The First Draft

I know my last post was about Oliver, too, but what can I say? He’s my constant companion during this quarantine. You may think I adopted him at a great time. I mean, I got him potty trained and crate trained before all of this started. His coming home definitely didn’t go that smoothly though…

I signed his adoption papers on a Saturday afternoon, after suddenly deciding to go to the animal shelter. No reason, just wanted to go look at dogs, and then I had him. He couldn’t come home that day because he wasn’t neutered yet, so we left him with plans to pick him up on Tuesday. By Saturday evening, I had a fever somewhere around 102, and on Monday my fears were confirmed: I had the flu. Not gonna lie, I was a little mad since I got the flu shot and hadn’t been going anywhere? I think I must have gotten it at work, after all, that’s the only place I went that week. And flu tests… there has to be a better way. So I’ve been running a pretty high fever, and that hadn’t changed by Tuesday when I got the call that Oli could come home. I sent my boyfriend, Noah, in to collect him so I wouldn’t infect the poor, unsuspecting animal shelter workers, and we were off! They didn’t give us a cone, so we were using a blow up donut. He wasn’t super impressed, and neither were we. He could still reach his stitches, but I was home all day and literally all I had to do was watch him, so we figured we’d make it work until we could get an e-collar.

Eventually, Noah had to go home to take care of his dog. This would’ve been fine, but I live on the third floor of an apartment building without an elevator, and was not in any shape to carry a 25 pound dog up and down the stairs. It was bad, to say the least. I did it though… until Wednesday. Oliver and I were not really getting along. Mostly because he was a baby in a new place and I was a sick person who needed sleep. Would not recommend. I couldn’t leave him in the kitchen because he very quickly learned how to jump out, and I couldn’t sleep if he was running around on the carpet in my living room. I let him go up and down the stairs a couple of times, and he was doing just fine.

That evening, I noticed that one of his stitches looked like it had been torn. I’m not sure if it was from going up and down the stairs (I feel bad even thinking about it, but on the other hand, shouldn’t a six month old black lab mix be big enough to go up and down stairs? They aren’t even kind of steep), or if he got to his stitches when I was trying to rest during the day. Either way, I was panicking and we were going to PetSmart to see if they could help. It was too late to go to their vet office, but they pointed me to an emergency vet and off we went! Luckily he does well in the car. We got there, signed in, and went into a room. Noah met us there (he knew I was panicking) and Oliver was really excited to see him. I think he was a little nervous to be in a new place, he had taken to sitting under my chair. They checked him out and not only had he torn the top stitch, he appeared to have come with kennel cough. They assured me he was fine, and that vets use multiple layers of stitches just for situations like this, and then they took him back to staple him up. Evidently he didn’t even cry. He just laid there like a champ. I got an e-collar andantibiotics for the kennel cough, and Noah was nice enough to take him home in his car so I could have a minute to calm down.

During all of this, I was still running a high enough fever that I couldn’t go to work. As a matter of fact, my fever didn’t break for good until sometime Saturday night. I think that might be where some of his separation anxiety comes from. I suspect he had a home before he was dumped with two other puppies his age, because he knew the dog bed was for him as soon as he got home, and he knows how to drink out of plastic water bottles. Between me constantly being home that first week and his probably being abandoned by a previous owner, I really can’t blame him for being anxious when I went back to work.

He got out the first two days, even though his crate was closed and he was barricaded into the kitchen. The first day all he did was lay in my bed, surrounded by my pillows. Noah went to check on him in the middle of the day and found a little pillow nest on the bed, covered in black fur. He didn’t find any accidents though, so I was a proud dog mom that day. The same cannot be said for Tuesday. I closed all the doors before I left, and Noah checked his crate to make sure it was closed completely (he didn’t believe the little dude opened the door). Since all of the doors were closed, he didn’t have anywhere to go. He ate my (luckily natural) flu medicine and peed on the couch that day. I was worried about the medicine, and pissed that he peed on the couch. I had just gotten it right before New Year’s Eve, and this was before January had even ended. It was definitly a breakdown moment.

Luckily for both of us, Noah came over that night and took care of Oliver and I. I eventually stopped crying, and he cleaned the couch cushion the next day. Now you can’t even tell it happened, Oliver has learned not to pee in the apartment, and I haven’t been sick since I had the flu. It’s safe to say that things have gotten better since that first week. He’s definitely proven himself to be a good boy, even if it was rough at the beginning. And now he’s my cute not-so-little quarantine buddy! I’ve gotten used to him being around, so it just feels like he’s always been here with me. It’s easy to forget how far we’ve come.