Throughout my life, there has seemed to be a recurring theme, and that theme is “we’ll have to make it up as we go along.” I admire those people who make plans and are able to stick to them and ultimately have the great life that they always knew they were destined for. I just wasn’t meant to be one of them, I guess. Not to say I have a terrible life. There’s just been a lot more improvisation than scripted journey. A Choose Your Own Adventure sort of existence, if you will. The situation with Nanners is the perfect example. This dog. Who had shown up out of nowhere on our porch in the middle of an extremely rainy April night and claimed us as his; who we didn’t know a thing about 8 months ago; and who refused to come inside and join us at night like any civilized dog who knew how good they could have it would, suddenly was going to cost us more money than any dog I had ever owned. Right at Christmas, too.

At this point, I feel it’s important to clarify. We are not wealthy. At the time of the Nanners situation, we were actually pretty close to poor. I was going to school in the mornings and working part-time in the late afternoons/early evenings, and my husband was working sometimes 80 hours a week, but on a salary, for a company that not only didn’t appreciate him, but refused to pay people what they were worth. We were very lucky that we lived so close to my parents, who helped A LOT with the kids. But when you factor in that we were living 30 miles (one way) from our jobs, gasoline costs, and wear and tear on the cars, added to everything else, we just didn’t really have anything left over at the end of the pay period. So we didn’t take it lightly when the vet gave us her estimate of the costs associated with saving this dog’s life. We had to work out an arrangement with the vet’s office manager so that we wrote them a series of post-dated checks to be deposited every couple of weeks. There were so many. It was like buying a car. But we didn’t even think twice. I should say that my husband, on the surface, is not a super-sentimental guy. I was terrified that he was going to say ‘Nope. It’s too much.’ But he didn’t. He was right there with me, working out arrangements so we could take Bananas home with us.

Christmas that year was a little lean. I guess you could say our big Christmas gift for the family was our new indoor dog, who was whacked out of his mind on doggie pain meds. Katie and I were the ones who took him home. My husband was at work, and Gus was at school. I was homeschooling Katie due to some issues with her class. So, she and I went to pick Nanners up. When we got home, he got out of the car and immediately headed for the road. Not to chase anything, he just legitimately didn’t seem to have any idea where we were. He was super groggy. We got him inside and settled in and took the other dogs out for a while so he could just sleep. We didn’t have a crate for him; we just walled him off in the kitchen with some furniture and plastic storage totes. We had no idea how he was going to behave now that he lived inside.

Moving Bananas, or Nanners, as we had begun to call him, inside was like meeting him all over again. While we knew that he had come to us with massive separation anxiety, we had no idea what he had experienced prior to showing up on our porch. He was surprisingly respectful and well-behaved in a lot of ways. He didn’t go near the trash, he didn’t jump up and try to get things off the table or counters, he wasn’t interested in tearing up the place. But he had some quirks, too. He had a pathological fear of squeaky toys and didn’t like stuffed animals/stuffed toys at all. He would freak out if you got too close to him with a plastic grocery bag. Little things that we didn’t expect would completely throw him off. And while before he had definitely been my son’s dog, and my daughter and I were the ones doing most of his care during his recovery, suddenly my husband became the focus of his affection. He would follow him anywhere.

A month or so into his recovery, we had a bit of a hiccup. We noticed that when Nanners would sneeze, green snot would come out near his eye, and we were experiencing an unpleasant smell. So back to the vet we went. Apparently, when the open wound into his sinus was healing, there was a small hole that didn’t close up. So there was a “blowhole,” as we and the vet lovingly called it, that was open to the outside, leading straight into his sinus, and causing an infection. Nanners had to go back into surgery. This time, with a much clearer prognosis, but still a hefty price tag. More checks were left at the vet’s front desk, and we took him home the next day. A few months later, you couldn’t really even tell that he’d had an accident, aside from a small dip next to his right eye that really only we noticed.

We had gotten into the habit of taking Bananas almost everywhere with us. At the beginning, because we had to monitor him and give him meds often, but after a while, just because we had gotten used to it. This is where some of my guilt and regret about Asti comes in. She loved car rides. But she didn’t get to go on them often, because she was impatient sitting in the car when it wasn’t moving. Nanners was the opposite. He was more excited when the car was moving, but was perfectly calm once we stopped. At that point, we travelled 30 miles one way, almost every day, for dance classes, with a two-to-three-hour period of waiting before traveling back home. Asti didn’t enjoy the waiting. Also, Nanners never got a crate. He would lie next to my husband’s side of the bed at night, then follow him wherever he went when he got up. Asti and Brownie were crate sleepers. Nanners had a lot more freedom than they did. I still beat myself up about it.

I have a million stories about Nanners, and Asti, and Brownie, but this is supposed to be a blog about the current pack, and I’m starting to get a bit sad thinking about the dogs that came before, so I think I’ll leave this one here for now. One more post about these three, I think, and then we’ll get to the current chaos. Thanks for sticking with me so far.