Sunday Afternoon

We face a busy week, the Diggie Dog and I. My husband and I are planning our schedules around the Oncologist appointment and the servicing of my car, so that should hopefully make life a bit easier. We both have work, many calls to make and several people to talk to.  Especially the dental veterinarian in Sarasota for the time frame we're dealing with since the holidays are coming up. He is going out of town then.  We have to maintain the car for obvious reasons, but more importantly we both will be there to hear the advice of this young oncologist at the veterinarian services.  It will be a good thing to hear the words of encouragement but also realistic words of advice. You have a tendency, as we all do, to only hear the words that fit into your expectations. You will hang onto any encouraging piece of information as if it's the only life line out there and forget the rest. Maybe that's a better way to cope, but when you say to yourself, did I do it all, did we make the right decisions, if you're really honest with yourself, you'll remember that some of what was negative was there all along.  Imagine listening to someone telling you about someone you don't know.  You walk away and someone else says who were you talking about and you try to remember what they said about that person. Probably out of the many things you heard, the things that got your interest were the ones you remembered.  So if the oncologist says those things we "want" to hear, we will probably only remember those words. That's ok, we have to hang onto something positive through this.  There has to be something to hold on to, hope springs eternal after all. We want hope, we want that ray of light to shine down on us and if we hear only positive things, well, that's the way it is.
 Speaking of a ray of hope, we went to this cute little shop in the ritzier part of town on Sat. and found this great girl named Jennifer, the owner of this incredible little dog food and treat store. What a ray of hope and light. I know that God directed us there because she was full of knowledge about food and diet and we happened to tell her about our dog and she said, wow, someone else had just come in with similar issues with their dog.  She showed me a brochure about a new program for cancer in pets and she said that it's made up of various veterinarian oncologists who are working on a medical treatment that has had wonderful results on dog cancers. I picked it up and will surely have another piece of the puzzle in my hands when we talk to the oncologist. If anything I'll contact the group to find out who else might be working with them on this and go to them. It's worth a try, why not? We have only one precious thing to lose and it's more time with our beloved Maltipoo and at some point I know we will try anything. He is beside me now peacefully sleeping on his special rug...turns out they love those fleece blankets the best, so we have several all over the house. If you want to find one of them, they are usually curled up in them all warm and snug.
 So while all this is going on, our little Diggie Dog Mack doesn't know the difference. Somewhere I read that we should act more like our dogs and we would learn a lesson in living. I'm pretty sure that a dog's life isn't so bad and being more like a dog might just get us through this time in our lives...they easily accept things, they don't worry about the future and they love treats and going outside and being with us...that's what we need to remember through this.