The Worst Thing a Mother Can Do

I did the worst thing a mother could do: I saw something wrong with my puppy and then I, I Googled it.

If you’ve ever Googled a symptom, you know that the worst-case scenario always comes up. It’s the positively worst thing a mother, grandmother, owner or caregiver could do.

There’s a difference between dogs. Some are just dogs, some are not well behaved, then there are some who are just special in the way Old Yeller was special.

Sorry, I’ll try not to bring up any other painstakingly sad dog books for the rest of this story.

Now that I’m faced with our first health crisis, I turned to writing like any natural-born author does. We just can’t help it. It’s therapy.

Daisy has a growth on her eye, so I took her into the vet. It will be three days before I find out if it’s cancerous, though the vet only gave it a 10 percent chance of being metastatic melanoma. (The other two options were benign so we’re praying for one of those.)

Read: I’m probably overreacting.

Still, it’s made me realize just how special this dog is. I mean, she’s moved six times in four years with me. She’s been there through countless heartbreaks and successes. In a lot of ways, she saved my life.

Let me start from the beginning:

I had a bout with fibromyalgia during my freshmen year of college, weighing only 88 pounds when I went home after my first year. It was terribly hard to get out, go walking or even get out of bed long enough to get food.

During my sophomore year, things were looking up—thanks to a host of doctors who figured out what was wrong--but it was still painfully hard for a good, Church of Christ, non-drinking girl to make friends in the then-number-19 party school, Alabama.

This is one of those things like talking about your siblings where I can unfavorable things but I’ll take you to the mat if you say anything bad about it.

One day, I got the wild idea to get a dog. Now, I’ve been very blessed with family and friends who supported these wild ideas. In the past year they’ve included:

• I’m going to start a program for inner city little girls to learn ballet.
• I’m going to hand out underwear to homeless people.
• I’m going to teach children to read.
• I’m going to hang glide.
• I’m going to run a marathon.
• I’m going to foster rescue puppies.
• I’m going to learn to play tennis.

And my family supports me no matter what. That’s probably why they were so willing to go along with the dog idea. I stayed up all night looking at Petfinder--then I saw Daisy.

In my true girly-girl nature, everyone expected me to come home with a girly little shih tzu or something. I didn’t tell anyone I had already fallen in love with a former-bait dog that was narcoleptic, abused, a little dumb and, what I didn’t know then, terrified of heights.

I've always had an unbelievable soft spot for the underdog. Literally. 

The big joke in my family is that my mom prayed for me a “best friend who wouldn’t mind me sitting at home a lot.” Then my mom always says, “I should have been more specific.”

When we went to get her, my mom looked at me and said “no.” We took her home anyways. What can I say? I’m an only child who usually gets her way.

When I got back to my apartment in Tuscaloosa, I found out she was afraid of stairs. Problem: I lived on the third floor. So, for six months I carried a 48-pound boxer-bulldog mix up and down the stairs. That’s true love.

We’ve been through a lot together and I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do if it is the cancerous option. We’ll fight the disease together and do whatever the doctors think will make it better.

It was Daisy who nursed me back to health and I’ll do the same for her.

These days we, as in me, Daisy and my Chihuahua, take in foster dogs. There are a lot of different reasons to get involved with animal rescue but mine is that gratitude I feel for the woman, Rhonda, who pulled Daisy from the pound. She wasn’t overtly  adoptable. She wasn’t tiny or fuzzy. Whatever made her do it, I’m so thankful for Rhonda’s role in my life. Without her I wouldn’t have gotten Daisy, may not have overcome fibromyalgia and would have most likely dropped out of college.

Now, every time I foster a dog, I wonder if it’s going to be someone else’s Daisy.

I hope it is.