Choo Choo on pain medication is funny.

Do you know what I find incredibly funny?

Watching Choo Choo trying to lead a normal life when she's high. 

No, I did not give my dog weed. Jeeze, Padawan and I don't mess with that stuff. I may drink occasionally, and Padawan might like his beer (ew), but we don't mess with illegal substances. Ever. So when I say watching Choo Choo when she's high is funny, I mean it in a, "the doctor gave her such strong painkillers she can't figure out why her tail is following her" kind of way.

Did I mention this? Oh, probably not since this whole thing went down on Tuesday and I spent all of Wednesday doing more packing and poking Choo Choo in the meantime to make sure she hadn't died or something. I guess I should take this back to the beginning.

I was sitting at work on Tuesday, minding my own business and doing absolutely nothing productive. I might have written a blog because I was really pissed at that guy who totally made up a bunch of bullshit about me and him that made no sense. The lies he made up, not my blog. I'm fairly certain that my blog was pretty logical. Or at the very least it was understandable. I mean, it was in English. But that's not the point. 

As I was sitting at my desk, mindlessly playing bubble popper, my phone went off with a text message. Then another. And another. I was bombed with six text messages at the same time. I didn't even have time to open ONE of them before my phone was ringing.  My cell phone, mind you, not my work phone. Although my work phone does get the occasional text message. You can text landlines, you know. I answered my phone, completely baffled, to hear Relly on the other end.

She didn't even give me time to finish saying "hello" before she was shrieking in my ear, "DIDN'T YOU GET OUR MESSAGES!?!?!?!" She sounded hysterical.

"Um, yeah. I just got like a million of them. I was in the process of trying to read them when you called. Is something wrong?"

"SOMETHING'S WRONG WITH CHOO CHOO!"

I swear my heart stopped for a second before sputtering back to life, racing at ten times the normal speed. My heart dropped into my stomach, my blood turned to ice, and all I could think of was the Chihuahua we'd had when I was in high school that had died suddenly one afternoon while playing fetch with my sisters. 

"What's wrong with her?" I barely managed to whisper it.

"I think she broke her leg or something."

I could have killed her. I wanted to reach through the cell phone lines and wrap my hands around her throat and wring her neck for scaring the hell out of me like that. She made me think my dog was either dying a slow, painful, and baffling death or was already dead, and all that was wrong was a hurt leg. Not that I wasn't concerned about that. But when you think your furry child is dying, a broken leg is a lot more palatable.

Forgetting I was at work, I snapped, "Why the fuck did you say it like that? I thought she was dying! What happened to her leg?"

"Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you." And then she launched into this long, rambling, completely useless story about how she'd gone to work and what she'd done with her day before she got to the part that I actually asked about, which was exactly what had happened to my dog, who was staying with my grandparents until moving day next week.

"Well, when we came home  she ran around in circles in the formal living room like always, and then she followed me into the family room and when I sat on the couch she jumped in my lap." That's where she stopped. I love my sister to death, but she has the worst way of relaying  important information I've ever seen in any human being in my whole life. Hands down, no competition. Six year olds are better at telling stories than my twenty three year old sister.

"Well, when did she hurt her leg?" I was quickly losing patience.

"Oh, when she landed on my lap she started yelping really loud and crying and then she rolled off my lap onto the couch and cried by herself. When we tried to touch her paw she snapped at us and cried more. She won't walk around or eat. She won't even get up to go to the bathroom. She peed on Memaw."

Well, I almost laughed at that last bit, but I reigned it in. I considered everything she said, and I recalled how when Choo Choo had been three months old we had accidentally closed the front door on her back leg when she'd made a wild dash to try to go with us to the grocery store. She'd just has a soft tissue sprain but she had screamed and thrashed around until we got to the emergency clinic, and then acted perfectly fine. They gave her painkillers for it. Well, that's what I thought of so I said we'd come get her later that night and take her to see Dr. Kevin Spacey if she was still limping in the morning. (Her doctor's name isn't actually Kevin Spacey. He just looks and sounds exactly like him. Choo Choo and I both like him.)

Between that time and when I got of at eight I received six additional calls informing me that she was really hurt, that she wasn't eating or drinking, that I needed to get out there right then, that they were worried. They were sure it was broken. Couldn't I just leave work early and come get her? I managed to convince them that I couldn't leave work and they finally left me the hell alone. Until eight o'clock when they all started calling and texting to find out if I was on my way. 

When I finally got out there, Choo Choo seemed to entirely forget her hurt leg and jumped out of Memaw's arms to run and greet me. She did not act like she was feeling any pain in the slightest. She didn't act like it anything was wrong with her at all, but my grandmother insisted we still take her to the vet because she was just certain something was wrong with her. Well, I wanted my dog home anyway so we packed her things and brought her home where, as soon as she knew she was with us for a while, she started limping and whining and yelping like they had said she was doing, and she would not eat or drink a thing.

Presumably, the adrenaline rush that she got when she saw me over road the pain, and she didn't start feeling it again until after the excitement of seeing Mommy again had worn off. When I woke up the next morning and reached out to pet her, she yelped so loudly when I touched her shoulder that I immediately picked up my cell and called Dr. Kevil Spacey's office and made the first available appointment, which was four thirty.

During the time between waking up and going to the Vet, I packed more of our belongings for the big move (eight days!!!!!!), but I noticed that Choo Choo wasn't acting like herself. She was laying in the sun in front of the glass doors, not moving or making any noise. I was so worried about her since she wasn't eating or drinking anything that I went over and poked her a couple of times throughout the day, just to make sure she wasn't dead. She didn't like that and growled, but it made me feel better having it confirmed.

When we finally got to Dr. Spacey's she was nervous and adrenaline filled again, so she wasn't acting like she was in pain until the end of the visit, when she finally started limping around. That's when they gave her the first dose of the painkillers, and twenty minutes later...Choo Choo had left the building.

It started with her eyes dilating. Then she started blinking. She tried to navigate the stairs herself when we got home, but she got up two stairs when she noticed her tail. She went up a couple of stairs more, turned back and watched her tail. She wagged it. Her whole head moved to follow the tail.

She was fascinated.

I had to carry her up the rest of the way, and while she was in my arms she kept trying to bite her tail. She wasn't chasing it. She was just...hoping it would move into her mouth.

When we were home she walked around with her head turned back to watch her tail. She cocked her head from side to side, twitched her ears, even growled at her own tail. Then she curled up in a ball and put her tail under her from right paw. When she moved it, she growled.

And I couldn't stop laughing. It was the funniest thing I've ever seen my dog do, and we have to give her the meds every night. So for the next week I will be able to watch my stoned dog do silly things and then giggle over it. It will be a good week. :)