Man's Best Friend

My dog Nora, often wakes me up. Sometimes she'll jump on the bed and head-butt me out of my sleep. Other times she lies her 70-lb body across my chest, which makes it hard to continue to sleep. Or breathe. Last Sunday morning she devised a whole new way of waking me. At exactly 7:01 AM, she threw up on my bed. If I'm tired enough, I can sometimes sleep through loud thunderstorms and have worried in the past that if someone broke into my house, I might sleep right through it. But this woke me. It's hard to sleep with a vomiting dog just a few inches away from your head.

I've had Nora for four years now. I picked her out at an animal shelter shortly after I bought my house. She was terrified of me at first. The people from the shelter put us in a room together and she sat as far away from me as she possibly could. I sat cross-legged on the floor and just waited with my hand extended, until she oh-so-slowly got curious and began to creep across the room. For the first few weeks, whenever I came home she'd stand one room away for a while before coming over to give me a very cautious wag of her tail.

Eventually, I won her over, which will happen when given enough love, attention and milk bones. She began to understand I wasn't going to hurt her and we became pals. She even progressed to the point that when I get home from work, she's there at the door, dancing. Yup, Nora dances. She goes up on her hind legs and does this half-jump, half-twirl dance. She dances when it's time to go out for her walk and whenever I walk in the front door. Sometimes, actually often, we dance together.

About two months ago she stopped dancing and started limping, so we headed off to the vet, Dr. K who said "Nora's developed back problems." He hands me a bottle of steroids. Steroids? Great. Now even the dog will have a better body than I do. Once the steroids start getting into her system, there's no telling what she may begin to do.

I can practically see her in the free weights section of the gym screaming at people around her;"You're working out with only 50 lbs. of weight! What are you a bunch of sissies?" She'll become addicted to the stairmaster and the treadmill, running as fast as Steve Austin in the 'Six Million Dollar Man' before settling into the juice bar to flex her muscles for everyone to see. Or she'll start doing interviews for Dog Lover magazine, her muscled physique gracing the cover, while inside she'll swear that it's just good genes and a healthy diet.

And from there, it's a slippery slope. After a few months she may demand I take her to Splash so she can be ogled by the boys. You can practically hear them saying "I don't know who the old man is, but that dog's hot!" She'll be calling me at work, telling me to not rush home 'cause she's got a couple guys coming over and she'll need the house for a while. And I can only imagine the hook-up ads she'll be posting on craigslist, all of them starting with the words "Muscle Bitch Seeks..."

All kidding aside, the back problem is pretty serious and at some point there are going to be decisions that need to be made. The steroids are only a short-term solution, but for now, they're doing their job. Nora's back to walking a little faster. And although she's not dancing quite as much as she used to, when the pills are working and she gets really excited, she can still twirl with the best of them.