My dog — aka my bestie, my security guard, my food rescue service, my hot water bottle, my exercise motivation, my many things — grew a lump on her neck.
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I feared the worst, but after the vets sampled it, they told me there was no cause for concern.
“Monitor it, but we’ll take another look at her next check-up.”
It grew to more than double the size at her next check-up, and therefore, needed to be lopped off.
The lump wasn’t a problem in the way you might think; it was more so a case of getting rid of it while it was still accessible and a relatively simple procedure, or wait for further growth to make it more complicated as it encroached into spaces that might involve more dangerous territory to navigate with a scalpel.
Now, this dog is tough when it comes to cats.
She’s tough (or at least thinks she is) when it comes to other dogs.
She’s tough when it comes to doorbells ringing without her permission.
She’s tough when she hears a bump in the night or sees the Coles delivery driver placing paper bags in the carport, even if there’s goodies for her inside of them.
But, she sleeps inside, curled up on a beanbag, wearing a jumper machine-knitted with teddy bear motifs and a blanket over the top of her.
The portrait is the polar opposite of how her ancestors, the wolves, got through winter, as they traipsed through the freezing snow in the darkness of night in search of scarce food to fill their hungry tummies.
And, when she visits the vets, she darts around the room like an overstimulated Scrat from Ice Age, hiding behind me as she tangles us both up in her lead, backing underneath chairs lower than she is tall, and basically just evading any vet or vet nurse who tries to get near her, all the while breathing quickly and snorting about it here and there.
Not so tough.
She exemplifies anxiety in those moments, and leaving her there for the day for her procedure triggered my own.
Would she be okay? Would the vets and vet nurses be okay, or would she try to bite them out of fear? Would she forgive me when I returned? Would she think I’d abandoned her for good? Would she cope with the pain?
Less than two hours after I’d walked out the door feeling like I’d been catapulted right back to those kinder gates in the tears that I’d held until I turned my back on the hysterical child the teacher had to pry from my arms, the vet called to tell me the surgery had been a success.
Phew.
When I went to pick her up, she was happy.
She wiggled her butt, she wagged her tail, she cut figure eights around my legs, tangling us both up again.
The vet reported that my girl had not been happy with the pug in hospital next to her, who was breathing too heavily for her apparent liking.
She spent the afternoon in recovery “hardcore side-eyeing it”, she amusingly described it as.
Yep, sounds like her usual self.
On the way to the car, she sniffed and shuffled, behaving not unlike a living vacuum cleaner.
She continued taking in all the dog scents down the path to the gate, along the brick fenceline where a thousand dogs before her had cocked their hind legs.
She pulled on her lead with no less strength than any other day.
All was already forgotten; all was already forgiven.
Or was it?
I lifted her into the car, strapped her in and got in the driver’s seat.
As soon as I shut the door — blocking out the road noises, masking the scents of outside, restricting her view — she took one deep breath, made one very loud huff and stilled her body.
I could feel her eyes burning into the back of my head as she glared at me.
If she could speak human, I’m sure she’d have said, ‘how very dare you?’, in an incredulous tone.
Instead, my eyes met hers and the silence in that car was so loud that it was an almost humanlike interaction.
My guilt was insurmountable.
She hated me for the rest of the evening, despite my endless pats and gentle lullabies; despite the extra treats (cheese laced with antibiotics).
By morning, she’d laid down her guns and decided to love me again, but still gave me a huff and a disapproving dose of side-eye if I so much as moved to look at her wound.
She had no cone because the lump was on her neckline where the collar would sit, so everyone in the house was on scratch-watch to make sure she didn’t tear it open with her nails while scratching enthusiastically with one of her two biggest feet.
We reduced the risk by adding cotton neck sleeves to her stylish wardrobe of teddy bear knits.
And thankfully, she got through relatively unscathed.
The wound healed, the stitches disintegrated and her shaved hair grew back.
As dramatic as the whole saga seemed while we were deep in it, the lump in her neck turned out to be but a bump in the road.