My dog, Rosie, has an infection of sorts. It’s in her eyes now, they’re both reddened and obviously causing her discomfort. We took her to the veterinarian’s on Thursday because she’d been coughing, hacking, and breathing heavily. Let me rewind a moment: My brother recently made a decision to get a puppy, a Rottweiler/Husky mix named King. This may not have been the smartest move because he was just promoted and was going to be working even more hours than before, which means that’s 70+ hours a week he’s not going to be spending with the dog. One day after King was adopted from the Nashville Humane Society, he started coughing like there was something in his throat he needed to get out. We called the Humane Society thinking it might’ve been kennel cough, they said, no, it couldn’t be. They hadn’t had a kennel cough outbreak in months. The next day my brother took him to the vet’s and yes, it was kennel cough. He started on antibiotics, but my brother, being the responsible being he is, forgot to keep going after three days (that was the point he was supposedly no longer infectious to our other dogs). Because we thought King was okay, we let Rosie and Rover play with him.

So here we are back to the place we started. Rosie is sick. She’s coughing and has that nasty eye infection, remember? The vet says it’s either some strain of kennel cough the vaccine didn’t cover or maybe it was a different virus that has similar symptoms. She gets a thermometer up the butt, a shot in the fleshy part of her leg, and her nails trimmed. That wasn’t as scary as…THE CAR RIDE. She really hates riding in cars…with boys or otherwise. The vet gave us antibiotics for her, that are supposed to clear up the eyes and the coughs.

Today she was doing worse, her left eye was swollen even more and the pink was spreading. My mom called the vet and picked up some ointment for her eye. Rosie and I were napping in my bed when my sister came in with the ointment to apply to her tear duct. I held Rosie while she attempted to put the ointment on. Rosie was not having any of it. She squirmed and snorted and sounded like a whole damn barnyard. We try several times in different positions, holding her face still, holding her body down, etc. Finally, my sister holds Rosie down to the bed and “mounts” her. Straddling her, she tries again. Rosie rises up, using all her strength to push her little body up and squirm out of my sister’s grips.

I was so proud of my little baby, pulling her way out of my sister’s thighs.