Things were looking great. After great strides had been made, late last night, Ethel and I entered into a solemn and binding ceasefire agreement. Which ceasefire dictated that I would continue to pry open her mouth and continue to administer the pills if she would CEASE the FIRING of resistance long enough to swallow the pills.

Last night’s dose? Surprisingly … well, it was kind of simple. “Simple,” if you’ll understand that “simple” is kind of like piercing a triceratops’s right horn with a lovely and delicate cubic zirconium bauble, while “difficult” is kind of piercing his middle horn (big) with a silver-plated cork-sized earplug. There are advantages, though slight, to the “simple” side of things, and for those advantages, my dog-tooth worn fingers sweetly thank the universe.

So this morning, it was easier to get out of bed when the time came to medicate the puppy named Ethel. I took her out, first, to avoid bladder infringement. We came inside and I washed my hands and prepared the pills on the bathroom counter. I called to Ethel when I realized she was tossing about a toy I was pretty sure I hadn’t seen listed on the FAA/TSA (that’s super Ashley) list of approved carry-on toys. In fact, that toy bore an eerie resemblance to something one might find outside on the ground and something one might conceal in one’s mouth until one believes the coast to be clear. The kind of “something” that seems to look a lot like goose poop on a stick.

There’s no room for goose poop on a stick on the apartment floor. Let’s be honest here—there’s not room for much on the floor, but definitely not goose poop on a stick. Which, apparently, Ethel knows to be a legally binding and also very gross contracted no-fly item. But you know what else is a no-fly item, ironically? And one that I guess we’d never addressed? And let me turn on the light real quick before I just reach down, all willy-nilly like, to remove the item from your dog-like grip upon it. And what? What is that? I mean it, Ethel. Tell me RIGHT NOW THAT IS NOT A FOOT. TELL ME OR YOU ARE SO NOT GETTING ICE CREAM FOR DINNER.

Yeah. I guess I’d never addressed the prohibited nature of the issue of Bringing a Dead Bird Inside.

A Dead Bird. Inside.

With wings. And feet. And feathers. Like a bird.

FEET, Y’ALL..

SO I DID THE ONLY REASONABLE THING AND I WENT COMPLETELY APE. LIKE A FREAKING GORILLA. AND I SCREAMED THINGS LIKE, “ETHEL IN YOUR BED RIGHT NOW I SWEAR IN YOUR BED NOW BED NOW BED NOW BED NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW.”

And if you’re wondering what will get your dog or maybe also your children to listen to you when you tell them to go to bed? Yeah, just bottle whatever it is that spewed forth from my mouth and mist that in their direction—because it seemed to have been effective.

Did I mention I may have gone APE? And maybe also hyperventilated? BECAUSE THERE WAS A DEAD BIRD ON MY FLOOR AND OH MY HELL, ETHEL, I DIDN’T THINK THE PILLS WERE REALLY THAT BAD, YOU JERK.

I hate birds. I really do. Some people are afraid of dogs or storms or peanuts (wimps). I am honest-to-goodness terrified of birds. What with their pecking and their flapping and their general unpredictability, the avian group of living organisms are generally far too arbitrary in their peck-flappiness for my obsessive-compulsive need to CONTROL MY SURROUNDINGS. BY MAKING SURE THERE IS NEVER A BIRD ON MY FLOOR.

Please understand. I really am that freaked out by birds.

Also? Not too thrilled about visions of “West” and “Nile” and “Virus” dancing through my head. Internet access is spotty in my apartment (because it is stol—free), and especially doesn’t work when I want it to. So there was no Interneting to allay my WNV fears and questions about how likely it might be that the H5N1 Avian Flu may bypass entering the US by way of a port city or other coastal area and just hop its way over to a small bird in my neighborhood. And that, along with most everything including the obviously quite dead bird suddenly sprouting life and PECKING OUT MY EYES, seems quite possible when—did I mention?—there is a BIRD on my FLOOR.

No one wants a triceratops with a green horn walking around all pissed off and stuff because of a piercing job shoddily done. And no one wants to be responsible for that. And I already had the delicate and lovely bauble in place. And when that bird was lying there this morning on the floor? I felt like the delicate bauble of dog-related peace was gone.

I called a lot of people. I may have text messaged my entire contacts list and also the CDC. I had a brief moment of lucidity when I realized that a call to the emergency veterinary may be in order. And while it was comforting, yes, to hear from Shanna that the only concern is that of worms, and that’s an outside chance even if the dog had consumed the bird, THAT REALLY DOESN’T HELP AT ALL BECAUSE THE BIRD IS STILL ON MY FLOOR.

On the flooooooooooooooooor. Being a biiiiiiiiiiiiird. And having wiiiiiiiiings. And leeeegs.

Shanna suggested that while my dog would be ok, I didn’t exactly seem like I ought to go long without intense psychiatric involvement.

Ha! Crazy? Me? No. Just terrified that THE BIRD WOULD COME BACK TO LIFE AND PECK ME TO DEATH. AND ALSO BE GIANT AND BIRDY.

I knew I’d have to do something. My hands were shaking. I am not even kidding you. And I am not even kidding you when I also tell you I then took an empty soup can from the trash can and I scooped up its birdy, rigor mortised little pecky body into a soup can. And because I was going to bust a CDC cap in its little birdy ass if something happened to the dog especially AFTER ALL THAT CRAP WITH THE PILLS, if I came home to a dead dog or one with wings, I left the canned dead bird in the hallway on a ledge. INSIDE MY APARTMENT. And I went to work.

My “friend” called this afternoon to ask how the whole “bird thing” turned out and thought she was being “funny” when she laughed and said, “Wouldn’t it be GREAT if you went home and the bird weren’t in the can?”

I told her, quite seriously, that No, that would not be “great,” and at that moment, I would be faced with no other choice but to simply retrieve my dog and set fire to the house.

So the triceratops had to go home from work and dispose of a dead bird in a soup can. And the triceratops was pissed.

Or something.

Here’s the deal. This is going to be a whole lotta words about a dog. A dog named Ethel. And yeah, while I guess you could call it “boring,” I shall choose to refer to it as, “RIVETING,” and, “PULITZER-WORTHY.”

Pitiful.

After a harrowing and throw-uppy weekend, Ethel made a turn for the better just about the time I wanted to go to sleep last night. After spending the entire weekend catering to her Every Single Need, cleaning up after her, and taking out a seventeenth mortgage on my non-existent home, she thanked me wholeheartedly by wanting to play at precisely the moment I gave out from exhaustion. Don’t get me wrong—I am extremely grateful that she’s feeling better. I’m extremely grateful to have this silly animal to cry over more times than I will ever admit. I am extremely grateful she is mine.

The timing just sucks is all.

Druggy.

On Saturday morning during our emergency vet visit, the short, bald, and extremely hilarious doctor in novelty scrubs and Crocs prescribed a week’s worth of tablet forms of Amoxicillin and Metronidazole, along with a probiotic gel to eradicate the yeast infection in her gut that resulted from the “massive” bacterial infection in her gut. Guts all around! Gutariffic! Guttastic!

Doodlebug in bed.

Even with all the wimping around and the puniness and the general drugged-outedness around the apartment this weekend, my 11-month-old puppy has taken the medicating-the-dog thing to an all-new level. We’ve been through this before, though only with one pill for three days and some mighty delicious Pepto Bismol to chase it. The medicating-the-dog thing? Not so much working out these days.

I learned early on in our relationship that my dog is very much afraid of allowing her teeth to come into contact with human flesh. I am not sure what brought about this phobia—and by the other ways she acts and especially around teenaged boys, I have a feeling a teenaged boy with not-so-kind intentions was involved in this matter—but it’s been a kind of nice outcome of what seems to have been a not-so-nice start in life. We can play rough but as soon as she gets a taste of my hand or leg, she takes herself out of the game until I utter a magical “ok” to start the fun again. I thought, Hey, this will be nice and useful and fun and to my advantage in administering the pills.

Ha. The first dose was traumatic. They’d drugged her up something awful at the vet and she had no idea what was happening when I tried to shove a pill-filled meatball down her throat. Well, ok, to her credit, I did first offer it to her peacefully and meticulously wrapped as a little antibiotic gift from Nutro. She wonkedly sampled the fare and upon discovering the secreted tablet, as a princess on a stack of mattresses, she looked at me, disbelieving, sprouted English, and exclaimed, “Woman, look! A pill! Who would play such a nasty trick on the both of us? I am so glad I found it before we both were fooled!”

So I resorted to shoving, and I think she got half of each pill and most of the squirt of probiotic, simply out of confusion for what it was I hoped to accomplish by filling her mouth with bitter, medicated filth. She passed out on my lap for a good three hours and I had to tell her three times to go to bed—not because she was disobedient, but because in her haze, she simply forgot what it was I wanted her to do along the winding, five-foot path from my bed to hers. And then she threw up. Again. Twice.

If you want sympathy and you know it, roll your eyes.

Then came Sunday morning. She was far more lucid and far better at refusing to have enter her mouth any form of anything ever, including otherwise deliciously bland “intestinal distress” food and Pedialyted-up-the-wazoo water. I think somewhere along the seventh time she’d thrown up in a twelve-hour window, it was decided that nourishment might be involved and she denied it entrance to her system.

I’d gone out late on Saturday to procure some peanut butter, since the Internet said it would work. Which is funny. Because she isn’t mean about it—in factm she’s downright sweet about the fact that she simply refuses to partake of the medication. Because she has taken up a strict policy of civil disobedience and Hello Internet, meet my dog, GHANDI.

As you might have been able to deduce, the peanut butter didn’t work. Ok, fine, it worked the first time in that she choked enough that either she swallowed the pill or propelled it across the room and in a few weeks when I am packing up all my things to FINALLY MOVE, I will find a shriveled-up Amoxicillin surrounded by ants who ventured to its peanut-buttery goodness and died because apparently, taking a pill is THAT BAD. That’s what Ethel says, and she wants all the ants to know it.

You’ve got a little crumb there, sport.

Monday morning brought the return of food—in fact, ravenous eating of food and slurping of Pedialyted water and a general improvement in attitude. And among the fabulous new traits accompanying the new found energy was the renewed fervency and great desire to make Mama go mad with the NO PILLS, PLEASE. I stopped by Walgreen’s for a medicine dropper (I’m thinking that with all my prescriptions and the jumper cables and the recent drug paraphernalia related to medicating my dog, that we’re in for a Christmas card this year) in hopes that one or both of the pills would dissolve into a paste I could shoot into her mouth. For good measure and in case that didn’t work, I also went to PetCo for a pill shooter

Tuesday afternoon at work, I found myself dreading the medication mayhem that was sure to ensue that evening. I called the veterinarian’s office and My dog LAUGHS in the general direction of your CHEESE and your HOTDOGS and your PEANUT BUTTER and your LITTLE TINY MEATBALLS MADE FROM VERY OTHERWISE-DELICIOUS AND -APPEALING WET FOOD, you silly little man!

“Actually, we’ve gone that enticing and disgustingly messy route and until today she’d refused to eat because of it and all the vomiting FROM NOT GETTING HER MEDICINE, so if you have any other suggestions, I wouldn’t mind hearing them.”

“Oh, I didn’t know you’d tried all that. I know, I’ll leave this device called a ‘pill pusher’ at the desk for you to pick up.”

Haaaaaaaaaaa.

So yeah. Besides helping me to feel more like an idiot for my inability to successfully choke my dog—”You know, we have to get her the medicine or we won’t get better,” and I guess the royal “we” was warranted, because you’re right, “we” won’t get better until she gets the meds because “we” are thinking seriously about investing in a dog straight jacket and also some sweet, sweet wine for mama.

Tuesday night, this morning, and this evening, I went the traditional route, which involves wearing down her will to refuse until she doesn’t even know anymore if she has the pill in her mouth or not, and she looks at me and says, “Here’s the thing. I think I may have swallowed it after all. You go about your, ‘GOOD GIRL SUCH A GOOD GIRL WHO’S MAMA’S GOOD GIRL YOU’RE MAMA’S GOOD GOOD GIRL,’ business and I’ll act like I wanted the pill the entire time.”