rained on day two, and Mommy couldn't get her hand wet and I got an ear infection. Auntie Naomi and Uncle Fred drove Mommy and me around to see some sights when it was raining and they took me to a special beach which was all sand and nicely sloped. Everyone thought I'd have a good time swimming and Mommy was prepared to let me do so with her keeping her hand dry, but because of my ear infection I was grumpy and didn't want to swim. Everyone seemed rather disappointed with me, but when you have an ear infection, swimming doesn't look fun. The next day, after Mommy cleaned out my ear, I felt much better so Mommy took me to the rocky beach for me to swim before we left to go home. Auntie Naomi and Uncle Fred came with and they watched from the road while Mommy and I slogged through 30 feet of thick mud and cattails to get to the water. I ran around on the rocks and looked for fish and had a great time. The humans seemed bemused.
