Interesting beginning to the New Year.....

Hope you all survived your New Year's eve celebrations. We lived it up and celebrated with New York at 10 our time cuz SM had to be at work at 5:30am this morning. We did however toast in the new year with sparkling cider, silly hats, noisemakers and those little bottle shaped pop thingies that have a cap in them and make a mess everywhere.

Then this morning, when I finally drug myself out of bed at 8am, GK came in and told me that her Mom had gone to get us breakfast. Yeah, I can get up pretty quickly when I don't have to cook. GK also told me that Odin (my chubacabra grand dog, who we rescued from Espanola, NM 6 years ago) had had another one of his seizures.

Odin has mild seizure about twice a month. He acts like Don Knotts in The Ghost and Mr. Chicken about 80% of the time. He is a mess. He is so obsessive/compulsive and nervous that he won't step on certain 18" tiles in my great room. He skips some of them and slips and then looks all wide eyed and well..............Odin. Crazy dog. But he has always been that way. When the pound in Espanola got him, he had mange, he was malnourished, was icky beyound belief and my lovely and kind hearted child fell in love with him from a picture of the little waif creature on the internet (Pet Finder). So we drove up and plucked him from the pound. This smelly, tiny, shaking bundle slept in my arms as we brought him home cleaned him up and hoped for the best. Needless to say his immune system as well as his physiology was compromised by his rough beginnings. So when I say we are used to his odd behavior it is because we love him so very much.

Last year this time when my beautiful Willow (St. Bernard) began having her seizures, Odin was our first line of knowing. He would alert us to her before she even started her terrible ordeals. And when we had no choice but to put her out of her misery, he really missed his big, little sister.

And when Shelley got back home with breakfast, Odin had what I would say was a life altering attack. Not like Willows shaking, jerking, drooling and going to another reality, he was lucid the entire time and in pain. It was as though he was having a giant "charlie horse" cramp over his entire body. It continued for almost an hour even after we used valium on him. So off to the emergency vet he was taken.

Shelley and I talked our options for him over and prepared ourselves and the children for what might have to happen. It was one helluva morning, waiting, worrying and waiting some more. But you know during that time GK and I (after she stopped crying, which was a lengthy process) discussed the positives (blessings) of the situation: her Mom had today off of work and was home to take care of him and I could stay with them, he lived longer than any of us hoped he might have, he was the best dog in the world, she could always say he was her protector dog and that when we cross over the rainbow bridge he would be there waiting for us with Willow and the other furry children we have loved. All of this in preparation of the worst because that's what we grown ups thought.

The vet could find nothing wrong with him. Nothing showed up in the blood work that would indicate a reason for the seizure. So against their advice (because they wanted to keep him for observation, we (all four of us) went to get Odin who had not had another seizure all day. While at the vets office we saw life played out in some very bizarre ways. Pets getting into prescription meds, a little dog having difficulty birthing her pups, cat taking out her own stitches, a puppy chewing part of it's foot off along with the bandages, and a couple who brought in their 16 year old dog to put her to sleep. Not exactly what I had planned to do today but taking the high road. I was an observer today. Except for the lady who was putting down her dog. While her husband had to take care of their dog, I had to go up and give her a hug and tell her I knew how she felt and then hold her while she cried. Afterwards, she seemed to have more strength to do what she had to do.

We are going to take this day by day. But I must say that the blessing of today for me was the watching the fabulous job of mothering my daughter did by being so tender, taking time to explain, being honest with and honoring her children by letting them express themselves in a time of real stress, inspite of her own feelings of worry. It was a time of love, respect and truth shared. I am so very proud of the 3 of them. I am a wreck. But my pride in them served as my support today and I am seeing this not as a terrible beginning to 2011 but rather a really special day shared by 3 generations.

Odin is resting comfortably on Shelley's bed with the 3 of them, as they go about the night's snuggle time.

Good night friends.