In Sickness and In Health

When you make the commitment to share your life with an animal, it's not always good times. If you've read my blog so far, you are familiar with the behavior problems I've had to work on with Roman and Tikka. I have also had to deal with a lot of illness issues (Tikka has had heartworm, a liver toxicity, foxtail in the eye, two surgeries for mammary tumors and one surgery for another low grade cancer tumor since I adopted her almost 2 years ago). Luckily, Roman has been in relative good health...except for this week. He contracted a virus and was having explosive (I do not use that term lightly) diarrhea all Sunday night and into Monday, accompanied by some vomiting. Diarrhea turned to blood and a $280 vet bill later (thank doG I have insurance) has him on the mend.

The embarrassing story in all of this is that I brought Roman to work with me on Sunday (I didn't know he was sick, yet). Teachers have been allowed to bring their dogs in on the weekend, and Roman and Tikka love going. They are very well behaved; usually sleeping in my classroom and never out of my sight (rather, I'm never out of theirs). Unbeknown to me at the time, Roman snuck off and did a huge diarrhea on the second floor landing (must have been when I was in the hall janitor closet filling my bucket with water for the aquarium-the only time my back was turned, but he was right there when I turned back-clever boy).

At 6:30 Monday morning, a fifth grade teacher (not a dog lover) found Roman's present and called my principal (also not a dog lover), who had to call the custodian to clean it. Long story short, it got back to me and in a mortified state with my tail between my legs, I explained what must have happened to the principal.

While the whole thing is gross and disgusting, I am fortunate that the custodian is my friend and loves dogs. He was totally cool about it and understanding. I know he has cleaned up worse messes from kids but I'm still going to buy him a bottle of wine!

The moral of this story: Don't work on the weekends!