Jess, Tess, And The Goose

For those of you reading the blog you know I’ve been talking about family this week—mainly one member—MY JESS. She’s a good girl, really is. She can be my rock sometimes. She’s awfully sweet and very pretty. Very smart—I know you’re not sure about that, but she IS smart. She’s simply young and makes mistakes and basically she’s working out the kinks in her personality. In the meantime, she’s good blog material.

Yep, she knows I’m blogging about her too. Hasn’t read the posts, but just laughs when I tell her about them. Glad she has a sense of humor. So today is going to be no different. This post is about Jess, well, sort of.

My family loves dogs. No cats in sight. Although I’m beginning to think we should have been cat lovers because they take up less room and don’t eat quite as much and aren’t always in your face. Cats have a much more independent nature than dogs, in my opinion.

Jess talked us into letting her adopt a dog from the local pound about two weeks ago. Actually, she didn’t talk me into it; she talked her dad into it. He’s my brother and lives with us—temporary arrangement going on nine years now. Anyway, she takes her money and hands it over to these people who know oh so much about dogs and require you to give them a driver’s license and sign in blood that the dog will be cared for. So she does this and brings the dog home. It’s a beagle. She knew I’d immediately fall in love with the little thing as I’m partial to beagles and we had another beagle that died, Sammie, and that dog was so special to me.

Jess was very proud of herself. We gave her no input at all. No one went with her. She brought it home, and the dog is standing there in the living room meeting us all for the first time, wagging its cute little tail. Just adorable. Jess announces its two years old and house-trained. It’s had its shots and an appointment to be fixed (thank ya verra much), and it has the micro-chip and has been tested for several things including heart worms and has been wormed.

And then the dog coughed.

Whoaaaaa…and what a cough it was. Sounded like a goose. And then it coughed some more. I mean the dog was seized by a coughing fit. Everyone is hurrying around—“what’ll we do, what’ll we do?” “Give it some water, idiots.” Yeah, I have good ideas from time to time. So the dog has a bowl of water placed in front of him, and he laps at it. Coughs a few more times and then gets quiet and goes back to wagging its tail. Crisis over.

Yeah, right.

I said, “Think he’s got a cold?”

Jess shook her head. “No, he does that.”

Now that got my attention. “Does what?”

“Coughs some times. The people at the pound said he was nervous.”

Okay, that didn’t sound right. Am I the only one who thinks that doesn’t sound right? I mean really? A dog is nervous so it coughs? Why not bite its nails or shake uncontrollably or something?

“Once he gets used to us he’ll stop.” Jess grins, picks the dog up and hugs him tightly to her.

So three days later I’m on my knees cleaning up Ace’s (yep, she named him Ace) little accident on the carpet (the dog was NOT house-trained as advertised) while ingesting caffeine intravenously into my free arm because I HAVE NOT HAD ONE NIGHT OF SLEEP SINCE THE DOG ARRIVED. We ALL wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of a flock of geese flying around inside our house and HONKING like crazy! The dog has not stopped coughing. Jess’ Dad is sleep walking at work, and her brother is falling asleep at his desk at school. And me? I’m going through the motions of living while dealing with an upper respiratory infection and a fractured wrist.

And what is Jess doing? Well, she’s going on about her routine just like everything is fine. Why? Cause Jess is in love. Her clothes are in this house, all her belongings, basically. She showers here, eats here, dresses here, does homework here, gets money here, etc. etc. etc. BUT! She doesn’t sleep here. Every night somewhere between ten and eleven, she rolls out my door en route to boyfriend’s house.

So the big argument started on DAY FOUR. As a family, we informed her that she would stay with the dog and clean up its poop and participate in house breaking it and sleep with the dog and deal with its coughing and it was non-negotiable. She argued that it made no sense for her to have to stay home with the dog. That the dog would still sound like a goose and wake everyone up regardless of her presence. She had a point there. But so did I. And my point was this:

IF I’M GOING TO BE MISERABLE, SO ARE YOU. PERIOD.

“Well, what do I do about my boyfriend?”

“Tell him good bye or introduce him to your goose.” And those were my final words on the subject.

Now you’re probably thinking there is something wrong with the dog. After three days so am I. I called the pound and talked to them and was assured that the dog is in perfect health and just adjusting—however—big however here—they suggested that maybe the dog has an allergy, and he’s allergic to something in our home. To which I replied, “He was honking like a goose at your facility too.” They had no comeback for that.

So Jess loads up her dog nightly—after we’ve dealt with it all day long while she is in school and all evening while she is at work (mostly me)—and takes little Ace to her boyfriend’s house. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA.

One night at said boyfriend’s house with THE GOOSE and she’s hell bound to the vet’s office. And I knew it was going to cost me money. I just gave her my debit card and went back to typing on my freebie Christmas story. Shameless plug here. I’m almost finished with that story and you’ll be able to download it from Got Romance Reviews in the next week or so. The book is entitled Blame It On Mistletoe, and I hope you enjoy it.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled session with the trials and tribulations of Tess.

So, three hours with the vet and a hundred and fifty bucks of my money later, Jess comes home and announces that the dog has bronchitis. The dog has three bottles of pills and everything should be okay. That was a week and a half ago and the dog is still THE GOOSE. I called the vet day before yesterday and got a refill. But if the dog doesn’t stop hacking away in four to five days, the vet wants to run more tests to the tune of THREE HUNDRED BUCKS.

In the meantime, the dog had an appointment with the pound to be fixed and they won’t take him now because he’s sick. @#!%$#@!@#%$#@!@#$%$#@$#!@#$%$#@!#@$#!@#$$%$#@!

Yep, sometimes only a string of swear words will do.

The vet suggests I tell the pound they have to pay for the tests. And that’s exactly what I’m going to do if it comes to that and this second round of antibiotics doesn’t work. I seriously doubt the pound is going to say, “sure, no problem.” So that means taking them to small claims court. Or rather Jess doing that. I don’t see it happening. I just see me with less money. One thing the vet did do to help out Jess and her boyfriend (yes, I still make her take the dog with her to his house) is that she prescribed something to relax the dog and make it sleepy. So it doesn’t cough quite as much. I guess we’ll know for sure in a few days if the dog is well or not.

And through it all, I keep hoping that whatever is wrong with the dog it’s something that can be cured and the dog will be okay. One more thing. Vets judge a dog’s age by their teeth. I can’t do it, of course, but I trust the vet to know. Remember how I said the pound told her the dog is two? Well, the dog is more like eight. At the very least, at the end of this road we’re on with THE GOOSE, I plan on writing a letter straight from HELL to the pound.