When daughter number two was in elementary school (well, they both were at the time), she used to find excuses to bring me to the school frequently, sometimes as often as once a week. I don't know whether she was disappointed that I wasn't one of those frequent classroom volunteer kinds of mommy, whether she was jealous over other kids whose moms were at the school with them, whether she really did get "sick" that often, whether she didn't want the lunches that were packed for her that she left on the counter, or whether she just missed me and wanted to make sure I was still out there and thinking about her too. Honestly, I think it might have been that last one more than anything. Every time she called home, or the school secretary did, it felt a lot like Piglet calling out to Pooh, and when Pooh answered, "Yes, Piglet?" the answer was, "Just checking." She knew I loved her unconditionally, but it always felt to me like she needed a booster shot, to see whether I'd keep taking care of her no matter what.
Murray chose a major holiday to give us that exact sort of test. The man was out in the back yard, painting some little hinge parts for his Jeep project, and he noticed that Murray was working on an injury in his mouth. The Pack had been given natural bones earlier in the afternoon, so it is possible that he bit too hard on one. Or it is also possible that he thought it would be awesome to gnaw on some of the thick steel Jeep parts when his daddy wasn't watching. It's unlikely, but not out of the question, that Elsa has claimed her second dental take-down. (We hadn't had her a month before she head-butted me and rammed my teeth together, chipping three of them.) By prying open his mouth, the man found that he had knocked one of his molars nearly clean out of his mouth. But it wasn't completely out--if he had done that, we might have just packed him with gauze and taken him to his regular vet tomorrow for cleanup. Instead, we got to find the emergency vet about seven miles from here, where it was a hundred bucks merely to walk through the door. To be anaesthetized, have the tooth extracted, the wound stitched, and sent home with pills, that was $540. But what were we going to do? Tell the child that we didn't love him enough to take care of him? Not an option.
Now we are physically and emotionally (and financially) drained. The boy went to bed as soon as we got him home from the vet. The man followed less than an hour later. Now I'm throwing in the towel. There will be a puppy howling in the pre-dawn light, and we need our rest ahead of that. I have pictures, but I promise, I will bury the picture of his bloody jaw at the end, in case you aren't ready for that.
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