My little Flower.

If you know anything about me, you know that I love our dogs. Okay, Simon definitely makes it challenging to love him, but no matter how angry I am at him for chewing up something I treasured or decorating our rug with a scoot streak; it only takes a little while for me to forgive that little baby-harp-seal-face, despite the telling Hitler moustache under his shiny black nose. My frequent urges to cram him into a rocket and shoot him into the sun are short-lived and fleeting. Usually, the hyper-spastic-attention-whoring fluffy teddy bear of a dog is much-adored.

But Flower enjoys a state of grace. I am never angry at Flower. She is the angel of the household. She is sweet, demanding, funny, and adorable and the Alpha dog of this pack, hands-down. She imposes her tyrannical dictatorship in a most passive, sweet way, using the weapons of her wide eyes and adorable face; by little growls of dismay when you stop petting her to rolling over onto her back and giving you the googly eyes and wrinkly head when you’re eating.

In our marriage, I’m the mean one. I don’t feed from the table.... err …okay... I RARELY feed from the table... Husband on the other hand is a tool of the dog-establishment. They have him snowed. One glance from the adorable eyes, one twitch of the nose, one lick of the dog-lips, and he is handing over his plate. He’s a sucker. And it’s so cute. However, the truth is, if Hubby gets up and leaves the room; it’s him they follow. I am okay with that—as long as I’m getting some decent dog-time.

Flower and I have a nice relationship. I am the petter, she is the pettee, and I often provide her the snuggle warmth she prefers when it’s sofa-time. Flower is the apple of my eye. Is it favouritism? No. It’s just that we girls have more in common than Simon and Hubby. They rumble, they roll around, laugh, throw and catch toys, play tug-of-war… we girls, we like more sedate, refined, less boisterous activities, such as snuggling while reading, snuggling while watching TV, snuggling while using the laptop. It works for us.

Flower has been sick lately—vomiting much. We just dropped the equivalent to a mortgage payment in diagnostics. For a short morning yesterday, we thought possibly cancer. That was a devastating morning. The ultrasound proved otherwise, to our tremendous relief. Times like these remind me how important our pets are to us. We have people ask us how we can spend so much money on just a dog… it’s impossible for me to think of them as ‘just’ anything. They’re not objects or abstractions. They are a life. It’s a beating heart, a little warm body. It’s unconditional affection; it’s a creature dependent on you that needs your care and your love and your time. I don’t understand people who see animals like that—as something… less. Every life is a treasure. Every spark that grows and lives and breathes is a gift. Every lifetime of every pet I’ve ever owned is something I treasure, something that stays with me. They make me smile, they make me laugh, they comfort me with affection and snuggles, and every single one of them are integral to who I have become as a person—even poop-scooting Simon.

I hope the treatments work for Flower. She means the world to me—even if she is a compass and my husband is true North. That’s okay. I still get my growl-demands for petting, and I still have to be careful rolling over at night as to not disturb the Princess.