Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show
up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch
and work: you don’t give up.

Anne Lamott
(American Writer)

I’ve had a really stressful week so far.  It all started with my pug Elvis’ scratching and flinging himself all over the furniture, trying to scratch his chubby little body to no apparent relief.  I knew it was time for him to have a bath, and he goes to the vet to get his bath and his nails trimmed about once every six to eight weeks.  I have two pugs, so I alternate trips to the vet.  Kojak had his visit in early October, and I was going to take Elvis the next week, but I knew he had a wellness check coming up with vaccines due, so I was going to wait until then to take him for the whole shebang. 

On November 7, I carried him in.  His itching was just terrible by then and his eyes both looked red and puffy as if he might be allergic to something.  I figured he probably needed a cortisone shot as I sometimes would have to get for Kojak, particularly in the fall and the spring.  I found out that Elvis’s teary, swollen eyes were not the result of allergies, but instead he had two corneal abrasions (perhaps from all the scratching and flinging he had been doing) that needed immediate treatment.  The vet wouldn’t even give him his vaccines or bathe him, much less give him the cortisone shot, until his eyes were healed.  So, we began a long and nerve wracking process of trying to get an ointment into Elvis’ eyes four times a day. 

The vet had warned that if we didn’t get his corneas healed, he could end up losing his eyesight and perhaps even his eyeball on the worst eye.  Elvis didn’t want me messing with his hurting eyes.  No problem, right?  After all, Elvis is the dog and I’m the human.  Well, if Elvis were a child, then there wouldn’t be any problem.  I have held down a screaming child that didn’t want his medicine or some other kind of treatment many times in the past.  I always came out the victor, and the child got well in spite of himself.  However, neither of my screaming uncooperative children would bite me.  Elvis is a biter.  In fact, he gave my husband such a severe bite back in February of last year when he was trying to put on his harness against Elvis’ wishes that he ended up getting 15 stitches in the ER.  Elvis is a rescued pug who had some abuse in his past that turned him into a biter.  So, we just sort of accepted that we don’t force things on Elvis that he doesn’t want.  And that plan worked well for us and for Elvis until his corneal abrasions and the ointment in his sore eyes four times a day. 

After a devastatingly stressful weekend trying to medicate his eyes, I got the vet to give me eyedrops to use instead of the ointment, which was almost impossible to use on him.  Elvis began to cooperate a little better because he realized the medicine was helping him, and he could see we didn’t mean to hurt him.  Still, the eyedrops work best when we can do it without having to hold Elvis against his will.  He tries to cooperate, and he offers his big brown eyes to us to put the medicine in even though he doesn’t like it, but occasionally, when he’s very wound up, he bobs and weaves and makes it more difficult to do.  And if we have to hold him when he’s wound up, he gently growls first as a warning, and then he snarls and tries to bite.

Guess what winds Elvis up a lot?  Itching that he can’t get relief from!   We tried various things to relieve the itching: combing and brushing him, which he seemed to love, giving him a flea treatment on the outside chance that he might have fleas although I couldn’t see any, and Kojak wasn’t flailing around with flea bites as you might assume he would do if fleas were in the house, and finally, giving him Benadryl tablets, which I read on the Internet was okay for dogs.  That seemed to help just a tiny bit, and I was glad for even a tiny bit of relief myself.  But eventually, the itching got so severe that the dog wouldn’t sleep or eat anymore.  I think he probably couldn’t sleep and he felt too bad from not getting any rest that he didn’t want to eat.  Plus, Elvis is smart.  And he figured out that we were slipping him pills in little treats such as cheese or peanut butter. 

When Elvis doesn’t sleep, neither do I.  I am concerned for his well-being, and I can’t bear to hear him whimper and look at me with those teary eyes, begging me to help him.  I didn’t know what else to do.  I got very little sleep over the weekend, but Elvis was managing to sleep in fits and starts, and so was I.  That went on until Sunday night when he was up all night (and so was I).  A human being can go for a little while, days actually, before keeling over.  But with me working long hours on Monday and Tuesday, and me also having a urinary tract infection that I should have taken time to go to the doctor for, but didn’t, my body started to react in a very negative way.  Tuesday night (or really Wednesday in the wee hours of the morning) I had a full-blown panic attack.  I couldn’t breathe.  I felt as if I was having a heart attack.  I had severe chest pains and could feel my heart beating in my throat.  When I began to cry, the pains shot through my head, too.  I wasn’t sure if I was having a heart attack or a stroke then.  Finally, I was able to calm down and drop off to sleep.  My husband let me sleep in, so I missed work Wednesday.

I woke up with no one in the bed but me and Kojak, so wonder I got about 4 hours sleep.  My first thought was I wonder where Elvis is.  I knew that my husband was staying out of work because he had a severe cold and sinus headache, so I was thinking that perhaps he had taken Elvis to the vet for a cortisone shot or some other kind of relief.  But, no.  They were in the den, my husband asleep on the couch and Elvis sitting by his side, periodically nodding off, then jerking awake to a scratching attack.  In between he would sit and hassle and whimper.  He hadn’t eaten his dog food in almost three days.  It’s a good thing he had some fat to spare.  I called the vet and described what was going on, and he said to bring him in.  So, my husband, bless his heart, took him in.  They examined him and found no fleas either, although one assistant thought she saw one on him.  If he does have just one flea, then that is one nasty little bug to cause all the frustration in Elvis.  The vet also emptied his anal glands, which I think has helped with some of the itching and frantic behavior.  And thank goodness, he gave him a cortisone shot.  Unfortunately, the cortisone shot takes about 24-48 hours to have a real effect.  Still, Elvis calmed down enough to get some sleep, and alas, so did I.  Last night went like this:  Elvis would sleep heavily for an hour to an hour and a half, and then he would awake in a frenzy of scratching and flailing and whimpering.  Of course, every time he woke up, so did I.  But I’m very grateful for the rest that I was able to get. 

Needless to say, Elvis’ itching has mostly precluded me giving him the eye drops.  I’ve been lucky to get then in his eyes once a day, muchless four times.  But improvement has been made, and hopefully by tomorrow, the shot will take full effect and he will be at peace.  He didn’t eat his breakfast this morning, but he did take a baby carrot (he loves baby carrots) and he did eat about 2/3 of his supper tonight.  Hopefully, we’ll both get good night’s sleep tonight.

At the very darkest time, during the panic attacks early Wednesday morning, I really thought that if I had a heart attack and could just be swept up to meet my maker I would be better off than left alive on earth to be sleep deprived and in such pain.  Plus, I couldn’t bear to watch Elvis suffering as he was.  But in spite of the dark, painful night, I was able to get a little rest and to begin to see that the vet had to have an answer to something I saw no hope for.  And he did.  And I pray that this cures the itching for Elvis and for me.  I will finally take Elvis in for his bath tomorrow morning, and the vet said if he was still itching then, he would give him a pill to take once a month that would make his skin poisonous to fleas so that if a flea were to bite him, the flea would immediately die.  I must admit that I considered it might not be a bad idea if there was a pill available for us humans to take that would not make Elvis die, but would certainly give him a strong aversion to biting us.  But then I know that Elvis does not try to bite because he’s mean. He’s not.  He’s the biggest sweetheart in the world and faithful to me to a distraction (he sits against my legs when I’m putting on makeup and drying my hair at my dressing table so that I can barely move).  He tries to bite because he’s afraid.  And that fear runs deep and goes way back, and it’s awfully hard to get over.  Maybe he never will.

I love Elvis and so does my husband, and it’s a good thing.  If we didn’t love him so much and want him with us so much, he’d be a goner.  I think Elvis is very lucky there is no pill for humans that cause immediate death on impact.  And we’re very lucky that Elvis has chosen to love us and trust us (most of the time) even though he had a rough earlier life.  I’m glad neither one of us gave up on the other.  Because in a dog eat dog world, having an Elvis in my life is such a reward.