We went to Ilse’s on the 4th and grilled hamburgers. (grass fed beef is delicious) Sadie and Rosie hung out for the first time, and got along pretty well, until they didn’t. Sadie laid out a pee matrix in Ilse’s yard, so she would never be more than a foot from her own urine, and Rosie followed her around, checking her work. It was all going pretty well until The Lovely Wife tried to take Sadie’s harness off. This covered her head, made her feel vulnerable, and when Rosie came up to sniff her butt she freaked. What followed was 30 seconds of escalating dog war, and Sadie got bit on the face and leg. (To Rosie’s credit, she is a much bigger dog, and totally held back. She could have done some real damage, and didn’t.) Sadie seemed fine, but after a few minutes she started stumbling and her front legs would collapse under her when she tried to walk. We immediately scooped her up and took her to the Emergency Animal Hospital, where, an hour and $90 later, we found out she probably just had a huge surge of adrenaline that made her wobbly as it dissipated. Not a broken leg, or a broken back, or any of the terrible things we were afraid of. Which was great, except by that time my huge surge of adrenaline had worn off, and I was feeling kind of wobbly. So we went home, had a bit of medicinal whiskey, and went to bed.
Now that I am no longer freaked out about my dog’s health, this is what occurred to me as I wrote the paragraph above. I spent $10 on 2 pounds of ground, grass-fed beef and $10 on a six-pack of beer (well, 6 Hoegaarden and a single Sisyphus). We probably spent another $20 on various items too paltry to mention. When my dog appeared to be injured, we didn’t hesitate to drop another $90. We spent a total of $130 in one day on non-essentials (sorry, Sadie) without even thinking about it, and we are not wealthy people. We are solidly middle class.
This doesn’t exactly make me proud to be an American (I can’t really be proud about spending more on my dogs than half the world can spend on their kids), but it does make me extremely grateful for everything I have, and for the country that I was lucky enough to be born into.
Happy 4th of July.