A Day at the Vet's

I hate to take my dog to the veterinarian for anything that involves leaving the dog. Any dog. Any veterinarian.

I didn't used to have that problem, but a dozen years ago I took my much beloved Jack Russell terrier, Lucy (1) for a checkup because she was dragging a bit. The vet kept her because there was more going on than I thought. She never came home.

Now I face every visit to the animal doctor with trepidation. I have, in fact, made two trips in one day to an emergency vet nearly an hour away to keep from leaving my dog overnight. I don't even like to leave one for the day for something as simple as a tooth cleaning, but I buck up and do it when absolutely necessary.

There's a terrible fear that something will happen and I won't even get to say goodbye. Because, tough as it is, I can handle goodbye. I expect to outlive my dogs (hope to, to be quite honest), but I do want that goodbye as painful as it may be for me. I want them to know I'm there, that they are loved, and then slip away. Not some surgical mishap or crash during treatment.

Abi, who followed Lucy as the Jack Russell terrier in my life, makes that difficult. Although you wouldn't think it by looking at her, even at 12 years old, Abi is quite the scrapper. In fact, since she's come into my life I've become quite adept at managing dog fights and treating wounds. I've learned where not to put my hands when separating dogs, whether it's tangling terriers or bristling bull dogs.

The first time Abi was in a serious to the death battle, or so it appeared, she and a sheltie were under my feet and I naively reached down to pull them apart. I think I was the only one who had to see a doctor that time, but for a while after that there were a lot of vet visits. The emergency trip was for Abi, who needed stitches behind her ear after another round with the sheltie. Then I got better at anticipating and handling the occasional bouts. And the sheltie, who was apparently Abi's nemesis, passed away a few summers ago, so Abi has generally been more mellow.

Her bestest buddy now is Lucy (2.0), who came to us as a gift when her owner lost his job. Lucy, while not quite the love puppy the original was, is generally not a fighter and they have gotten along well since day one. That is despite what I'm sure is an anti-Lucy complex that Abi has developed through years of hearing "Lucy never did that." They snooze in the sun, harass the rabbit and chickens, wait out naps and kennel visits and sleep at the foot of the bed. The black terrier mix, Mushu, is purely an accessory in their relationship.

But several weeks ago one of the Es dropped a bit of lunch into the floor and it was on. That's another thing about the terriers, although they had never been around babies, they are absolutely devoted to the girls and will apparently tolerate anything from them. When stressed, they tend to chew vigorously on a cow hoof or, without intervention, each other.

This time there was no warning. One dog grabbed the scrap, a gift from the girls she thought, and the other dog grabbed her. Separating two terriers is a bit like separating pit bulls, although on a smaller scale. They are tenacious. I've learned the best approach with the smaller dogs is to grab one by the back legs and pick her up so that I can shake the other one loose. That doesn't work with a pit bull, mainly because I'm not big enough to lift both of them. Any way, when Abi and Lucy released one another, Abi had wounds on her muzzle.

They healed. Then there was one that didn't. Turns out after a visit to the vet nearly two weeks ago that Lucy probably shattered the root of Abi's tooth when she bit her during that altercation. For the wound to heal, the tooth has to be removed.

Which is a round about way of saying Abi is at the vet and I'm hating the day.

I love my vet. She is very caring about the animals who come to her and I can always get an appointment. It's totally not personal. I'm just uneasy when my dog isn't here with me (which gives me a little reminder of how much trust people put in me when they board their dogs, even with no medical procedure involved).

So I'm anticipating 4 p.m. and heading back to pick her up. And down deep, dreading the scenario where that doesn't take place.

The Fun and Frustration of Feeding Preschoolers

Do you remember the aggravation of feeding a small child?

I think it's one of the things we forget the quickest as our children grow. Oh, we remember in some drug-hazed way the pain of labor, recall the occasional embarrassment of department store tantrums, aggravation of potty training, and the bone deep exhaustion of interrupted sleep for months and months on end. We remember diapers, and car seats and children drawing on the walls.

Among all the things we have to cope with and manage when dealing with small children, I think the thing we forget most thoroughly, or at least it was true in my case, is how hard they are to feed.

I'm not talking about spooning baby food into the mouth of a small crawler who eats like a baby bird with her little mouth open. Unless it's a food she rejects, in which case you're scraping it off her chin, the high chair tray and possibly your clothing. Or even the general messiness as children learn to feed themselves, which can be dealt with somewhat like an organized serial killer with a lot of drop clothes and clean up, but even then you're likely to find food caked in strange places (enough for CSI to bust said serial killer).

No, I'm referring to children who can quite competently feed themselves and even manage (most of the time) to drink from a cup with no lid without a major catastrophe.

Those are the ones who drive their parents, and in my case grandmother, stark raving insane. Really, meal time can be so stressful that I wind up with a bowl of cereal at 10 p.m. because I just can't deal with them and try to eat, too. It's ridiculous.

Oh, I remember my children going through food cycles. I think I still do that myself. There would be days on end where, if asked, my son wanted nothing but peanut butter and jelly. My daughter, on the other hand, probably never wanted the same meal twice and still doesn't. I could deal with that by stocking up on their favorites. At least I would know they were eating.

Instead I'm dealing with two little girls who one day will devour a food and the next turn up their collective noses.

E1 is the ring leader in the food rebellion, as is often the case, and I know it's a three meal a day fiasco. Weighing in at a hefty 32 pounds and 4 years old (note sarcasm intended), we tend to worry about her eating enough. So when she requests a particular food for any meal in which individual orders are taken, we try to deliver. When that food is set in front of her, however, she's as likely to declare it "yucky," or spend 45 minutes rearranging it on her plate, as she is to eat it. Her list of go-to foods is really short and even then I sometimes don't feel like she eats enough. Of course, it is hard to remember that her stomach is really quite small so I never demand she clean her plate, as long as she samples what is on it.

Granted, she will almost always eat an apple or a stick of cheese, loves cold hot dogs (most of the time), turkey and ham, and will usually eat a carrot with some buttermilk dressing. But seriously, can you live on that?

Since she is quite outspoken, her food rebellion often overflows onto E2. If she declares it yucky -- a word I've banned at the table -- then of course her younger sibling will likewise turn up her nose. Never mind that neither of them have actually tasted the dish which usually contains only food I know they like.

At least once a day we try to sit down together for a balanced meal. Well, I may or may not eat then, but I do prepare a meal and sit with them. My meal time, however, is just as likely to be spent negotiating with E1 over how much she has to eat. If we can keep her drama to a minimum, E2 will often polish off her plate while we're debating. Often E2 finishes her meal and is excused before E1 and I have a food treaty ironed out.

We've had some balanced meal successes, although I'm always looking for more and have a stack of "kid friendly" recipes to try with my fingers crossed. I'm always on the lookout for something they might eat and expect that's a fairly common phenomenon.

Both love Lunchables because they put them together themselves, although I now get ingredients to assemble my own, serve them with carrots and they are allowed no more than once or twice a week; they expressed a love for Campbell's Chunky Chicken Noodle when I opened one for myself and they wound up eating it (but we've not tried a second round yet); virtually anything that smacks of pizza goes down well (think pizza casserole with whole wheat noodles and limited ingredients); they will consistently devour chicken breasts topped with a Greek yogurt and parmesan mixture; and the cheeseburger soup which we all made together turned out to be a hit even if it did dirty three pans and require a lot of chopping and preparation.

There is still no guarantee on anything from one day to the next. Although using familiar foods and letting them "help" increases the odds of success, we have prepared foods in which they know all the ingredients but insist that together, today at least, they are not edible.

At the same time, sometimes some totally unlikely food will be snatched up and devoured. E1, for example, loves onions with no real rhyme or reason. Raw or in the form of onion rings, which she once declared "the best food ever."

I can hardly wait until E3, who so far resists anything beyond milk, enters the fray. Hopefully by then I'll have a repertoire to enable me to feed them without totally losing my mind.