Alternative style therapy dogs.

I have the best dogs ever. Yesterday I had ANOTHER tooth surgery in the effort to give me a front tooth. This has been going on for years. Many years ago, I bashed headfirst into a jump. If you are looking for a sport that is easier on the teeth than riding horses, dog agility is for you. The jumps are made of wispy little pieces of pvc and you can carry them in one hand. Not 12' poles of sturdy lodge pole pine that have to be dragged through the footing every time you reset the course. Also, if your dog refuses one, the judge quietly holds up a hand for your 5 faults, and you merrily loop around and over they go. When the horse stops, they are VERY NAUGHTY, and if they were REALLY VERY NAUGHTY, over their head you might go.

So many years later, they had to pull that tooth out due to it's sad death. And they tried to give me a fake tooth on a screw. Screwed up into my bone. With bone grafts from cadavers. It sounded like a great idea at the time. Most of the people you see missing front teeth, you don't take them serious, no matter what they say. Put a herd of small black dogs in their bike basket, and perhaps mis-matching plaid ensemble and cop glasses, and you are the neighborhood crazy person. So I really wanted that tooth.

But it kept going bad and they're still trying and that means I now go to tooth surgeries in San Jose, right near Apple. I bet fancy Apple employees go to my brilliant tooth doctor there, who is trying this and that and this and that, but is flummoxed by my tooth rejecting skull. Like everything else I do though, there's no giving up yet. We are all still trying to get me that tooth.

So yesterday he tried something else. I'm not even sure what at this point. I just know poor Gary had to once again drive me over the mountain and wait all morning while I'm knocked out with a mixture of halcion and something else I forget the name. Little blue and white pills and cups of orange syrup. Makes you sleep for a day, but well worth it if they need to drill around in your mouth and graft things and screw stuff in or pull stuff out and you want to be sound asleep the whole time.

When I get home, the dogs all stay close. Nothing fun happens on dental surgery days, or the days following. My face swells up like an orangutan. For real. And I get covered with a blanket of dogs. Otterpop is the best. She's like a police therapy dog. She makes sure no mailmen or little yellow school buses or UPS trucks come near me while I'm out. The other dogs just curl up and stay close, but Otterpop takes action. Decides what dog sits where and whether toys can be brought up on the bed and if so which ones. She's a control freak, but she takes charge.

I don't think everyone needs a therapy dog like Otterpop, but I'm happy to have her. And everybody else. I am very lucky to have 3 of them plus a super awesome husband! Maybe by tomorrow there's something fun for the dogs, better than our scary orangutan shamble around the block, which may have freaked out all the neighbors who saw it last night. But until then, they stick close and wait for me to feel better. Thanks, dogs. I feel better already!