More Trouble for Trouble

Last week I was so caught up in my road trip stories that I left out one major thing we had going on. We got a new dog. You read it right, and I know it's crazy, but sure enough we have another one. Roommate was home sick one day last week, and in the middle of the day she sent me a text saying that we got a new puppy. One of her friends is a State Trooper. One of his trooper friends is one of "those" animal people and he found this little puppy while he was out on patrol. He rescued it and took it to the vet. His wife threatened to divorce him if he ever brought home another stray so he call Trooper to see if he knew anyone who would take the dog. Trooper said, "I know just the sucker." So now we have Ethel (as in Lucy and Ethel).

Trouble hates Ethel. For that matter, I'm finding it hard to bond with her too. It's because she's not fully house-trained yet, and I don't have the patience for that. Yuck. This morning I heard a rumble before I got out of bed. When I was putting on my coffee, I saw that Trouble was limping around and not putting his back right foot on the ground for anything. I sent Roommate a text and said that I thought Ethel had done something to his leg. (Oh yeah, we discovered that Trouble is in fact a boy.) She replied back and said that Step-daughter shut him up in the front door on their way to school. It was so pitiful that we decided I should go ahead and take him to the vet. The vet definitely felt a fracture, but was going to have to do an x-ray to determine if it needed a splint or not. Also, he had to be treated for flees and get his shots, both of which we already had planned. The vet asked if I wanted to have him neutered, and I reluctantly agreed. It was going to have be done anyways, and I figured that as long as he was there and already having a bad day, we might as well get it over with. There was no sense in putting him through two bad days.

The nurse told me she thought we should change his name because "Trouble" might be some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. She's probably right, but the name is not changing. I have such a soft spot for that furry little creature. Even as flea-covered as he was, I was still just cuddling and petting him because he was so pitiful. I have to go pick him up this afternoon, and I can only imagine how sad and pain-ridden he's going to be. By the way, today is exactly three months to the day since the choking episode that sent us on our first visit to the vet. He weighed a mere 14 ounces that day, and today he weighed 4 pounds and 12 ounces.