not to be crass but december 2009 can go suck it - i have never experienced such a shit sandwich of a month as december 2009 in my life. sadly it wasn't even the type of crappy month that once you get past it you can look back and laugh - it was chock full of "only time will heal" moments. after demeter's diagnosis and the loss of astrid i couldn't shake that insipid "bad things happen in threes" idea and i really wish i was able to. the day after christmas we were enjoying some down time when murray started acting funny. he had gotten knocked over earlier and i thought he was having back pain because he was stumbling around and wouldn't sit down but then he vomited and then i looked at his eyes and 5 minutes later we were in the car heading for the emergency room. his eyes were darting from side to side and my thought was that he was having a stroke. after an interminable time in the waiting room we got to talk to the vet where finally we got the news that murray had idiopathic vertebral disease. ivd is also referred to as "old dog disease" - how the hell did we not see that one coming?* long story short it took a few weeks but murray has made a full recovery and lives on to slowly waddle through life. a few days ago dave let it slip that when we were in the er waiting room he didn't think murray would ever be coming home. i'm here to tell you that he is one lucky guy that he was wrong because, dear gravy, i would not have been able to come back from that.
so that was december 2009 and while i'm sure it meant well it sucked...bad...really bad. as you know we've since lost demeter and sadly it's time for us to try to move ahead. i hope for only joyous posts in the future but the reality is with the amount of dogs we have our chance of crud happening is exponentially larger and yet our chance of joy is also exponentially larger...so there you go.
here's a recent shot of murray...could you die???
*a proud direct copyright infrigement of denis leary "lou gehrig. died of lou gehrig's disease. how the hell do you not see that coming?" and if you aren't familiar with denis leary get to be because he's hee-larious.