Managing Big and Small Dogs: A Guide to Patience and Playful Challenges

Sometimes, these monsters just amaze me. I’m not as patient with the dogs as Maggie is. I don’t always think everything that they do is cute. Frequently, I get annoyed with things that they do, even though they’re just being dogs. Granted, the last few weeks have been stressful for me (Maggie, too, I suppose…) and I’ve felt a little stretched at times. But, for all of the barking, the jumping, the messes, the pulling things out of the garbage, the refusal to allow a new toy to survive longer than 20 minutes, every day these guys make me realize just how special and unique dogs really are.

Not once have the jumped on Maggie since all of this has started. Not once have they gotten too pushy with her, or gone after her medications, or the other items associated with her recovery. In fact, they’ve been nothing but gentle with her. I’m amazed that they’re still terrified of the vacuum cleaner while simultaneously realizing that they need to be careful around Maggie.

Any instances like this where your dog seemed to just know?

To update everyone, we got the pathology results back from Maggie’s last surgery. That set of lymph nodes that were removed came back cancer-free, which means that even though the cancer started to spread it didn’t get very far. The past month has sucked, but “cancer-free” did a pretty good job of cheering everyone up.